Haute Living Executive Interview – The Future Of Life Insurance Under Infineo

Earlier this year, Stearns Financial Group joined infineo, a global fintech firm that provides technology to transform life insurance into a more accessible and intelligent asset class for institutional and retail investors.

infineo leverages blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock the full potential of its proprietary LifeNotes Trust, which modernizes how credit unions manage executive benefits built on life insurance for both liquidity and long-term yield.

Born in Jamaica to missionary parents, Jay Rogers has been a financial advisor with Stearns Financial Group since 2015. Today, he serves as Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at infineo.

Dr. Robert Murphy is a Co-Founder of infineo and serves as its Chief Economist.

Eric Stearns is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of infineo.

HL:  infineo blends AI sophistication with life insurance and exclusive wealth-management insights and tech. How do you balance the tech-forward edge [that appeals to a savvy Haute Living reader] with the human personalization that ensures trust at the ultra-high-net-worth level?

JAY: The evolution from traditional finance to technology-enhanced financial instruments has been slow but it is certainly here.

People today are very interested in not being left behind in this age of rapid technological transition from traditional finance to blockchain. Combining blockchain with AI creates unique opportunities that did not exist before.

That’s why just about every company seeking to raise money is throwing around the term “AI” – it feels sexy. But for a firm like ours, which is at the forefront of reliance on blockchain and AI to deliver real value to investors, they are essential to our ability to execute on what we are building and deliver added value to high-end users – like your savvy Haute Living readers.

This sea change brought about thanks to blockchain and AI is certain to spread across the entire institutional space with the LifeNotes Trust. We are seeing how it transforms how our clients – and everyone – will interact with life insurance.

I cannot overestimate the importance of becoming AI savvy. When friends seeking a career change ask for advice, I tell them to download their preferred AI and start to interface with it.

Tell the AI about yourself and ask how it would advise you on what to change in your tactics for getting hired, what you ought to be learning to become a better candidate and to grow as an individual.

Interfacing with the new AI tools will help all of us.

ERIC: Life insurance is one of the oldest tried and true industries. It is based on a promise and trust between the company and the policyholder. And life insurance companies provide benefits much needed when families are in their greatest peril – an unexpected death.

To honor that trust, we are using blockchain and AI technology to duplicate an analog world but also rethinking how the world should act in this new universe with respect to that trust. We are not just duplicating a life insurance product on a digital chain; we are creating an understanding that trust does not come just from a big building downtown that has been there forever, but can be transparent, available, and auditable.

We can take these products and turn them into something that is indelible (openly secure), transactable (liquid), and transferable – and usable in flexible ways.

Another huge advantage from this tech-driven approach to managing life insurance assets is that it makes it far easier to adapt to real-time changes in the goals for investors who leverage their life insurance assets.

Especially for high-net-worth individuals, this type of platform enables users to interact with the AI to make better informed decisions.

This confluence of finance and technology that is innate in tokenized assets on the blockchain will enable us to act far differently, and more wisely, than in the past.

BOB: Blockchain and AI are simply put, revolutionizing life insurance. That’s why we hired Dr. Christian Hubbs, who holds a Ph.D. in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon, as our chief technology officer.

And like me, he has confidence that AI will open up entire new job fields – rather than lead to mass unemployment.

HL: Many affluent individuals turn to LifeNotes for curated insights in credit union / executive compensation. What themes or formats have resonated strongest with your stakeholders, and how do you foresee LifeNotes evolving to stay ahead of competitor digital offerings?

ERIC: LifeNotes can be leveraged for credit unions who want to reduce the duration of collateral assignment, split-dollar loans or to add a split-dollar plan for key executives without increasing their impermissible investments. It also enables implementing a new CASD plan for those who would like their loan assets back in as little as 10 years.

It also enables increasing yields on credit union owned life insurance (CUOLI) without adding additional capital.

Our platform fits in a unique way to deliver added value, even when competitors arrive and real-world assets expand. This is like a blue ocean in which we are all working to build value.

JAY: Do Haute Living readers believe that tech advancements should fundamentally change legacy industries or not?

Does this mean that every small technological advance changes generations-old industries?

Let’s be clear – Blockchain straightforwardly adds transparencies – not risks – and combined with the high-speed rail of AI hitting the scene, it is enabling the biggest jump since the Internet.

Your readers would likely agree that if this does not change industries and how they interact with users and the economy, then we would have failed. Yet some nonetheless have an incentive not to let these changes occur.

Life insurance has been the most conservative, slowest-to-change industry in existence, yet life insurance companies are adapting to these technological advances, adding so much value and growth potential that the results will be shocking.

Historically, many life insurance benefits go unpaid, often because the beneficiaries and companies do not even realize that the insured has died (or that they are indeed beneficiaries). On the other hand, the named beneficiaries of many people nearing retirement no longer need the assets they carry.

The challenge – and opportunity – from digitizing these assets is to get the maximum benefits from these assets today without impairing their stated value.

Large institutions that leverage these tech tools will be thrilled at how this benefits their customers.

None of them will disappear; instead, they will be blue chippers.

