Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Lee Morris, Vice President of Underwriting of Life & Annuity Brokerage with Gallagher, Inc

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Lee Morris is Vice President of Underwriting, Life & Annuity Brokerage who rejoined the Gallagher Life & Executive Benefits consulting team in January of 2023.Lee Morris has been in the insurance industry specializing in technical underwriting risk management for over 33 years. She is known for her astute ability to merge the technical attributes of underwriting with the art of modern-day medical advancements and interpretation while protecting the interests of all stakeholders. Lee’s strong experience with the top one percent of the wealth management firms and the ultra-affluent market demonstrates her ability to address the needs of clients requiring an enhanced “boutique” encounter.Certified in EKG interpretation and a dynamic presenter, Lee’s past experience of 17 years at the carrier include being Assistant Chief leading one of the top premium distributions in the high-net-worth arena. She is one of very few in the brokerage market who achieved a prior insurance carrier underwriting single signature authority of $20M dollars.Lee holds a Cum Laude Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from Grambling St. University, Grambling, LA. She enjoys her free time volunteering with the K-12 school she is the co-founder of, hunting, shopping and is the mother to one son, Evan who is a Senior Pre-Med student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga.Learn more: http://www.ajg.com/Take advantage of the Gallagher Underwriting expertise platform that can move your life insurance consideration from a “success story” to reciprocal “successful solutions”Financial Professionals should ensure they continue to follow the current policies and procedures of their broker dealer and/or registered investment adviser and the insurance carriers they represent on the use of any advertising, third-party materials, sales processes and/or social media/internet use. This marketing presentation in no way supersedes the requirements of a financial professional’s license requirements or the policies and procedures of your broker dealer or registered investment advisory firm.This content is for informational and educational purposes, and is not designed, or intended, to be applicable to any person’s individual circumstances. It should not be considered as investment advice, nor does it constitute a recommendation that anyone engages in (or refrains from) a particular course of action.Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-lee-morris-vice-president-of-underwriting-of-life-annuity-brokerage-with-gallagher-inc

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Lee Morris, who's a vice president of underwriting of life and annuity brokerage with Gallagher, Incorporated. Lee, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to participate.

Hey, you're welcome. Looking forward to talking with you, and you've got quite the broad job description of underwriting of life and annuity. I'm sure that encompasses so many things. And I want to get into kind of what you do on a day-to-day basis and how you serve advisors. But before we dive into that, give us a little bit of your background and story and how did you get into the industry? That is such an interesting question because nobody really desire to be in underwriting when they go to college. It's not one of those positions where I want to be an underwriter when I grow up. So after college, I actually started off, you know, a state farm as a life underwriting training manager.

And within that, it gave you an opportunity to be able to choose between service or the technical aspect of underwriting and mortality risk. Through that, 34 years, I spent 17 years of that at the carrier where I was a chief with a $20 million sign in authority. And I moved over into the sales side kind of as an advantage simply because we now, being in the cell side, you understand what happens at the carrier. And you're able to kind of pull that curtain back and explain to them, you know, this is the process. This is a best practice, that type of thing. But I've been in underwriting for 34 years. I have my own trademarked underwriting training program certified in EKG interpretation, the whole nine. So now that's interesting.

And I want to dive in on a couple of those points. Number one is I love when I hear that someone is used to be in sales and now is in underwriting or used to be an underwriting but now is in sales because it gives you full perspective. And I think that I want to say if my. My history is right. Back after World War II, some of the Japanese kind of started this whole concept where they would have someone come out of college, start working at a factory, let's say, and they would work two years in on the factory floor, two years in HR, two years in sales, two years in so that they would never overpromise. And if you are sitting there in sales and talking about something that underwriting is not going to approve, then that client is not going to be very. happy, are they? Absolutely. They're not going to be happy, but one of our goals here on this

side in sales and underwriting is to certainly be able to make the process easier to kind of circumvent those challenges because underwriting is the only subjective part in the entire life insurance placement process. It is the only area that you can have a person who has the funding, They have their desire. They have everything else in place with the product and pricing per se to start off with. But it gets to underwriting because of that subjectivity and the bottom falls out. So being able to explain what happens at the carrier and kind of make those adjustments where necessary and properly position a case is certainly an advantage.

Because carriers have their own marketing, ploys and secrets anyway. So I just go out and I just tell all the stories that are behind the curtain. And it helps our clients place more business. Well, and the thing, too, I would suspect is this. You are on the side of your client and the advisor to make the deal work. And you've seen a thing or two. And unless it is just a flat out, can't do it for a valid reason, you want to make it happen. So let's talk a little bit about the differences between.

some of these guidelines. And I know there's some technical jargon that you can throw in like clinical this and mortality that, but it basically is like, I've got this client that needs this. Does it fit? Can we do it? So talk a little bit about where you start the process of looking to see if we can approve this case. Absolutely. Two of the most popular questions or inquiries I receive are one, what carrier is best at what medical condition? And two, what happened to my policy or what happened to my consideration because my doctor says I'm fine. In order to be able to properly assess a case, we have to look at the clinical side.

