The Ryan Hanley Show - RSH 160 - Titans of the Insurance Industry Share Their View of the Future

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comLike other industry disruptions preceding it, the InsurTech movement was widely viewed as a threat to the existence of the independent agency channel. Thus far, the independent agent has proven to be an invaluable component in meeting client needs and expectations. Still, technology advances are the ecosystem in which they must operate – together with their carrier and digital partners.In this panel, leaders representing the three components of this dynamic, IA’s, carriers, and tech, share their thoughts on how to make the customer journey a smoother one and why collaboration is a win-win for all parties.Don't miss this conversation...Episode Highlights: Ryan introduces his guests: Amy Zupon, CEO of Vertafore, Tyler Asher, President of IA Distribution for Liberty Mutual, and Matt Masiello, CEO of SAA. Amy Zupon mentions that the increasing amount of M&A in the industry is catching her attention right now. (8:50) Amy Zupon explains that there is a huge amount of money invested in the space right now, and she sees this trend continuing. (11:07) Matt Masiello shares that we are currently seeing a lot of exclusive business channels being converted to independent agency channels. (13:25) Tyler Asher explains that in the next few years, what he sees is better quality service and continuous growth in market share. (15:55) Matt Masiello believes that small businesses need to be a part of other organizations to remain small and independent. (22:27) Amy Zupon explains that as a software company, they believe in an open platform, and they belong to groups where they participate with tech companies that are similar to them. (27:12) Amy Zupon explains that the Orange Partner Program's concept is to be open and to establish relationships because the partnership is about trust and communication. (33:06) Matt Masiello mentions that partnership has two bookends, first, you have to like your partner, and second, you have to have the same goal as them. (37:40) Tyler Asher shares that the agents, carriers, technology providers, and vendors still have a lot of work to do when it comes to integration. (45:24) Tyler Asher explains that retention is materially higher when customers engage in online digital capabilities for service. (54:24) Matt Masiello shares that the two things independent agencies can do to scale their business are lead generation and digitization. (57:47) Key Quotes: "We did start that Orange Partner Program with the philosophy of being open and building on relationships and collaborating with others to build things." - Amy Zupon "To really grow, it means taking a look at the digital resources that are out there and getting them into your agency, which includes building a digital brand, whether you're in a geographic market, or a digital market." - Matt Masiello "I think right now, the biggest gap is making sure that we're serving customers in the way they need to be served today." - Tyler Asher Resources Mentioned: Amy Zupon LinkedIn Matt Masiello LinkedIn Tyler Asher LinkedIn Vertafore SIAA Liberty Mutual Insurance Reach out to Ryan Hanley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous conversation for you. This is another repackaged episode and not that I'm trying to skirt you guys, but just had two really good non-podcast conversations that I thought were worth sharing with you all here if you hadn't otherwise listened to them or wanted to listen to them again. In this case, it's a panel that I did for the IA Evolve Digital Conference. Now, this is a conference put on by SIA, and I had the opportunity to interview

a panel of people that just do not, you know, this caliber of individual, of leader in our industry just does not come together that often. And I thought the panel went really, really well. I mean, a lot of times these things can be kind of bore and dry and stale, and I'd like to believe that this was not one of those conversations. Everybody came to play. Everyone came with comments and energy and it was a really good conversation and I asked some of my colleagues at SAA Proper if they'd be willing to let me push it out through the podcast channel and they agreed.

So what you're going to get is a conversation between me, Amy Zupan, the CEO of Vertifor, Matt Massiello, the CEO of SIA, and Tyler Asher, the head of all IA distribution for Liberty Mutual. These are three power players who gave up an hour each of their time and about a half hour, 45 minutes of their time in a previous call to game plan for this conversation. And I think that hopefully shows you that for these individuals to give up that amount of time to something like this, that they wanted to share this message. It wasn't just going to be repackaged, kind of gobbledygook. It was going to be their thoughts, their feelings, you know,

where their attention is actually focused. And I think that's exactly what we got. So I wouldn't be resharing this if I didn't think it was incredibly valuable. I do. I think you're going to enjoy it. There's a lot of great insights. It was actually the kickoff panel for the conference. There were a whole bunch of other speakers, James Jenkins, Josh Gurley, Nick Ayers. There's a bunch of others.

I'm forgetting them Ciara Gravier there was a bunch of them awesome speakers and so what I'll say to you is if you enjoyed this podcast episode or this conversation that I have you can actually re-watch

right now for free all the other speakers all the other conversations, listen to them. You just go to IA Evolve. That's the letter I, the letter A, and the word evolve, E-V-O-L-V-E.com. Go to IA Evolve.com and you can listen, watch all the other speakers that took place during this digital conference. And I just hope that you enjoy this conversation. I love pushing these things out to you. And as you guys know, this podcast feed is really a menagerie of information

that I think is valuable to you. Sometimes I do solo episodes. Sometimes I do interview episodes. Sometimes I have multiple guests on. And in this case, sometimes when I deliver content or I'm part of content in other places, I try to get that recording and push it back out through this vein so that you get access to that when possible. Not always possible, but when possible. And in this case, we were able to do it.

So I want to say thank you to my colleagues at SA for letting me push this out. I hope that you'll go check out IA Evolve and all the other speakers, and I hope you enjoy this conversation. As always, I love you for listening to this show, and if you find this information valuable, if you find this content valuable, please share it with a friend. Go on social, text it to someone, email it to someone, share it with your team. More ears listening, more ears listening more

ears getting involved in these types of conversations this type of content helps push our industry forward and that's why I do the show so love you guys for listening let's get on to this amazing panel from IA evolve hello everybody and welcome to the opening kickoff panel of IA Evolve. I'm going to do very short intros and a second for our panelists. We have an absolute rock star panel here. I feel like something funky must be going on in the universe to have such power players like all this gravity in one place.

