What were the biggest issues for your members in 2012?

Ken Crerar: The major concerns over the last 12 months are among the same issues our members will face in 2013.

• The election and the state of the economy. Concerns stemming from both will spill over in this post-election political climate.
• Mergers & acquisitions. There is significant activity in the M&A arena, with consolidation and pending changes in the capital gains tax being major factors.
• Technology. Our member firms are affected by both a lack of innovative solutions to run their agencies and a lack of solutions for customer facing technology needed to compete with carriers' direct-to-consumer strategies.
• Talent. Even though many in our industry remain top contributors well past traditional retirement norms, we are preparing for mass retirements in the next 5 to 10 years.

Andrew Harris: Under regulations it adopted to implement the Affordable Care Act, the Dept. of Health and Human Services rejected all calls to exempt agent compensation from the calculation of medical loss ratios. The result: Agent compensation for selling healthcare policies has been cut in some cases by as much as 50 percent. We continue to advocate that under healthcare reform, private sector insurance agents are full participants who are fairly compensated and play an instrumental part in the health insurance buying decision and servicing of consumer questions.

In crop insurance, agents are being attacked from two directions. The federal government, which administers the crop insurance program, for the first time has included arbitrary caps on agent compensation. At the same time this year, an organization of federal employees tried to get Congress to eliminate private sector agents from servicing crop insurance policies and replace them with government employees—an effort PIA opposed and fortunately, hasn't gotten anywhere.