Agency Blog

The industry in which most of us have spent our careers has centered around two primary groups serving as “gate keepers” of healthcare: commercial carriers and government. To say they have failed us would be a huge understatement.

I hear predictions all the time about how the insurance industry is going to die because “millennials aren’t interested in insurance.” After all, this generation is unlike any other than came before it, right?

Remember flying kites as a little kid? And how when that kite struggled you'd pull the string tight and it would soar high once again? I wish more agency owners would think of their struggling producers as that kite.

Erica Kiefer from AgencyBlocinterviewed me, asking how agency owners and agents can thrive, not just survive, in today's insurance industry and healthcare climate.A version of this article was originally published on their blog.  

We watch insurance agencies make the craziest decisions about spending money. We see heavy spending and snap decisions regularly being made on a variety of software platforms, hiring internal marketing people, and buying client services (think value-added services). 

What we also see are agencies frustrated with the lack of results from that come from this spending. It feels a bit like a money pit. And the way this spending takes place, it should! 

The time comes when you know you need to make changes in your business, but changes can be intimidating. How do you know if the team will accept the new ideas? How do you know if the clients will like it? How do you know the changes will even work?

The pace of mergers and acquisitions among insurance agencies has reached a fevered pitch. While the motivation behind any single transaction is personal to the organizations involved, we see some consistent outcomes on the back side and, most of the time, it ain’t all that pretty.

The last decade has shown multiple record-breaking years for the number of independent agency sales. According to Optis Partners, an investment banking and financial consulting firm specializing in the insurance industry, the most active buyers taking the lead in last few years have been private-equity backed firms. Bringing up second place for buyers are private brokers, followed by public brokers in third.

No, this is NOT going to be a political rant, at all. But the results of the recent election have me concerned for the future of independent agencies. I’m guessing that might surprise you given the new administration’s stated mission of repealing (all or parts of) the ACA. However, it is that stated mission that has me concerned.

I have the privilege of speaking at industry events on a regular basis. Regardless of the presentation I’m giving, I always start with a quick literature quiz. I ask the audience, “Who can yell out the opening line from ‘A Tale of Two Cities’?”