My computer is also wonky, so the delay is on purpose just so you guys know I did that for effect um all right so before we get to our panel and get into what I think is going to be an absolutely tremendous conversation I just want to give a big fat shout out and and thank you to all of you who are attending. I Evolve is an annual event and the entire SIA ecosystem family is very happy to put this on and happy that you would choose to spend time with us. There's a lot of good presentations that are gonna happen throughout the course of the next two days.

This panel being the first of what should be a wonderful event. That being said, just a couple of housekeeping items before we get there. There is a Q&A section that you'll see. I'm not exactly sure what you're seeing, but somewhere in the screen that you're looking at, there's a Q&A button.

When you have questions, pop them in that Q&A section. We will get to those questions. Now, if your questions are terrible, I am not gonna read them on this thing. But all of those terrible questions will be answered by either the Vertifor team, the Liberty Mutual team or the SAA team afterwards. So they will you will people will get back to you about those things. But if you ask about like, hey, Tyler, how come our commission rates aren't 45% instead of 20%? I'm not asking that question.

So any pertinent, good, thoughtful questions that you have, we absolutely will try to get as many of those to our panel as we can. But any like really tactical kind of very specific questions, please still ask them. That's the point. And then someone from the team of whichever respective organization you are asking that question, we'll get back to you. So I want you to ask those questions. And then there's a group chat thing. There's a whole bunch of features, but really the one I'm going to be watching is the Q&A. So use that Q&A once we get there. Also, Lisa gave me some few other things that I'm kind of

forgetting now that we got going. But the Q&A was the big one that we're going to follow up after. And there are tons of great panels. So just keep watching. And we appreciate you being here. Okay. With that, let's get on to our panel. I'm going to do very brief introductions because I don't think the individuals who we have on panel here today need a tremendous amount of bio-read. And really, I don't want to waste any more time on non-content related things. Also, Christopher, congratulations on not actually asking a question, but being the first one to use the tool. So whatever prize that gets you, wonderful. So our first guest is Amy Zupan. She is the CEO of Vertifor. Amy, it is a pleasure to have Tyler Asher, who you cannot see. He is coming in via telephone because technology. Tyler is

president of IA Distribution for Liberty Mutual. And we also have, who is online and you can see, Matt Macielo, the CEO of SIA. So I want to give a big welcome to all of you and thank you for taking time out of what I know are very busy schedules to be with us here today. That being said, let's get to our very first question. All right. So I'm going to throw a softball up and we'll start with Amy. Our very first question that I wanted to get into just to kind of get things rolling here is that there's lots of things happening always in our space. Regardless of when we do this, always things happening. We work in an industry that is always evolving.

I guess my first question for you, Amy, is like, what is one trend that just, just something, something that's happening that just has your attention that when you see an article on it, maybe you just pause for a second and it kind of catches you. What's one thing that's catching your eye right now that's going on that you find interesting and relevant to our time? Yeah, it's a great question, Ryan. You know, I've been in insurance now for six years here at Vertifor, and it is hard to believe it's actually gone super fast. But there's so much going on in our industry right now. And specifically around technology, you know, when I think about this question, where I might go is I might highlight the increasing

amount of M&A activity that's happening in the agency space right now. And in reality, it shows no sign in slowing down anytime soon. In fact, it's picking up. You know, we like to follow the agency and broker buyer index. And in Q2, what it told us is it showed a 74% increase in acquisitions over Q1. And deal count is actually up 16% year on year despite economic headwinds that are around. And yet at the same time, there are still similar numbers of independent agencies out there as there was when I joined six years ago. And so what that's telling you is the bigger getting bigger, they're getting more complex. There's no question about that, but that newer, smaller agencies are popping up every day. And

for a vendor like us, it really means that we're constantly investing in our solutions to help automate and simplify things because large agencies need to handle the complexity that comes with acquisitions, conversions, how to help folks clean up data and new agencies that are popping up need simple automated solutions that can get you up and running quickly. And I just, I find, I find the amount of M&A activity and the amount of independent agencies staying about the same, just to be a pretty fascinating tribute to the strength of the independent channel. And do you just quick follow up in there? Do you think that, you know, whether we actually dip

into a real recession or not, or how big it is, whether it's a shallow or it ends up being deep, do you think that what does feel like some sort of slowdown, you know, to a degree where no one can really tell necessarily, do you think that's going to have an impact or do you see on M&A activity or do you think we're just in a time where we have enough individuals whose career has hit a point where they're starting to consider making a move that we're just, this is just going to be a continuing trend that it's just going to continue to increase. You know, it's obviously hard to predict the future. I'm not a crystal ball reader about what's going to happen, but my perspective is that, you know,

if we were starting to see those slowdowns, we would have seen them by now. There's a tremendous amount of money that continues to be invested in this space. And I think for the foreseeable future, we're just going to see that continue to go in that direction. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know, at least, you know, my, the people that I talk to, they're seeing all the same stuff. There's, you know, I got a buddy that has a certain type of agency that like almost on a weekly basis, he has someone new pitching him. And it's just incredible what's flying around. And it's a very interesting time from M&A. So next, and Tyler, this is not in order of importance.

It's just in order of how I want to ask the questions. I'm going to go to Matt next. So Tyler, be prepared. You know, I know you're the third one. So you got to, you're kind of playing roulette with these questions here. But Matt, what trend are you looking at? It can be M&A too, or whatever. But what's what's catching your eye that's stopping you when you see a piece of information or report or a study that's on your brain? Yeah, it's sort of like sticking your hand in a candy jar right

now to answer that question. I mean, there's a lot of sort of fascinating trends that are going on out there. And so when I thought about this, I was thinking granular or sort of more global. And I'm actually going to go one step just above where Amy went, where Amy was on sort of M&A and the health of the industry. You know, I was once told, by the way, when I was the youngest person in the room, that one day I would wake up and I would be the oldest person in the room, which I actually think on this screen I am. And what's fascinating is in all the years I've been doing this, without exception, I've been told that independent agencies are dinosaurs. We're going to go away. We don't deliver a value proposition to the consumer.

