Frequent Life Insurance Selling contributor Maria Ferrante-Schepis has been warning readers for years now about the possibility of an upcoming "Napster moment" in the life insurance industry.

A Napster moment, Ferrante-Schepis says, occurs when someone who has no business being in your business swoops in and reinvents your business — putting you out of business. We've seen it happen before. Just look at what Napster and, later, iTunes did with the music industry. And the life insurance industry certainly possesses a lot of the hallmarks of a business ripe for reinvention — commoditization, a flight to the high end of the market, a growing underserved market, an imbalance in the supply chain.

Yet, no matter how much Napster moment predictions make sense, it's easy to write them off. We often pay them as much heed as that downtown loony wearing a "The End is Near" sandwich board. It won't happen to our industry, we tell ourselves. Or, it'll happen, but not until I'm long retired. And then we get back to business as usual.