If you’ve been paying attention at all, you know there is a new era of solutions taking hold in the industry. If you haven’t been paying attention, well, you need to get up to speed and fast!
And, to be fair, it’s not so much that these solutions are completely new. In fact, many take us back to the basics of what healthcare used to be. You know, back before it started falling apart.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Reports of the death of the industry are greatly exaggerated.”
Many see the industry as on its deathbed. Between the unprecedented number of agencies selling, the belief that the industry can’t recruit new talent, and the countless other challenges weighing on it, many see these as the final days of the independent insurance agency system.
But, they are wrong.
Even though I’ve worked my entire career in insurance either as a producer or with producers and agency owners, it’s been a while since I was a producer myself. It’s amazing how much has changed during that time.
I’m concerned about some of the activity I see playing out among brokers and advisors with their online social activity. And I’d like to note that paradoxically this concern is actually a cause for celebration.
At a time when the industry is paralyzed by an unprecedented amount of change, when bottom line profit is evaporating, when too many agency owners are giving up and selling, when effective agency leaders are hard to find, Barry Cohn is a rare find.
The insurance industry has two very distinct types of sales people. Back when health insurance was affordable, selling group policies was the norm for the benefits broker. As regulations and expenses have both risen to new heights, the ideas, advice, and outcomes employers need have also risen to new heights. And the way brokers and consultants work with clients must rise along with it.
And inside-the-agency perspective from our long-time Q4iNetwork member, Bret Brummitt.
Being an insurance agency owner has been one of the greatest journeys you have likely embarked on. You have felt the immediate financial reward for doing a good job and you’ve been able to impact the lives of your clients in profoundly positive ways during their times of distress and turmoil. There are few professions that let you experience that combination punch of intrinsic and altruistic rewards simultaneously.
It’s crazy how timing works. On the heels of our #Q4LiveTampa conference where we spent a few days learning, debating, and planning how to bring solutions to the failing healthcare system, comes the announcement that Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), and Jamie Dimon (JPMChase) have teamed together to do just the same.
We have long said, the greatest time to be in this industry is right now; the greatest opportunities we have ever been afforded are still ahead of us. However, we are also quick to point out that those opportunities look different than those of the past, and the way you have to work to have them for your own is definitely different than ever before.
Every year we choose a theme that will be a focal point for everything we do throughout the year. In past years, we’ve had Simplify as a theme, where we looked to make everything we did and created as simple as possible. Another year our theme was Relevance, where we intently questioned what relevance looked like and how we could ensure our own relevance as well as that of our member agencies.
Our theme for 2018 is (drumroll please) … A New Normal.