The carriers don't need us. The Internet, banks, ins insurtech everyone's going to put us out of business and what i find fascinating even on the tails of you know certain large consulting organizations even in the last five years sort of counting independent agencies down and out um it's the strongest i've ever seen the channel uh we are converting exclusive channel business over to the independent agency channel. We are seeing, I think, the direct response. I won't say sort of plateauing, but they do have a limited product offering. We're seeing carriers double down on their independent agency investment. We're seeing obviously technology

partners invest significantly into the channel and so uh just you know amy's m a piece is is a huge piece but i just think you know we should believe in what we do because other people believe in it now too and i think that that's a fascinating trend you know i i say all the time right now this is simply the most exciting time to be in this business and you know you started an agency there are thousands of people starting agencies right now they're doing it because it's a great opportunity um you know recession market economy debt markets m a doesn't matter it's a great time to be in this business so that's a great trend and i might add one point to what

I know. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I might add one point to what Matt just said, because I love it is, you know, when I got here six years ago, that was the same comment made to me, which is, hey, you know, the independent agency channel, it's going to diminish over time, and it's going to go to direct and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think one of the things that's super interesting right now, if you look at the data, that the end of the amount of premium that's actually going through the independent agency channel is actually going up, it's not going the other direction, so it's going up and, you know, I think that's falling away from the captives a bit if you look at the premium, but, um, and direct is also coming.

So that's not something to ignore and, you know, make sure you're multi-channel and all of those things, but I find that the premium going through the channel is only going up. Does anyone else feel like direct business is really just like a feeder program for independent business? Like I love when I see a new direct competitor, because I'm like, they're going to scoop up all this business, do a really terrible job, and then we're just going to take it all from them like in two or three years. Like that's, I don't know. That's always been my perspective. That's every time I see like a new insure tech that's going to disintermediate, I'm like, this is gonna be great. I'm going to get a ton of calls

in like two years from all their customers. Sorry, that's just my perspective. David, your question around what does MMA stand for? MMA stands for mixed martial arts. We are talking about M&A and also known as mergers and acquisitions. So sorry. Sorry, Tyler. I just wanted to clear that up real quick. Oh, no, perfect. And I would, you know, honestly, I would just kind of add to what Matt and Amy said. I mean, I think the headline that is soon to be written is that independent agents are going to continue to win. You know, the data from market share shows that if anything, the channel is actually getting bigger. You have many carriers that are pivoting models to really exclusively focus on independent agents. And the prospects

at large continue to be, you know be very advantageous for the independent agency system. And I think we're in this environment right now. I think many of those on the webinar will attest to this. Service has been something that's been hard to come by over the last couple of years, whether it's staffing shortages, whether it's everyone being remote. But I really do think in the years ahead, there's going to be a flight to quality service, a flight to advice. And Ryan, your point on the direct riders, I'd say they're very much

targeting a different customer. And it's customers that truly get to a point where they value advice, where independent agents are a tremendous fit in terms of the value proposition that agents provide in what consumers are interested in and I really do think that independent agents right now are better positioned than they have ever been and again the headline that has yet to be written is that independent agents will continue to gain market share and continue to thrive in the environment ahead. And if I could, Ryan, just jump in on Tyler's coattails there. I think it's sort of fascinating when we talk about your comment a minute ago about the direct channel and Tyler's comments. Look, there is some business that just belongs in the direct channel, and we as independent

agencies shouldn't compete for it. It tends to be lower limit, lower premium, higher risk, low loyalty, low commission if we happen to write it. And so I'm a firm believer that that business does belong in a direct channel. And we should fight within our weight class, which is do business with people that are looking for the value that we deliver. Yeah, I think there's also one of the things that since would love to see the carriers step their game up in general, I think carriers as well have started to really dial in their message around what our value

proposition is and get much better at telling it and telling it more frequently which is starting to take customers who may have given some of the direct Channel competitors a shot they're they're they're coming to us first which I think is a you know and again some of that is subjective it's just you know maybe a lot of it is my two and a half years at Rogue but but it's we're subjectively internally starting to see that people who may have been direct channel consumers are coming to us because they're seeing messaging, they're hearing messaging that resonates that maybe just in years past they didn't see from us. And I think that's a really good sign for what all of you have said anecdotally. Great. So one just quick question. Amy, you had referenced a buyer index and Carrie had a question just if you could say the name of it again.

Yeah, it's the agency and broker buyer index. It's it's just something that gets published every quarter that we can fundamentally look at. And I can what I can do is look it up here and get you a link and send it out yeah awesome thank you so much thank you okay um jake we're gonna get to your question towards the end you're you're you're you're you're trying to make me bury the lead here so all right so thank you for all that on the trends uh and the back and forth that was tremendous so i think we're all in agreement. And obviously, we're talking to the audience, the right audience here as well. But we wouldn't be on this call if we didn't feel that way. But I do think it's reassuring to hear from people in your positions that you're seeing what I think most of us are feeling is that we're on the upswing and that there's a lot of things happening. One of the

trends that, and I'm going to put this to Matt first, it's going to feel like a softball. I know that. Don't start hating on me when I ask this question. But if you listen to my own podcast, you will hear that this is the way I felt and felt for a while, well before any of my relationship with SIA, is that it very much is feeling to me like we can't do it alone anymore, right? Not that you can't, can't, so please don't start hating me in the Q&A, but it feels very much like whether it's joining a cluster or an aggregator or partnering with another agency or a group of agencies, whether that's regionally or based on an industry or whatever, that very much feels like the future to me. And having worked in and or run agencies both outside of an aggregator slash network and now inside, pros and cons to every agency, but to me, this feels like the future, being part of a larger group, having these young startup agencies that are filling the gap behind them, it's very difficult to get

