YouSaid · the spoken record

John Schlifske

lines on the record: 62
first: 2021-04-09
most recent: 2021-04-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Have both a keen intellect and strategic mind, but you also have to have high emotional IQ, emotional quotient. And I really, when I was younger, I thought, wow, if I have a good idea and I explain it, everyone will just buy into it and start working there. And I totally underappreciated how much how important it is to engage with people, not just on an intellectual level, but on an emotional level so that they know that you care about them. They know that the reason you have this idea is not for selfish reasons, but it's for the good of the organization. They believe that what you're doing isn't just for personal aggrandizement, but for the good of the organization. I don't think I really appreciated that 15 or 20 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago. I didn't appreciate it. But as I, you know, as I've been in this job longer, you just can't.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I started at Northwestern Mutual, as I mentioned, I worked in the investment side. I could have cared less about life insurance. I just loved being a portfolio manager, investing in companies, watching them grow, et cetera, et cetera. I wish I'd known what a great industry this is back then. And maybe this sounds a little self-serving, but our industry is vibrant. It's growing. It's full of innovation. And I think sometimes people aren't attracted to it because they think it's kind of boring and old and stodgy. And it's really not that. And I wish I'd known more about that. I probably would have paid more attention to things going on around me rather than just hunkering down and doing the investment stuff. And from a leadership perspective, I'm still evolving there, but ultimately what I've really learned about leadership that I didn't know back then is that you have to.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've evolved and changed and transformed ourselves. And you couldn't do that if you weren't reading and learning and observing and being curious. And so I think those two things, working hard and never stop being curious, never stop looking at other industries or people for skill sets or ideas I think is really ultimately a great way to build a career regardless of whether it's an insurance and finance or probably anywhere else.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The advice I got when I was 22 is advice I followed at work for me. And so I always like to share it with other people. And one of my neighbors when I was just getting out of college said the secret, and he worked at a bank, a fairly senior guy at a local bank in Milwaukee. And he said, if you work harder than anyone else between the ages of 25 and 35 and never stop developing additional skills. So you're always learning. You'll set yourself up for a great career. And I've tried to follow that. Obviously, I'm well beyond 35 now. But in my 20s and 30s, when you're young and you have boundless energy, there's no reason not to work harder than everybody else. And I did that. And I think that was the foundation for the career. And then as we talked about, just reading books or finding other ways to constantly be learning. Think about how Northwest remutual in 34 years my career there has changed. It's dramatic how”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To see it from that point of view. But I just finished that book, and my wife and I just celebrated our wedding anniversary today, as a matter of fact. She gave me this book on Sunday. She jumped the gun a little bit, and it's called Lincoln's Mentors. It's by a guy named Michael Gerhardt. And it's really about all the people in Lincoln's life that influenced his policy. And I'm on about, I don't know, page 100.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I am a big fan of history books. So, you know, early in my career, people would give me books like Good to Great and stuff like that. And I've read them, and I think they're good. And I'm not complaining about them. But I found that I learned much more from reading about actual history and how people dealt with it. And I tend to move from American history to European history. And I just have a huge interest in both of those. Right now I'm reading this really, someone recommended this book. It's called Oliver Wiswell. And I think it was published in 1947. It's the one exception in my rule because it's a fiction book, but it's historical fiction about the Revolutionary War told from the perspective of loyalists. So people fighting against the colonists and the militia and George Washington. And it's really interesting.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I've gotten and sort of the advice that I've got, not necessarily about strategic goals, but more around style and relating to people and engaging with people. I think those two things have really had the biggest impact on my sort of development as an executive. And it's stuff that I'm very appreciative of.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aluminum die casting and retail products and consumer products and things like that. That ability to see different industries confront similar problems, I think was really helpful. And then my board, I've been a CEO for now going on 11 years. Before that, I was very involved with our board. And what I would say is that my board has been unbelievable in mentoring me. I can't tell you how many times when I was a junior executive making presentations to our board where a board member would take me aside after a board dinner and sit down with me for 15 or 20 or 30 minutes and tell me what I did right and tell me what I did wrong and tell me where my style got out of hand and things like that. And I think a lot of times people sort of say their board's been valuable, but I really mean it. The mentorship”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been blessed with a lot of mentors. I think that probably rather than name names, I would say two things really I value in terms of the mentorship that I got as my career was developing. The first thing is I mentioned early on that Northwestern Mutual does a lot of leverage buyouts. And we continue to be very active in that part of the capital markets as a company. But back when I was making those investments, the opportunity to either sit on a board that of a company that we were an owner of or at least be part of a board meeting when I was in a more junior role and see all those CEOs in action and how they ran companies. And it wasn't just financial services.