The head of the nation’s largest research trade association for the financial services industry sees potential for independent financial advisors to make money by selling life insurance.

The most potent lure of life insurance for consumers has changed from “protect my family in case I die early” in the 1960s to “protect me financially in case I die late,” said Limra President and Chief Executive Officer Bob Kerzner in an interview with Financial Advisor magazine.

Today, less than half of middle-market consumers ages 25 to 64 have individual life insurance coverage, Limra's website says.

For this switch in focus by baby boomers, Kerzner contended, advisors should find it a profitable investment of their time to learn the ins and outs of single-premium immediate annuities and deferred immediate annuities with payouts starting when the insured is in his or her 70s.

The changing market factors of fewer life insurance company representatives; the impending settling down of Generation Yers or millennials, who were born in the 1980s and 1990s;  and the greater ease of writing policies should combine to put bread-and-butter life insurance on the menu of more advisors’ product offerings, he asserted.

According to Limra's website, Generation Y consumers are the most likely to purchase life insurance. Still, the weak labor market, high student debt and the outlook of their peers has resulted in many millennials delaying the family formation that often triggers life insurance purchases. Kerzner expects that many more Gen Ys will start buying life insurance in the next five to 10 years.

By then, the industry leader says, he expects the trend toward simpler, quicker life insurance policies to solidify and making them easier for advisors to sell.

“It’s much less complicated to get life insurance for clients than it had been,” he said.

Instead of needing medical tests and waiting 30 to 90 days to get approval of an insurer, consumers can get immediate approval by some companies by just answering a few questions on a form.

Kerzner added young people are focused on accumulating cash, which (combined with years of low interest rates) is making them more interested in indexed universal life policies and whole life than in term insurance and low cash-value products.