ERIC: While we are talking life insurance, most think of estate planning, wealth transfer, and other high-end uses.

But we are taking the idea of life insurance as assets whose value can be multiplied over and over, gaining added value from wealth that was once inaccessible.

As this tech moves forward, it filters down to the traditional working person’s “kitchen table” life insurance policy, sold by young agents who are family friends.

HL: So infineo recently examined executive compensation structures at credit unions—an area often overlooked compared with banks. 

What have you discovered about how these growing cooperatives reward their leaders, and why should luxury investors or industry insiders care?

ERIC: Stearns Financial and infineo came together to merge financial technology and life insurance.

And Stearns Financial has been in the credit union space and addressing executive compensation and retention planning since the early 1990s.

Credit unions are in business to help their members. They are 501 ( c ) (3) corporations owned by their boards and members. Their CEOs are running complex financial institutions that are similar to banks but their employees do not have access to stock options or other tools to enhance executive retention.

Cash compensation does help, but credit unions rely primarily on life insurance-based programs to get cost recovery back to the credit union while helping executives build their retirement packages.

Our platform’s blockchain and AI enable executives to take access to those assets within the credit union’s legal framework.

That changes how the entire life insurance world uses, buys, and interacts with life insurance – and that’s just a first step.

JAY: The blockchain with AI builds parity across financial industries.

Nonprofits will be able to compete with groups with the capital to outperform them in the executive retention space.

In a credit union, the executives do not have ‘cranking out profits’ as their sole goal. Yet those who believe in the credit union’s mission and seek their community’s well-being and also have the talent to run these often multi-billion-dollar organizations should be properly rewarded to incentivize their staying with their employers.

To make that happen, they need tools that meet them where they are – not just a chunk of cash at retirement.

Through the LifeNotes Trust, infineo and Stearns Financial can enable executives to receive interim payouts during their children’s college years or for other milestones – their assets no longer have to wait until their retirement to be vested.

The LifeNotes Trust is ultimately an evolution of the retention space in credit unions and other nonprofits – and even for for-profit businesses.

But there is another benefit.

There is a lot of turnover in the credit union space now, as older executives are retiring with huge retirement benefits that must be paid out often all at once. The same is true in many other industries.

The credit union industry now has a tool that will not encumber the balance sheet by limiting the opportunities for newer executives to stay put.

HL: Your team has highlighted unique incentive models in credit unions—such as rewards tied to member engagement, rather than to pure asset growth. Can you walk us through a standout case study, and explain how those models could influence executive pay practices in broader luxury-finance circles?

JAY: I recently met a 26-year-old who is sitting on the board of a huge credit union. He started a company to help credit unions engage with Gen X and Gen Z members via a digital interface, rather than relying on brick and mortar.

This reliance on solutions that incorporate technological advances enables capturing members from across the nation – His peers do not know what credit unions are or what they do, but he realized that one of the primary examples of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a credit union – an institution built for and by its members for their benefit.

The ability to access a credit union digitally is attractive to these generations.

ERIC: Member engagement has been driven by innovation for over a hundred years.

Credit unions were the first to adopt telebanking in the 1950s – to accommodate United Airlines pilots and flight attendants’ needs.

Credit unions were the first to adopt automated teller machines (ATMs) that enabled deposits and withdrawals 24/7/365; a service that particularly benefited shift workers who would find it difficult to visit their bank during business hours.

Credit unions early on adopted internet banking, a tool that resulted in huge jumps in member engagement.

The same is true for blockchain.

Credit unions are in a unique position – They are able to provide the future of money to their members.

Whether in traditional banking or via digital dollars, they will be the first in, even though later on big banks may dominate.

HL: Looking ahead, which executive compensation trends in the credit-union sector do you see gaining steam—whether ESG-linked incentives, digital-performance benchmarks, or deferred profit-sharing—and how is infineo preparing tools or content to help stakeholders stay ahead?

ERIC: The trend is toward diversification of incentive schemes.

While credit union boards are chosen from among their members, they are rapidly becoming more sophisticated about compensation.

Now, they can see how to create incentive schemes based not just on performance metrics and profit sharing, but also on how they incentivize risk.

Any new marketing incentive or product launch involves risk, and choosing the appropriate risk level requires attracting and retaining talented people who choose wisely.

JAY: Blockchain and AI should enable institutions to cut out waste and expenses thereby enabling them to retain key personnel.

Accessing these technologies should enable all Haute Living readers to be empowered to make their own decisions – without the fears and insecurities inherent in traditional company structures.

Financial advisors will have to be on their game as they are challenged by an increasingly educated populace.

BOB: LifeNotes has created a secondary market that benefits both the insurance provider and the insured.

As executives move from job to job, their new credit union can effectively transfer their life insurance asset from their old credit union and leverage it as an executive retention strategy.

For the executive participating in an employer-sponsored CASD plan, the ability to obtain competent answers from infineo’s AI enables people to avoid having to talk to fellow employees (board members) about sensitive personal financial matters related to the use of the life insurance.

Written in partnership with Infineo