This month, AIP Marketing Alliance will transition the compliance role to Darron Markwood, Vice President of Marketing, who will work as a liaison with Integrity™ for compliance, annual required training, and legal matters. His new title is Vice President of Marketing & Compliance Officer.

“During the last five years, I’ve worked very closely to keep our marketing and communications efforts compliant with industry and carrier standards,” Markwood said. “I continue to learn a lot about the compliance function, and with the support of Integrity’s compliance and legal resources, I look forward to maintaining the high standards started at AIPMA more than two decades ago.”

The compliance function has grown through the Integrity strategic partnership as their annual employee training program helps AIPMA build a stronger and better team. Reinforced by Integrity’s Leadership Academy by Ziglar®, these combined sessions help grow our employees – especially when AIPMA’s slogan is, “Your Growth is Our Commitment.”

AIPMA’s staff recently completed the 2024 Spring Training program, where each training topic is tied to one of Integrity’s Core Values: Family, Respect, Integrity, Service & Partnership. This year’s schedule focused on the new updated Employee Handbook, updated antitrust policies, Integrity’s Respectful Workplace Training, compliance sections on HIPAA and CCPA, Information Security and CMS, Outbound Communication and Marketing, General Compliance, and Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.

“As team captain for Spring Training and the upcoming Game Time programs, I have a thorough understanding about the annual training requirements. Our goal is to provide not only compliant content to our downlines, but to also keep our employees informed and aware,” Markwood said. “Compliance will continue to have a steady presence within our industry, and we need to remain accountable and do our best to protect our team, wholesalers, and agents.”

These new compliance duties are not something Markwood has to handle alone, as he currently works with Integrity’s compliance and legal departments for content approval, carrier requests, mitigation plans, and Do Not Contact (DNC) requests.

“For the last five years, Darron has taken an interest in compliance tasks and grew his responsibilities after AIPMA formed a strategic partnership with Integrity,” AIPMA President Rick Kisser said. “He understands the importance of compliance – especially in today’s social media and AI-based world – and how he serves as a gatekeeper of information. Between his training and industry knowledge, Darron is positioned to excel within this role and continue the compliance path started 20 years ago in our office.”

As a local product, Markwood graduated from Chippewa Valley High School and received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from Central Michigan University. After serving years as a reporter and editor at the Advisor and the Source newspapers, Markwood carved his niche in the financial industry by serving in marketing roles at Bank of America, Huffmaster, Proctor Financial, TIP Capital, and Crestmark Bank before joining the AIP Marketing Alliance team.

If you have any questions or compliance requests, you can contact Darron Markwood at darronm@aipma.com or (248) 312-2609.