appointments, especially when choice is one of our big value propositions. If you can only get one or two direct appointments, that is a handcuff. So by joining a network or what have you, you're able to get access and really hit the ground running. So, Matt, I wanted to put to you this idea of being part of something bigger, of joining forces with other agencies or whatever, this network model. Where do you see that going? Is this a trend you're seeing in SIA? Are you seeing in the broader ecosystem? And just what other comments do you have on in SIA? Are you seeing in the broader ecosystem? And you know, just what other comments do you have on on this particular concept? Yeah, and I'm going to be generic in my

response and let my peers also sort of come around on this. I think sort of small businesses in general in the United States need to be part of other organizations, because that's what allows us to remain small independent businesses. What is it? 80% of the U.S. economy is small business. And it's hard to go it on your own if you're not partnering, collaborating in a buying group, whatever the case may be. 70% of the independent agency channel is under $1.2 million of commission income. So we're small businesses. So you need to be part of something. The carrier access thing, you know, agencies can access

carriers anywhere right now. They can access carriers through wholesalers, through joining networks. It's sort of table stakes. What it ultimately becomes after that is what is the value proposition that they're looking for in any sort of a relationship? Because it is more than carriers. It is more than just income. It becomes thought leadership. It becomes technology. It becomes collaborating on how agencies are going to look into the future. And where I'll

sort of pivot that question just a little bit is it really isn't just joining a network or a cluster or an aggregator or something like that. It's, you know, being active participant in technology user groups. It's being an active participant with some of the carriers, right? You know, we'll give Tyler some opportunity to talk about Agent for the Future and the investments they've made there. But I think we all have to be sort of collaborating and part of something as we move forward, especially as small businesses. None of us can afford to go out and sort of change the world today. But if we all get together, we can do that. And, you know, 20 or 30 years ago, as independent agencies, we would sit here and say, well, we're just going to wait for the agency management systems to solve this problem,

or we're just going to wait for the carriers to solve these problems. And the basic fact is, is they're looking for us to help them solve those problems. And so we should be active participants in that. And scale brings you to the table to be active participants in the future of not just how you're going to grow your agency and your individual business, but how we're going to grow the industry overall. Yeah. We'll go kind of reverse order. Tyler, what's your thoughts on this particular topic? Joining forces, we'll say, is the general concept here. Yeah, I actually loved how Matt framed that.

I think we like to say going independent doesn't mean going it alone. And so I think there's lots of ways for agencies to pick up scale, whether that's being a part of something, whether that's tapping into programs that carriers offer. We certainly, Liberty Mutual and Safeco, our know, our commitment to agents is to do more than really anyone in the carrier side to help agents win. We have a ton of programs to help agents from digital marketing to their websites, hiring, training producers, to loans, to bring new staff in. You know, we have programs that really cover everything. And so for agencies, I think it really just means tapping into the resources that are truly available. I mean, we are in an industry where scale increasingly does matter depending on the aspirations for the organization. So there

are many small agents that are serving a local community and they're content or they're happy with how big the agency has gotten, the success they've reached, that's fine. But if an agency owner has an aspiration to continue to grow, to continue to expand, you know, scale starts to matter. And so, you know, we see that certainly on the agency side, that is certainly true on the carrier side as well. You know, making sure that you've got the ability to continue to invest in the future, the ability to bring in new technology, the ability to hire new talent, the ability to really invest in marketing and brand. All comes down to scale and being able to invest in a smart way. So I really do believe that scale matters.

There's lots of ways for agencies to get support. And, again, I love the title of this panel, Transforming Our Industry Together, because I do think that's ultimately what it's going to take for us to win. And together is a partnership, you know, between carriers, between agencies, and between all of the technology providers and all the service providers in kind of a broad agency ecosystem, all working together to ensure the channel is really set up for success. Amy, anything to add on this topic? So I loved what both Matt and Tyler had to say, in all honesty.

I think the two things I would kind of build on is, I mean, I obviously don't have the experience of being an aggregator or a cluster or an agency, right? But I'll draw the parallel to being a software company. At Vertifor, we can't do it alone either, right? We 100% believe in an open platform from that perspective. We 100% belong to groups where we participate with technology companies that look and feel like us, that work in other industries, right? I mean, you really need to understand best practice, new trends. I'll take cybersecurity as a great example, right? What are all the threats? Well, our head of cyber participates in all sorts of things, and that's where we get all that insight that helps us to protect you. And so kind of building on what Matt said, it's not just us in

our industry. I think it's across the board for small businesses. You really need to have those support systems that help you do the things that you don't have to go it alone. And then you kind of build in on what Tyler said on the title of the panel of we do this together. I find this industry to be fascinating from the perspective of it's a coopetition type of industry. And I actually love that part of it, right? I'd never before have I been in an industry where you feel such a sense of camaraderie and support across agents at the same time you're out necessarily competing for business. Super cool.

And when you look at technology and the opportunity that we have to actually drive impact for our users, for our end consumers, it's going to take the folks like Tyler in the carrier community. It's going to take all of you on the phone and it's going to take people like me working together to really kind of break through and drive some of those advancements. So I think that together where it's a really important angle of what Tyler was saying. Yeah. This was one of the most important lessons that I learned launching Rogue Risk was just how alone you feel if you don't join something a group a network a networking group uh you know a mastermind if you don't if

you don't reach out if you don't get involved one our industry everyone is so so willing to help each other which is amazing uh right now i can tell you there is an s i have a buddy si member who's watching this panel then he's doing david carruthers killing commercial thing this afternoon and then tomorrow he's going to chris paradiso's mastermind so in two days four different groups all this cross-pollination of ideas everyone's so willing to share it just that to me is think, one of the most redeeming qualities of our industry. And I think it's so incredibly important. And if people do feel like they're on an island, put a question in the Q&A.