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say that from a streaming perspective, except for the crown, my wife and I don't do much of that stuff. When I am winding down, I'm much more about reading books than I am about streaming. But I will say we got sort of addicted to the series The Crown and Love It. My mother's English. I went to English every summer to visit my grandmother. So I'm a little bit of an Anglophile. And that series really resonated with me. But to be honest with you, I'm much more interested in reading books when I have some free time. I think that quiet really appeals to me. And so that's about it from a streaming perspective.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I haven't really started thinking about it, to be honest with you. I've still got a lot to do here, and I'm really excited about what I want to do. And it's a full time job. You know, in my heart, I think I'd like to teach after Northwestern Mutual, but I haven't put much thought into it beyond that, but some sort of graduate business school environment where I could talk about all that I've learned and share it with people would be really fulfilling. And I think I get much more sort of joy out of that than a second gig somewhere in corporate America or anything like that. But as I said, I've got plenty of time. I mean, Joe Biden and I are going to end our terms at about the same time. I'm sure he's not thinking about retirement, and neither am I. I've got a lot to do here. We've got a great team, and I really want to focus on delivering in the here and now.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is a bright future. And so as this company does both perform and transform, at the same time, I think we are just having one of the brightest futures that we've ever had as a company. And I'm really proud that we can deliver performance here and now, but at the same time build out this customer experience platform that's going to ensure relevance for years and years and years to come.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And more companies shift away from sort of this product oriented sell where I just want to sell a product and move on to forming these lifetime relationships with clients and get them to have the outcomes they want, not the products they want, but the outcomes they want. I think our industry is going to continue to shine. And so I am actually quite optimistic about our future. I'm 62 years old. We have a mandatory retirement policy here at 65. So I've got three years left with this company. I feel melancholy about that because I think our brightest days are ahead of us. I just think.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See the way to do that is through a trusted advisor planning and the integration of risk and investment. So that's our job. Our job is to show people the way to get to financial security. But people are underinsured. People don't know how to save for retirement. People don't know how to take care of themselves financially. And the financial literacy in this country is, I would say, below average for where it should and could be. And so I think the opportunity for our company and for others like us is absolutely unbounded. I mean, I really believe we're a growth industry. Now we're going to grow it single digits, as I said. We're not going to be the 20% year over year thing because this is hard work. You've got to engage clients one at a time. You've got to meet with them and do the planning, the rigorous planning that they need and show them the way forward. But as I see”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think this is a growth industry. It's just amazing. To repeat what I said, most people have fractured centerless lives from a financial perspective. They have too many things. They don't know how to pull it together. They're on their own. They're pioneers in the sense that there's no agreed-upon way to do it. They don't know where they're going financially. They don't know how to get there. They need someone to help them. And it's unbelievable the demand that's out there. Now, it's latent demand. And by that, I mean, people don't necessarily know exactly how to get what they want. You know, Henry Ford had that famous saying, if I ask people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses because they didn't see the view, the value of a car. And I think our industry faces that a little bit. People want financial security. They want to make sense of their financial lives. They want someone to pull it all together for them and make sense of it, but they don't necessarily.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Also, from what we did as it relates to minority contractors and their ability now to go forward, and as you've seen other construction in Milwaukee develop, our new Pfiser form where the Bucks play, other major office buildings, those construction projects are now learning from what we did and employing the same both sustainability issues and the same minority contractor issues. And it's just, you can see the ripple effects of that. And it's why I'm very, very proud of that building. Now, our employees will tell you they love it because it's great work environment. But I'm proud of it not just because of that, but because of sort of the catalyst it became for all the things that we're talking about today.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the windows and the cooling and all that stuff, but ultimately, it is a very beautiful, sustainable structure that has a great work environment as part of it. But the other thing that's interesting, and this isn't right to your question, but it ties in to your previous question, is when we built that building, we committed to the city that we would have a large portion of the work done by minority contractors. And that's another form of sustainability that doesn't necessarily tie right to the climate or our ecological resources, but by using minority contractors on a half billion dollar building, we were able to create sustainability for them. They were building skills, they were building financial resources, they were building a resume, a pedigree around this kind of really important work. And so I think the sustainability of that building isn't just from an ecological perspective, but”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, look, you can't be 160 plus years old and not care about the environment. Okay. I mean, it's this, we want to be around for another 160 years. And our sort of ecological sensitivities predate climate change and predate all the current things that are going on because we ultimately want to conserve things. And we want to conserve things because that's what great companies do. And we don't want to be seen as wasting any resource, especially natural resources. So the building is a proof point around, I think, two things. One is the ability to create a building that can be green, that can create a wonderful work environment, but at the same time be at the forefront of all the efforts around energy conservation and so on. And this building is. And I can get into details.