Editor's Note

by Nancy Manning

This, the first issue of NewsDirect in 2007, marks the beginning of the 22nd year since the Marketing and Distribution (MAD) Section began as the NonTraditional Marketing Section of the SOA. The first council of the old NTM section, led by chairperson Michael Shumrak, also included Maria Thompson, Jay Jaffe, David Vrla, Harry Ploss, and Kiran Desai. These actuaries worked together to start the fledgling NTM, addressing such diverse topics as Credit Insurance, Direct Response Sales of Insurance, using media like direct mail and billing inserts.

2006 marked the first full year in the life of the MAD Section, a time when section council leaders Rob Stone and Van Beach directed efforts to expand the focus of the group to embrace Marketing, Distribution, and Process Oriented Topics.

As 2007 begins, you, the members of MAD, have selected me to a leadership role as a member of the section council. This first issue in 2007 marks a time for me to return to a task that I have had the privilege to perform several times over the past years: editing NewsDirect. Following the lead of previous editor Steve Konnath, we are continuing on the path of providing an unbundled, electronic version of the newsletter.

This edition features summaries of MAD–sponsored sessions occurring at the Chicago Annual Meeting of the SOA, updates on activities of your section council at the annual face–to–face meeting, the MAD bulletin board. PIMA seeks feedback from you about the P2IMA Product and Process Award, as they evaluate how to make the competition and award more useful. Jay Jaffe provided a summary of a presentation he gave at The Insurance Direct Marketing Forum 2006: Database Delivers!

As always, we seek input from you to identify other topics of interest. If you have seen an article in another publication, if you have read a book recently, if you've heard about a topic that you'd like to know more about, we urge you to contact me or any one of the section council leaders. We value your ideas.

Contact me at nmanning@aegonusa.com with your ideas, opinions, suggestions for topics, or suggestions for newsletter improvements.

Happy 2007!