But pretty much all carriers utilize a few manuals, basic. And the subjectivity comes or dials down to the actual underwriter, the understanding. But the latter part of that, I'm saying when I'm talking about mortality risk and clinical risk, is when a person goes to their physician, their physician provides them that one-stop shop and they're able to see them over and over again and be able to kind of change direction or change course if something goes left. An underwriter or the carrier, they only have that one opportunity. However, the clinical side of it also looks at it on an individual basis where the mortality side at the carrier, they essentially just take that medical information from the clinical assessment and assign it to a group. So they assign it to other applicants that have like history and then against their mortality experience.

And that's how they come up with an assessment. So the challenge becomes as a consumer, hey, my doctor or my physician said that I had this cardiac event three years ago, but he says that I'm fine. How is it that my insurance company is not approving me at a best class or at a normal life expectancy? So we try our best to make sure that we explain that nuance first, that the carrier is not saying that your physician is wrong or not saying that something else is happening because it's alarming. I get it. I'm a consumer too. It would be alarming to me if I had actually overcome an event. and then all of a sudden my insurance company says I'm not eligible or that I'm at higher risk.

But the difference is they're just taking that data and then applying it to their mortality risk as is grouped with like applicants. Now, the additional question, most popular question with mortality and clinical is which carrier does what the best? And my response is usually a little bit jarring for people because carriers always present these niches and what they have an advantage for. My response for that inquiry is all of them and none of them. Why? That's a good marketing response. Let's just test it. Yes, all of them and none of them. Why? Because most of the carriers use the same manuals. So that's the guideline of where the base of the risk is. But each person, And each underwriter views conditions. They would view a condition very differently.

The subjectivity in terms of the underwriter's understanding of the risk or even their personal experience in this particular risk, that could deviate from what the guidelines are. Not to mention carriers like to do the marketing, as I said, of niches and what they have an advantage for. But they do that based upon the assumption that you don't have access. or understanding of the reinsurance manuals. So that's not a surprise if they're saying,

hey, this looks this way because you can't see the difference. Well, we can see the difference. So if a carrier, there are carriers that are out there that will say we are great at this risk. We can go best class for this risk. Well, unfortunately, or fortunately across the board, depending upon what that risk is. Other factors. Yeah, other factors.

I would think that there would be like, you know, a box that is. like, okay, well, this risk, it fits, but now when we consider this, this, this, and this, we got to dive in a little bit deeper and peel the layers of that onion back a little bit more. Beal the layers. Not to mention the carriers, the biggest manual, there's one centralized manual that most carriers use, and carriers will market to what that manual refers to for a particular risk, knowing that the field doesn't have access to that manual, technically. but if they're marketing it one way, they don't, I mean, they don't really reveal that every carrier that uses this manual has that same opportunity.

So that is a marketing thing. And we try to explain that, you know, we want to stay away so much from which carrier is best and implore our technical expertise in assessing a case and understanding underwriters. So as I said before, underwriters may experience something different with a particular condition. or they may have a deeper understanding of a particular condition and deviate from that guideline. When I was at the carrier, I tell the story all the time, that as a young child, my son and my ex-husband had were severe asthmatics. So regardless of what the manual or the guidelines indicated that this risk should be assigned to, I had a personal experience with this condition. And I just didn't view it the same way. If the manual said after two hospitalizations or two ER visits, this should be assessed

at 100% more risk, because of my personal experience with this condition, I'm going to think, my son is great. So why I want to increase their risk? It's that correlation. So it is so much subjectivity with underwriting across the board that we try to make sure that we, our value, is being able to provide those behind the scenes nuances at the carrier, being able to utilize our technical expertise in understanding, I mean, deeply understanding medical information, medical processes and procedures and definitions, all of that, because we're really built very well-first in the technical aspect of underwriting. And it gives the client and the agent at advantage, and we're able to manage.

those expectations a little bit more properly. It sounds to me like, first of all, like when you hear about the IRS tax code, I think it's like 50,000 pages, right? And like how in the world can any business owner understand all of that, but someone out there that knows it can go, here's how to navigate through here. And same with what you're saying, yeah, these guidelines are similar boilerplate many times, but based on an underwriter's experience, maybe personally or even with a specific case, that can sometimes be like, oh, I can see a way through here because. Yes, absolutely.

And I also tell our field and our agents and our clients that that is the subjectivity of life insurance underwriting. and they try to lean into, well, this carrier assessed it at this risk, well, the other carrier assessed it differently. It's no different than putting up a color. It's the underwriting is an art based upon a science. If you put up a color, then you know that color is the scientific representation. However, the art is what you call it. And I've provided like the color yellow, And I ask each person, what do you want to call this? Well, I'm going to call it maize where another person may call it goal.

That's the subjectivity. In 34 years, I've never had two cases alike. Even if they're the same distinct, okay, diabetes, this person has single buffalo coronary artery disease. I've never seen two cases alike. So it's a different day, a different case, a different approach. and we're able to tailor what our experiences are and pull from all of those those different perspectives that we have and hopefully pull that client out of that mortality risk pool that they were initially assigned to and provide a better assessment.