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so those conversations combined with what we saw going on around the country really had an impact on me in a way that I honestly didn't think that they would. And so I knew that there was a lot of work to do. What I'm proud of in terms of the way Northwestern Mutual approach did is that we didn't just issue press releases and we didn't just donate money to this cause or that cause. Those are easy things. I'm not saying they're bad things, but they're easy. But what I'm really proud of is the hard work that we did. So we formed a task force that I chair. We call it sustained action for racial equality.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I was particularly moved this summer by some of that. And the reason I was moved is, as I said, we're very proud of our record around diversity and inclusion. But after the George Floyd killing and some of the social unrest that followed, I made a point to call about 20 or 25 of our black and African American leaders throughout our company, both in our home office in Milwaukee, but also in many of our network offices. And I think the biggest sort of impact I had was this notion of hope being constantly deferred. And it's this notion, and not just at Northwestern Mutual, but from a societal perspective. And it's so this notion of as a black professional in this country, you hope things are better. You hope you're getting to a point of full equality and things like that. And yet those hopes get deferred because of some of what we saw.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has to worry about. So generally speaking, I feel good about where we are. I'm not losing sleep at night. Being the strongest company in the industry helps. But you've just got to be uber vigilant about all these things that are going on because you just can't make mistakes when rates are as low as they are.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pressure on life insurance companies. And so we have to be uber vigilant about expenses. We have to be Uber vigilant about where we place our bets. We have to be Uber vigilant about execution because we don't have a margin of error when rates are so low to make mistakes and waste money or go down the wrong thing. Those are the things that keep me up at night. And then, of course, the government, you never know where regulation's going to go, where corporate taxes are going to go. Those are wild cards that we can't control. We're lucky that our industry is generally a bipartisan issue. We work with both sides of the aisle. And so when there's a new administration, we've got to build new relationships with the administration. But generally speaking, our relationships in Congress and both in the House and the Senate are strong. But you never know what's going to happen there. And that's a wild card, I think, that almost any business.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hired thousands of people in 2020 who have never spent a day in the office seeing that culture firsthand. And so this virtual world that we're in, I think has eaten away a little bit at that cultural piggy bank that we have. And I can't wait to get back everybody back on campus and back in the offices and back to work so that we can rebuild that culture over time. I'm a little bit worried about that right now. And that's one of the things that we're losing a little bit of sleep over. But fortunately, I think with the vaccinations and everything, I think we're closer and closer to the end of this. And then ultimately, I think low rates are continue to be a problem for us. We're built to last. It's not going to affect our company long term, but persistent low rates are very, is a very sort of slow.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nervous is about a lot of the things going on from a federal government perspective. I think we're in the midst of one of the biggest experiments we've ever seen in terms of government spending and modern monetary theory. I don't think we actually know how this experiment's going to end, and I think that's something that causes me to pause and to be another reason why we value financial strength so much. By the way, we're a AAA company, one of only two AAA companies in America that has a stable outlook. And that financial strength is what gives me comfort in this sort of thing. The other thing I would say that causes me to lose sleep a little bit is this notion of operating in a virtual world. Northwestern Mutual's culture, and I hope you've heard this as I've talked, and our mission is steeped in all of our employees.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the biggest thing that keeps me up at night is some of the stuff from the external environment. If you look at our business model per se, obviously we're still in the midst of a transformation, so we've got to execute well. But the nuts and bolts of our operation do not make me nervous. In fact, one of the things we like to talk about is last February when COVID was on the horizon and everybody was freaking out, we were very, very calm about it because we had done all the scenario planning for both a pandemic and a stock market crash with low interest rates well in advance of last February and March. It's not, by the way, it's not because we knew that was coming this past year. It's because that's what we do to make sure that we're always in operations for decades to come. And so I don't really lose sleep over the nuts and bolts of our operation. Where I get.