If I can't find you a place to join and learn, one of our panelists or, or someone in their organization will find you someplace that you can connect. So if you're out there and you're listening to this and you're feeling like you're, you're, you don't know where to turn, you don't know where to go, put, put information in and we'll, we'll, whether it's, you know, someone who's involved in this or not, we'll find you a place. You know, but before you go on to your next question, I think this is actually a cool evolution of the industry, right? Because this was an industry where we all liked our box, right? Everyone had to stay in their lane and stay in their box. And, you know, we had non-competes and non-piracies and confidentiality agreements that we didn't want to share and collaborate. And as some of us got more and more involved in technology over the years, I think Amy makes a good point coming in from the outside with technology is you did see things like open source and collaborating on moving technologies forward. In the insurance industry, we didn't do that. We all stayed in our lanes. And I think that we are evolving as an industry because of this willingness to collaborate and

share. And it's sort of a rising tide thing. And there's some that still want to just stay in their lanes. But I think where everyone's making this investment, including their time and treasure to help others is a really, it's a really big deal in this industry. I think it's a great, it's a great trend for us to evolve because if we don't evolve, we will die. And we are evolving right now what's up guys sorry to take you away from the episode but as you know we do not run ads on this show and in exchange for that i need your help if you're loving this episode if you enjoy this podcast whether you're watching on youtube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment.

If you're on YouTube, leave a rating review. If you're on Spotify or Apple, iTunes, et cetera, this helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're

not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. Talking about evolution of the industry, only one question so far, 30 minutes in has been about download. So that's a big positive for the evolution of our industry right there. Also, April April says it is much easier to embrace change when you're not on an island by yourself. Amen to that, April.

I appreciate you sharing that sentiment. I think that's wonderful. So, all right. So kind of keeping this, this kind of idea going, we've, uh, set up some trends and, um, and, and talk a little bit about how we can't do it alone. Um, the next thing I want to talk about is how do we actually choose our partners or our collaborators? How do we, how do it alone. The next thing I want to talk about is how do we actually choose our partners or our collaborators? How do we make these decisions? What is the filter that we pass people through? And again, I tend to think about these things as filters because there's no

absolutes, right? All of us will be different. And with different partners, all the criteria might not always be the same. So I don't want to, I don't expect anyone to give, here are the seven things you need to do if you want to, you know, be part of Vertiforce Orange Partner Program or something. That's not what I'm asking for. What I'm asking for is from your position, from your seat, what are some of the high level filters? And Amy, we'll start with you. What are just some of the high level filters that you're looking for when you or your team is considering a partner or a collaborator that you would like to bring in because it is a big decision when especially with the size of the

organizations that are on this call when you decide to partner with someone it's news and I am positive that you're aware of the gravity of that so just anything you can share around some of the filters used to make those decisions would be wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we did start that Orange Partner Program with the philosophy of being open and building on relationships and collaborating with others to build things, right? I think, you know, first and foremost, the partnership, whether it's about the partner program or it's about our customer relationship or anything, partnership is about trust and communication at the end of the day right um you know relationships are never perfect they're never you know um everything doesn't always go exactly as you expected but there is no substitute for having base level trust and good honest open communication and to me that is like

first and foremost table stakes for thinking about who a partner is. I think the second thing for us is, you're looking for a win-win, right? In a partnership. It's good for you. It's good for me. Those partnerships live, right? And so I think a lot of times we're looking for solutions

that solve the problems that our customers actually are facing right now as we think about who our partners are. This is something that matters to their business. It's going to make a difference. And it does so in a way that automates and simplifies things for them, meaning we're not looking just to have a partner because it's like a flashy new object. We want to actually do something that's physically going to solve a problem. And again, that kind of goes back to the second point I was making about win-win, right? We're looking for a win for whoever we're partnering with and a win for us at the end of the day.

So just some high-level philosophies as we're thinking about things. Tyler, what about you guys? I shared with you in our pre-call that my buddy Chris Klein, who used to work for Westfield, he said he had to hire an assistant just to filter the partnership calls that they would receive like on a daily basis. So I'm sure either you or someone in your organization, it's probably pretty similar. So how do you think through what could potentially be a partner or collaborator when you're making those decisions? Yeah, I mean, I think there, you know you know partners collaborators come in lots of shapes and sizes from you know agency

partners to technology vendors or places where we might integrate you know fully for benefit of an agent but I'd say broadly what we're looking for is a partner that shares our philosophy to Amy's point win-win you know we're driving mutually beneficial partnerships that we share a philosophy for Amy's point, win-win, you know, we're driving mutually beneficial partnerships, that we share a philosophy for what's ahead for the channel and that we share a commitment to continue to advance, to push the channel forward, to help the channel evolve. So, you know, for an agency partner, we're looking for someone who maintains a growth mindset and is really looking to continue to drive the business forward. That means always looking to add new producers where possible. That means always being willing to take some risks on new technologies to try new ways to interact with customers.

You know, certainly, like, I know there's a question in the chat about getting direct access to carriers. The biggest thing actually isn't, you know, whether you're a scratch agency. It's whether you've got a good marketing plan whether you're building a strong agency culture and whether you're really maintaining kind of a growth mindset in terms of how do you take the business to the next level how do you always ask the question of what's next so broadly that's who you know we look to partner with because it aligns to our interests you know know, I think from an agency, you know, partner perspective, we do business with a lot of agents, you know, about 24,000 retail agents

across the country out of about 36,000. So we see partners of all different sizes, shapes, you know, operating models. But really the agents that we most find success with are those that really, again, meet those core commitments to want to grow, meet those commitments of wanting to do good in their local community, and who is committed to advancing the channel, who's willing to help at times when necessary, push agents forward, whether that's digital adoption or whether that's a new technology. I'm not going to say download the new tech, but other technology advances, just making sure that we just align on those key tenants. Matt, what about you? Yeah, I mean, I actually love the question because it goes back to, you know,