I mean, it sounds to me like you're actually wanting to make the deal work versus just, deny, you know, in next case, I've got a file of, you know, 10,000, you know, cases. So it's just, you know, it doesn't fit in the cookie cutter. But it sounds to me like you're trying to make it work, looking for me to make it work. And that changes the perspective to, and I think that that is a refreshing approach that your advisors, that Gallagher is like really, really, really enjoying that because I'm certain that there's horror stories of other underwriters out there that they're like, I can never get these things. through because it gets killed in underwriting. Yes. And you have to remember, too, when I'm talking about all these different aspects of underwriting and what goes into making the assessment, the understanding of the condition,

the personal relationship, underwriters are still human. They have emotions every day. You may have an underwriter that will go in one morning and they're not having such a good day and they're more conservative. You cannot put that in a box. So we like to provide, provide our agents and firms and representatives with the realistic version of how underwriting operates. That way they can place more business and manage those expectations and be honest with their client. And that's what we're here.

So realistic expectations gives me the connotation that there might be some misconceptions about life underwriting. So how does that compare to how it's, being marketed in the field? Yes. Biggest misconception, again, as I talked about this niche that we have an advantage. If two carriers use the same reinsurance manual, nobody really has the niche. It's the reinsurance manual that tells you if there's an opportunity to improve this offer. So it still boils down to the understanding of the condition, the experience of the condition, and how an underwriter may feel that day. So that's a huge misconception that one carrier is going to offer one way,

so all of them are going to offer one way. It's not going to happen, as well as you can have one underwriter view of a risk one way and another underwriter view of risk another way. When I used to be at the carrier, we would all sit and have these underwriting meetings and we would use these different cases as examples. And if there were 10 people in a room, we may get eight different perceptions of this risk. Are they wrong? No, not necessarily, because each one has their own view of the level of severity with that particular risk. But that's a misconception. It's a misconception that a carrier doesn't want to give you business. Carriers, we're in this as a partnership. Carriers want to provide business. We want to make it easier for them to provide

business. Underwriters do not get any joy by hitting the decline stamp. Why? Because they have to look at that case again if the agent can't understand it. So it helps to make an underwriter's job a whole lot smoother if they're able to go ahead and partner and please the agent and the applicant. Everybody wants to place more business. Yeah. So how does Gallagher underwriting position cases that's a little bit different than others. Absolutely. We provide the technical expertise. What we have here is, like we said earlier, that full view of the entire underwriting process. We understand how the new business aspect of underwriting is employed when you're talking about MIB coding, where you're talking about application processing, when you're talking about understanding even the questions per se.

but we provide a different layer of assistance with our agents that we don't call things, when we're successful, we don't call them success stories. And there's a reason for that. A story could be a luck of the draw. A story could be a one-time one-off. What we want to provide is a successful solution. A solution is something that can be aligned with more than one occurrence. We want to be able to support the agency, the support the applicant with a different perspective of the process.

We want to be able to manage their expectations up front. We literally want to be able to give you a solution that you can utilize throughout your business of life insurance placement and not just a one-off, hey, we won this case. So with the technical capabilities that we have here, with understanding, the reinsurance manuals with understanding how the processes are at the carrier. We are an extension of that agent's office. We are an extension of that applicant because we're their advocate that allows us to be able to negotiate better, to be able to partner better, all of those things. So we're a little different, a little different than a lot of the distributions.

And it sounds like you said, the technical side of things. it sounds like you bring not only a technical side of things, but a human side of things. You know, it's often been said, oh, business to business or business to consumer. But I love the new, you know, thing that people threw in H to H, human to human. And when you can bring in the human and common sense side of things to the technical side of things, it sounds to me like there's a lot of solutions that are made. Absolutely. Underwriters are human, as I said.

They're human and they want to do what makes sense. A reinsurance manual technically is just a guideline. However, as an underwriter, you want to put a risk on the book that makes sense. So we try to have those conversations. We try to present that different perspective, the example of the yellow versus maize versus goal. We try to change that perspective that moves that applicant out of a risk. and kind of put an approach that we're partnering with you. We're protecting the carrier's risk.

We're protecting our risk. And we're protecting the client and getting them the best offer that's available. Yeah, that's awesome. And then it's kind of like what's been said so many times before in other industries. You know, it's a win, win, win. You know, like it's not just one person winning and yay, we won. Everyone is winning from the client to the advisor to Gallagher. you know, everyone is winning when we are making those kinds of great decisions.

Absolutely. And we present ourselves. We look at scenarios and partnering with our agents from different angles. I'll take a case and look at it as if I were still the carrier underwriter, then I look at it from the agent's perspective. But I can never forget that I'm also a consumer. I want the consumer to also feel like that I am an advocate and a direct extension of them. So if you're able to assess this from all different sides, then it's an easier process to be able to mitigate the challenges and proceed in a best practice. Excellent.

Well, Lee, I tell you, this has been really eye-opening. I love your approach, the sensible approach, the technical approach, the human approach to making sure that everyone is going to win. I'm sure that you don't want your personal cell out there or your email for people to be. contacting. So what I will do is put in the show notes a link to the main website and that way people can learn more about Gallagher and how they are serving the industry. But thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity and I welcome the partnership. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the

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