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's totally unfair. I think the bad rap is because nobody wants to buy life insurance, right? It's the ultimate self-sacrifice. It's giving up money today as a policy owner that I'll never see. It'll go to my loved one someday when I die. Hopefully many, many, many, many, many years from now. But ultimately, life insurance is a self-sacrificing instrument that nobody really wants to deal with. And you layer on that, nobody wants to talk about their own mortality. And so I think that's why the rap is unfair. I don't think it's because of the product itself. Whether you're talking about Northwestern Mutual or almost any of our competitors, the persistency in their product line.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ultimately, how we compete in the marketplace. And it's this creating a proprietary system, if you will, that ultimately works with clients. And we think we can demonstrate better outcomes over the long term with our clients, better outcomes from an investment perspective, and better outcomes from a risk perspective. And certainly when you integrate them, better outcomes. And so I think at the end of the day, that's what's causing this strong retention in our career advisors is because the independent channel can't offer everything that we do.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To clients. So it's sort of the merger of a trusted advisor, a robust planning process with proprietary planning software, the integration of insurance and investments at the client level, which is somewhat unique in our industry, all backed up by a rich digital platform and omnichannel service. So those five things do set us apart from most of the independent channels. They can't bring all of that sort of skill to bear to a client. The second thing we have is obviously we have arguably the best products in the industry when it comes to our insurance products. Our long-term value in our permanent life insurance product is second to none. We're a low-cost producer in the industry. You combine those two things and we think that there's a home for advisors that creates something for them that they can't get anywhere else.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say we've probably had a handful of our career advisors go to independent channels. And the fact of the matter is if a career advisor leaves Northwestern Mutual, it's almost inevitable that they go the independent route. But ultimately our retention rate right now is about, I think, around 96, 97%, which means the vast majority of our veteran advisors are staying with Northwestern Mutual year after year. There's two things that we're doing to create sort of that stickiness because we never, you know, you never want to compete on anything that's a commodity. And so from our perspective, I think our sort of value proposition to our veteran advisors is what's keeping them there. And it all starts with sort of what we call our unrivaled holistic approach.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perspective is it's not just one thing, it has to permeate your entire culture, it has to permeate your entire way of doing things. And as that happens, the roots take place. There's roots everywhere, and you're not really dependent on one or two people staying in order to hit some sort of metric.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Podcast. I've been here for 34 years. And when I look at our management ranks and I look at the women and the people of color in it, I'm very proud to say a disproportionate share of that is homegrown talent. And I'm hoping they see the same opportunities I did, the same mission that I have, the same mission that we have going forward. And so I do think we can hold on that talent. But I will say the other thing is that when someone recruits away one of our black employees or let's say a woman, a senior woman, I take great pride in that because what it says to me is that we're developing talent that other people value and are hiring away from us. And just like we lose white males to the recruiting process sometime when we lose people of color and women, I view that as a proof point that we are growing talent that other people value. So I think that's just this whole ecosystem from a diversity.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Payouts and it's around diversity. We have to be moving people up in this organization. We want to see more people of color at management levels and up. We hold ourselves accountable for that. open job when we look at a slate of people has to have at least one diverse candidate on it when we're considering filling those jobs we want to promote from within the same thing is true if we recruit from the outside for a job that slate has to have at least one person and hopefully more that represent diverse candidates so we walk the talk from the very beginning from a recruiting and promotion perspective and then we have fairly elaborate what I would call support mechanisms by the way they're not perfect yet they're getting better but so that people of color and women in our organization feel they have the same mentorship that maybe I had as a white male back in the 80s and so I think and as we've talked about on this”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're very proud of our record there. I always start with our board. My board, so we're a Fortune 100 company, and only forty percent of our board is white male. That means 60% of our board is diverse either in terms of gender, ethnicity, race, or some combination of the three. And so we walk the talk right from the beginning, right at the top of our organization. The other thing I would say is that we tend to be a company that likes to develop talent internally. Now we have some senior people who we've recruited from the outside world, but by and large, we think the way to create a more diverse and inclusive company is not just from recruiting people to it, but from growing homegrown talent. All of my senior team, we all have a personal goal that we hold ourselves accountable to. It affects our annual incentive plan payouts and our long-term incentive plan.