how excited it is to be in the industry and how important being part of other organizations are. And I sort of look at sort of these partnerships and collaboration as bookends. And the first part of it starts with you gotta like them um and then the second part of the bookend is you have to have the same goal everything else that happens in between there um is is a result of a good relationship with somebody that you like and can work with and the same goal because ultimately you want to find the alternative paths to get to that goal uh we can't be linear in this industry, you know, with, well, this is the way it needs to be done, or this is the way we've always done it, or this is what the carriers require. This is what the technology platforms require. It's all about the consumer. And so

finding that non-linear process of people you like that you can work with that have common goals, and then you can sort of figure everything else out in between. Yeah. The one thing that I wanted to add is the partner or collaborator has to actually solve a real problem. There's a lot of tools and insure techs out there and specifically that do cool things, but they don't actually solve problems that agencies actually have or care about. And that can be difficult sometimes to parse through because you're like, oh, wow, look at this thing and it's awesome and it does this and this and this. And then when you actually look at the workflows of an agency, you're like, yeah, but, you

know, we don't really need that. It doesn't really make our lives better. It's just different clicks, not less clicks, I guess, sometimes. And that can be a challenge. And the other one I'm sure you see, and no one has to comment on this, but I just remember this from a previous life with a company that fired me. But we would get a lot of people that wanted to do business with us because there were like slide decks in incubators where it was like, get a partnership with X and that will amplify you, right?

So it wasn't that they even wanted necessarily to do business with you. They just wanted to be able to put on their sales deck that they had you as a partner. It's a very difficult thing. So I just hope everyone listening knows that this is one of the hardest decisions. And these guys, I think, were all very kind and thoughtful in their responses. But it can be very difficult to choose who you partner with and sometimes I know outside emails how come this company won't partner with these guys and XYZ and and sometimes you might not understand but I just want everyone to realize that this is a hard thing to sort through

because for every great company that would be a really true value add there's a dozen or more similar looking companies that could be an incredible waste of time or a complete fail. And it is a big decision. And Ryan, maybe I can comment on that if that's okay. I think, you know, you hit on kind of one of my favorite phrases, actually, as we think about insure tech investment. You know, it's hard to believe when I got here in insure tech, there was about $2 billion being invested in a given year right we're now like over 15 16 right and you know ryan's spot on right not all of it is actually helpful to you and navigating that is a really complicated thing it's the sole purpose why we created the orange partner program i think it's what networks and clusters and you know

groups that you can join can help you navigate at the end of the day. But in SureTech, because it's cool and interesting and kind of looks fun, but if it doesn't solve a real problem for your business, it could actually add extra clicks to your workflows, which is exactly what we're not trying to do, right? Not helpful, not what we're trying to do in the independent agent channel. We're trying to simplify things

so that we can give you time back at the end of the day. So navigating that's a really, it's a big challenge. And I think that's where networks, clusters, companies like us can help too. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So we're going to pivot a little, or of course, just in the line of questioning, this has been tremendous. I feel like we've done a really good job of developing a narrative here, but we do have some good questions. I have a couple other places I want to go. I want to give a quick shout out to Jessica, who said, agreed as a new agent, I feel like I would have sank without my SIA support team. So, you know, just stroking some egos out there, loving it. Great. Thank you. I appreciate your feedback, Jessica. That's wonderful. And it took us 41 minutes to get our first question about Accord. So again, the evolution of the industry. This is tremendous. All right. So I want the last kind of scheduled question that I had. And I actually want to, I'll give credit where it's due to Amy. This was her suggestion. So after this, we'll pivot to the questions that have been asked in the Q&A. So if you have a question for our panel, please get

that in the Q&A right now. We have about 20 minutes left on our discussion. So we're going to hit this question I'm about to ask, and then we'll get into your questions. So if you have them, pop them in. And remember, if you think it's's silly i will be your silly filter so just just get the questions out there keep them rolling all right so um amy as this was your question i'm gonna put it right back on you um what what is it what is one problem or a set of problems whatever what is a problem that we haven't solved yet what's a problem out out there that we as an industry talk about, but just doesn't feel like we've dialed in on? Is there anything in particular, or is there a set of things? Where are you at with this one?

So I love this question because it's similar to the very first question we had on trends, which is there's so many to pick from, right? So it's about where we want to focus and what we see i think for me my hot button these days is you know we we live in a complicated ecosystem we got the uninsured we got independent agents we've got the wholesalers and mgas we got the carriers and our collective purpose is to help the our end customers get the best coverage they can for the right prices as with as easy and experienced as right? And we have not even come close to crossing the chasm of navigating the possibility of improving the way all of these stakeholders connect across one another. And we will never get to the point where we can fundamentally drive that fast, personable experience if we don't address the connectivity challenges. And so from a technology perspective, I wake up every day and I think about that. And back to the comments we were talking about earlier about doing it together.

What I learned the day I got here six years ago into insurance, I said that connectivity problem, we can solve that. That's not a big deal. Well, what I underestimated was all the players in the game and how they all have to fundamentally come together to solve that problem and really get us to the tipping point. So I wake up every day having conversations with carriers, having conversations with agencies, working with my team on how we actually cross the chasm of where we really need to be to unlock the value we can deliver to the constituents by addressing connectivity you mean you didn't realize how many rating systems are still run on cobalt I didn't explain that to you when you join. Sorry, I can't help myself sometimes. You are 100% right.