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Had a better one, but ultimately, I think what happens, and I think this may sound a little bit like Motherhood and Apple Pie, but I think it's true. At the core of what we do is we help people become more financially secure. That is our mission. And that is an attractive proposition, regardless of your race or your gender or anything like that. And so ultimately, the more we can demonstrate to people that there's a home for you and that people want what you do, I think it's really, has been one of the hallmarks of why we've been so successful from a diversity perspective in recruiting. It's because this is not a white male only mission. It's a mission that anybody can look at. And if you look at, let's say, black America,”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite example is one of our network office leaders used to have a contest for new employees and if you won the contest you got a tuxedo. Well the problem is women don't want a tuxedo, right? So there was never an incentive for them. It's a little point, but it shows you all the nuances that we had to do around culture to create this welcoming environment for anybody who wants to be in it. Then we spent the next five or six years really focusing on this notion of meeting people where they are. And so you don't recruit the same way necessarily for a white person at a big 10 university as you might a person of color at a historically black college or a woman who might be a career changer or all those kind of things. And so we really focused on meeting people where they were, recruiting people who were in environments that they didn't like, that they could see.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think we're on about an eight to ten year journey in this regard. And by that, I mean, we started about eight to ten years ago. And we really decided at the time that it wasn't just going to be a one kind of year and done program. And so the first, let's say, five years or so, all we focused on was the culture in our offices. We knew that we had a male-dominated, white male-dominated workplace culture. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it wasn't as inclusive as it should be. And we needed to change the culture of those offices so that women and people of color felt just as comfortable in them as a 25-year-old white guy. And so that was the beginning of this journey, which is let's look at those aspects of our culture that needed to change so that it became more inclusive, more welcoming.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Growth even in the midst of this notion that it's not a face to face company anymore. So we're a growing company. We grow in single digits every year. We're never going to be a double digit growth company given our size and our history. But the fact that we could continue to grow in such a strong way in 2020, I think is a proof point on the notion that there is a demand for what we do.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The notion that most Americans have to provide their financial security to themselves. Think about it. My father's generation had a pension plan. The equity value in his house and social security. And that's really all he needed in retirement to be financially secure. But it's much more complicated today. And people are on their own. They're not getting sort of those corporate defined benefit plans from the days of old. And so there is strong demand for what we do. And I think when you add all that up, it creates an ability for us to recruit into it. And then you add to this notion what we call the abundance mentality, which is that people support each other in our system, they help each other. Our veteran advisors work with young advisors. They mentor them. They coach them. They do joint work with them. And all of that, I think, has put together for us a very robust year in terms of”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of color. And it really represents, I think, a continuation around this notion that this is a great noble profession. At the end of the day, people who work for Northwestern Mutual and others in our industry are really helping people become financially secure. We know that the average American doesn't know where they're going from a financial perspective. They don't know how to get there. They have cluttered sort of centeredless financial lives, and they ultimately need someone to bring that all together. And so this notion of being able to attract exceptional talent to this business is not as hard as I thought it was going to be in a virtual world because of two things. This notion that we have the digital tools and because there's demand for what we do. We are not recruiting people to a dying industry. We are recruiting people to an industry that really has a really bright future because of this.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's been a lot harder. I will say that. At the end of the day, I think though the fact that we were prepared for this pandemic has helped us be successful. We didn't see the pandemic coming, don't get me wrong, but we were well on our way to creating a digital experience both for our customers and for the people who sell our product, our advisors. And so when we went to a quarantine situation and then obviously the lockdown, we were able not only to service our customers and sell our products to our customers solely through digital channels, but we were also able to recruit people. In fact, we had a record year of recruiting in 2020 over 3,100 new people joined us as advisors. And what I think is really noticeable about those recruiting class, it's more diverse than ever, more women, more people.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That our experimenting around the customer experience and so on. Ultimately, though, life insurance is a product that is really tied to two things. Forgoing money now and pooling those risks to protect everyone over time. That core essence of the product is not going away. That stands the test of time. It's the only way you can really”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who see the value of a product to buy the product. And so that's where you're seeing the disruption in the short run. And on the same side on the wealth management side, you're seeing these robo advisors who are trying to sort of simplify many of the core principles of investing, diversification, dollar cost averaging, tax planning, all those kind of things. And ultimately, so I would argue that we are seeing disruption creep manure industry both on the risk side, the insurance side, as well as on the wealth management side. And by the way, I think that's a good thing for our industry. It's taking longer because, as I said, it's a capital intensive business, but there's nothing about life insurance that would make me think that we're somehow immune from the kind of disruption we've seen in other parts of the financial services industry. And so the companies that are going to survive are the companies that are leaning into this disruption.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Been positively changed by technology. And I think COVID has accelerated that change in a huge way. And I'd like to say we're not in twenty twenty one anymore. We're in 2030. And that's sort of a glib way of talking about how the acceleration in our industry because of COVID has really taken a decade of change and compacted it into one year. Where you see the most disruption in the short run around our industry is around the client experience as it relates to purchasing our product. Companies are simplifying the process of becoming an insured in terms of the way you buy insurance. They're simplifying the application process. They're simplifying the underwriting process. They're doing it all sort of digitally with no human interaction. And they're basically making it easier and easier for clients to”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there's a short answer and a long answer. The main reason sort of in the short run why you haven't seen the disruption in life insurance that you've seen in other financial services companies, I think is because it's a very capital intensive business. And so for companies either startup, fintech startups or even established players like Amazon or whatever to get into it, it's a very capital intensive business. It requires a ton of money from a capital perspective and because rates are low right now, the return on that capital is much, I think, less attractive to many disruptors, let's call it that, than maybe other places they could go right now. So that's the short answer. I don't think that's a reason not to be worried about disruption, and I'll talk about that in a minute, but I think there's a lot of disruption coming our way. But I think in the long run, we really have to.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of integrating insurance and investments together is, we think, a much better way to create outcomes for our clients that are valuable rather than just engaging in sort of one off product sales.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody needs what we have, but nobody understands how much they need. And it is typically all three of the products we're talking about, life insurance, disability, income, and long-term care are products that are bought are not bought but sold. And by that I mean people don't wake up in the morning for the most part, try to figure out how much of any of those they need and go out and buy it the way you'd get up and say, I want to buy a car, I want to buy a refrigerator, I want to buy a vacation for my family. And so it is important that financial advisors understand these products, that they can show the value of them to their clients. And typically when that's done, especially not in a product sale kind of way, but as part of a comprehensive plan, we're always pleased to see that people for the most part do want to buy more because most people do want to take care of their loved ones and plan for these unexpected events. And this is why, as I mentioned earlier, this notion.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that most Americans, and I'm generalizing, but I think this is generally true, are underinsured when it comes to both, in addition to long-term care. They're underinsured when it comes to both life insurance and to disability insurance. And we find that when our reps sit down with clients and go through a rigorous planning process, especially people who have loved ones that they need to take care of, the notion they often have a notion that I've got a group DI policy or group life insurance policy and that takes care of me. And yet when they see what could happen, if they would become disabled, especially in their 20s or 30s or 40s with 20 or 30 years of earnings potential out the door, or worse, a death, they find they're very much underinsured. The problem we have as a industry is that”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How they take care of their long term expenses post retirement. And I always use the example people have no problem insuring their home even in retirement after the mortgage is paid because they can't imagine losing a physical asset to a fire or something like that. And yet the odds of making a claim on long-term care are much higher than the odds of your home.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any benefits were ever paid on it. And what the industry found out is that long-term care is in fact a product that once people have, they don't want to give up because they know how near and dear it is to their financial security. And so, yes, the industry had some rather significant mistakes when it comes to pricing that product. I'm proud to say that Northwestern Mutual has been sort of much more conservative with our pricing. We don't do lab supported pricing in the long-term care market. And as a result, we've had much better experience with our products. I do think long-term care is an example of a product that is, what's the rate to say it? People need that product. It's really, really important for the, let's call it the average American to think about”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no doubt that some products in the insurance world are harder to price than others. If you think about insurance in general, you've got a group of people paying premiums up front and then collectively they're sharing in the risk of loss. And when it comes to long-term care, there's a number of assumptions that were really, I think, mispriced from an industry perspective. I'm glad to say Northwestern Mutual didn't fall into that trap. But without getting too esoteric, the single biggest mistake that many companies made with pricing long-term care was what's called lapse rate. And so this is the percent of the policies which lapse and which people stop paying premiums on. And many long-term care products were basically lapse supported pricing. In other words, they overestimated how many people would pay premiums for a while and then let the product lapse before.”
2021-04-09 · Masters in Business · John Schlifske on the Legacy of Northwestern Mutual (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source