Connectivity is the problem. All right, Tyler, where would you go with this? Where would you go? You can obviously expand upon connectivity, which I agree is probably the the thing that we have not solved um or anything else that you're seeing no i mean i i think i think that's actually spot on i mean i think if we put the customer at the center of all that we collectively do so agents carrier technology providers there's a lot of work for us still to do so we're all interacting in the service of the customer each and every day whether that's a simple transaction work for us still to do. So we're all interacting in the service of the customer each and every day, whether that's a simple transaction like paying a bill, whether that's the customer

trying to change their policy potentially online, whether it's a claims filing. And yet the way we communicate and share data between agency, agency management systems, and carrier still isn't quite in real time. In fact, a lot of it's still, you know, overnight downloads. The ability for us to continue to meet customer needs is just really important. And so, you know, I would love for us to continue to come together and drive real solutions to continue to meet customers' expectations, which are only getting

higher. You know, we work too hard in the independent agency system to bring customers in. We have to make sure that we're providing a differentiated experience, and it really is going to take all of us to solve that. We mentioned the complexity. You know, there's 36,000 agents in the country. There's 350 carriers operating in the independent agency system. There's any number of technology providers. Some have a rating software from one vendor and AMS from the other.

So you look at the combinations, permutations, if you will, of tech stacks, and it's a really complex problem. But it's one that if you come back to, you know, just mutual beneficial partnerships, if you come back to being aligned on the mission it has to be service of the customer and so there has to be ways for us just to make sure that you know carrier systems the data that we have and collect is being shared with agents when they need it to provide exceptional service and vice versa so I think there's still a lot for us to do in that space I think individually we've all made tremendous progress on empowering agents. I think together, we have an opportunity to truly transform the way we do business and the way we differentiate

ourselves from the direct channel. Yeah. So Matt. Yeah. I'm going to actually start where Tyler ended ended which was service right uh you know i think service uh is an area that where we haven't solved for uh that we really need to and and it's that value proposition and you think about you know amy talking about connectivity and we talk about the consumer and we talk about the agency and we talk about the company and when we look at an independent agency we sort of break down an independent agency into four sections right marketing operations sales and service and we look at what digital capabilities or what new capabilities can we provide into each of those segments within an agency and we suggest that agencies sort of measure themselves on how they're

doing in those four areas and staying on service just for a second. We're not yet giving the consumer what they want relative to the service. And some of that is because we're not evolving our business model. And so, you know, we as this industry need to figure out how we're going to service this business moving forward. Is it the connectivity and giving them the ability to do it themselves through interfacing with our ams or our mobile apps is it carrier self-service in diy is it carrier service centers uh is it agency vas which we're seeing as a a big growth trend right now uh and then to a certain degree agencies do still need to be able to advocate

for their consumers when those other things don't work. And, you know, I'm a big believer that not only do we as agencies need to find our value proposition in the insurance cycle as technology and digitization continues to come in, we got to find our value proposition for the consumer. We also have to recognize that we need to find our value proposition for the carriers that we do business with. And it's not being staffed for service. It is being staffed for sales and business development and productive interactions, meaningful interactions with our customers and our clients. And so, you know, service and getting that figured out of what that right mix is that's right for the consumer. And, you know, we hear a lot of agencies say, you know, my clients still

want to talk to me. But the basic fact is, is most of the calls that go into the service centers are when agencies aren't open. And a lot of consumers, if we think about ourselves in our own lives, we're busy. And so we want to do these things at night or on the weekend. And so we want to be able to either go into the carrier system or into the agency's AMS platform to be able to do these things. And we're heading in the right direction, but we're not solving for that. And I always tend to steal a little bit of your thunder, Ryan, on this one, which is we have to use digital capabilities, but we have to human optimize them for when somebody wants to talk to a human being and so this service thing uh we've

got to solve for it because at the end of the day if we solve or get better on how we're providing better service capabilities to our customers when and where they want it it gives us the ability to go after the business that's out there that might be in the exclusive channel, might even be some business in the direct channel. It allows us to compete better and be more efficient and agile in our businesses. Yes, so every time someone says human optimized, I have to get a check in the mail for 20 bucks.

Yeah. for 20 bucks. So, all right. So I have a, the podcaster in me can't help. I have to comment on just a couple of things here because I think there was so much, so much in those answers that I thought was tremendous. One, here's the solution to carrier service centers. The first carrier that is willing to service other carriers business without getting their hooks into that business wins the carrier service center game. The reason carrier service centers, especially on the commercial line side, have not taken off, and I've talked to many, many agents about this topic, is that there are too many accounts that have multiple carrier accounts. And the minute you have a multiple carrier account, the carrier service center model falls apart. So that's the answer to that so um whoever wants to take that from

a carrier perspective and run with it the first one to do it wins um because carrier service centers are an incredible resource it's just the minute there's a multi-carrier solution it doesn't work um so I the reason that we haven't figured out service from my perspective is because we don't ask. It's actually simpler than all of that stuff. We don't ask how they want to be serviced. We force whatever solution we feel is best down our consumers' throats. is a big part of the reason why I think adoption of tools like Glovebox, like Carrier Service Centers, like other things haven't taken off agency VAs is because you're never going to have 100% of your client base using any one of those. It's really going to be a set of tools and you

need to ask your customer how they want to be serviced. My dad is going to want to call, but my mom actually likes automated tools so she would actually use a login thing my dad doesn't still doesn't want to believe the internet exists so if you want both of those pieces of business you need to have both options here is my question for you guys this is something that i just kind of hit me as you were talking so if we're talking about connectivity um and actually uh uh tyler i'm gonna i'm gonna put this question to you so if we're talking about connectivity, and actually, Tyler, I'm going to put this question to you. So if we're talking about connectivity, it feels like everyone's trying to address this in a slightly different way. There is like a carrier-centric connectivity model where we're doing everything inside of the carrier, carrier dashboards.

I mean, obviously, Liberty has a very robust carrier dashboard. You can do all kinds of different servicing, all kinds of selling. You know, you guys would probably be on the more innovative side of the spectrum. There's agent-centric miles, right? So this would be like agencies having their own user portal and pulling all that connectivity into the agency or maybe do an AMS, like AMS 360360 or qq and then there's third party centric which would be you know tool i used before it's just one of many i'm not trying to give whatever just like the guys like a glove box where where the user the the connectivity is is a third part so in a in a in a perfect world um which one of those models do we think is that because all three

months can't work right it can't if we're trying to actually be connected all three models you know we can't all three work where do we see this going is a carrier centric is an agent centric or is third party I think well there's the where's it going and the you know what what to do now and I think, well, there's the, where is it going and the, you know, what to do now. And I think right now, the biggest gap is making sure that we're serving customers in the way they need to be served today. And so if you look at just customer, you know, NPS, customer retention, it is higher, materially higher for customers that engage, you know, we see that in our data, that engage online digital capabilities for service, whether that's an app, whether that's an online portal. And so, you know, my advice to agents is we have to provide that to

customers. If agents have a solution, either they're getting it from a different technology provider, maybe they've done it through a mobile app like Glovebox, fantastic. If an agent doesn't have their own capabilities, push carrier capabilities. The most important thing right now is that we give customers what they need. Like I said, we have worked too hard for a customer to have a better service experience from a direct channel because the direct carrier is pushing that as the only option. But the experience at the end of the day is what the customer needs and what they're expecting. So they need to get it some way. In terms of ultimately are we going to play or is there going to be one particular end zone, I don't know. I mean, right now we've been open to all of it.

So we have certainly proprietary capabilities we're providing. We have integrations with third parties. We have integrations with agencies to provide those services of their clients and there's pros and cons you know the carrier centric approach obviously built into our system built into our processes you know you have native experiences that in some cases potentially are a little bit more robust not because we're not open to making integrations tighter but because it's an investment you know so if we're going to invest in APIs to go soup to nuts through the entire claims process and embed that in a third-party platform, we have to have the return on investment to do

that. So that's been a little bit more of a challenge to get the same level of extensive kind of experiences and services built. So from a carrier standpoint, it's a native experience which sometimes will provide more functionality. That said, to your point, Ryan, on the commercial line side, you know, if there is a commercial account that's split across carriers, you know, that's maybe not an ideal solution for an app where they only have part of the account. You know, in personal lines, we're more likely to have the entire household,

and so those experiences are a little bit more robust. So I'd say, you know, the most important, we're more likely to have the entire household. And so those experiences are a little bit more robust. So I'd say, you know, the most important thing right now from my standpoint is that together we remain open and flexible and that we continue to give agents options, whether that's to empower the tools that they're looking to build or whether that's by leveraging carrier tools where customers can use them today to get that benefit. Awesome. Does any, Matt or Amy, do you have any additive comments or can I rapid fire a few of these other questions at you? Cause we got, we'll go, we'll go rapid fire. Cool. Okay. So I got a couple of questions here from the audience that I'm going to hit real quick. We got four minutes.

So just let's try to punch the answers if you can. So let's see, I'm going to, I'm going to hit real quick. We got four minutes. So just let's try to punch the answers if you can. So let's see. I'm going to go to you with this one, Matt. And Joe asks, what are two action steps that an independent agency can take that wants to scale their business in the 21st century? You may or may not have written a book that addressed some of these particular topics yeah i mean there's more than two but if i had to pick two out of the gate i would say uh lead generation and digitization right and so um and those two things are related right there's the you know we've got a saw we just heard we just broke down all the service needs and everything you know servicing your business um is a a obstacle to scaling your growth. But to really grow, it is taking a look at the digital

resources that are out there and getting them into your agency, which includes building a digital brand, whether you're in a geographic market or a digital market to grow your business and generating the leads and the potential prospective interactions with clients or potential clients that your carriers want to write and then look technology levels the playing field there's a lot of small agencies out there we do business with a lot of them that look a hell of a lot bigger than they are because they use digital capabilities to to scale and look and act and execute much bigger than they are. Awesome. Amy, I'm going to kick this one to you as much as you're able or willing to offer insights. Future of staffing CSRs, you probably see this in the logins that people are adding to

the system that where they're trying to access people from. What are you seeing from just the standard questions you guys are getting around VAs from, there's also, I just interviewed a guy who is building digital VAs, like bots that are going into AMSs and doing such automated processes, which may not even be legal. I don't know. But is it straight, local, American licensed CSRs, or are there other staffing options out there? What are you seeing and what are your thoughts? Totally. So I think the answer is all of the above we're seeing, to be honest with you, right? So there's still a lot of people that are at the large end building their own service centers and trying to create that internally.

There's using offshore resources to do some of that. We see people investing in robotics processing to do some of the more kind of standard tasks to ultimately get rid of the, you know, order taking type of activity that a CSR might have to do and trying to free up their resources times to do more value add thing by some automating some of these robotics processes, which to be honest with you is there's a ton of opportunity there. Nobody's done that really in a productized way that everyone could leverage. But when you look at what some of the individual companies are doing, you can you can obviously see there's a lot of a lot of opportunity. And then there's still a lot of CSR hiring going on across the board. Right. So employment growth is going up in the independent channel consistently.

And there's a chunk of those folks that are still CSRs. Yeah, if I will say from our own hiring at Rogue, if you are struggling to find high quality service people, look to younger moms there are a tremendous amount of talent sitting on the sidelines because they don't fit the traditional eight to four 30 mindset of a CSR. So just that's one way that we found some incredible people on our team. Just something to keep in mind. Guys, Matt, Amy, Tyler, I want to thank you so much. I know how valuable your time is. I know that we're all busy. It's the middle of the day on a Tuesday. Appreciate you being here, sharing your thoughts. And it was a pleasure and an honor to share the virtual stage with all of you. Thanks for having us. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Close twice as many deals by this time next week.

Sound impossible? It's not. With the one-call-close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals. In one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle-tested, the one-call closed system eliminates excuses

and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit MasterOfTheClothes.com. That's MasterOfTheClothes.com. Do it today.