ADJUSTED
ADJUSTED
Building Effective Relationships Between Agents and Carriers with Andrew Atkinson
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In this Rebroadcast episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Andrew Atkinson, Broker and Managing Partner at Insurica. Andrew shares his thoughts on how to strengthen relationships between agents and carriers.
Season 7 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Mike Gilmartin, Area Vice President, Sales & Distribution, for Key Risk.
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm excited today to introduce this rebroadcast. This was actually one of my favorite episodes. I really think that one of the things WR Berkeley does really well is we work closely with our agents to build partnerships, and this episode talks a little bit more. We had the opportunity to meet with one of our agents and talk about what adds value to an agency from a claims perspective and how can we differentiate ourselves, and to me, this is what insurance is all about. It's about keeping our promise. So join me in this episode as we get to listen to Andrew Atkinson talk a little bit about what makes the claims experience important to an agency partner. Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming to you from Sweet Home, alabama, and Berkeley Industrial Comp. And with me is my co-host, mike Gilmartin. Mike, you want to introduce yourself for folks who haven't heard you on one of the previous podcasts.
Speaker 2Yeah, Mike Gilmartin with KeyRisk, based out of Greensboro, North Carolina, and I've done a few of these with Greg and I'm excited to be back.
Speaker 1Glad to have you, mike, with us today is our special guest, andrew Atkinson. He is a business insurance agent at Insurica and, andrew, I thought I'd give you a chance to introduce yourself a little bit to everybody.
Speaker 3Sure. Thanks, greg and Mike, for having me. Yes, I'm with Insurica, and specifically Insurica Southwest. We are the office of Insurica that is in Phoenix, arizona, and I'm a broker. I focus a lot on workers compensation, had a big passion for that since day one, and a managing partner of the agency as well.
Speaker 1Awesome. Well, if people haven't guessed, the topic for today is building effective partnerships between agency carriers, and I don't think we've done one of these ever with an agency, and I thought sometimes this piece gets overlooked a little bit, and I think it's really important. So I'm hoping today we can tackle some of those things. But before we do, andrew, I wanted you to tell us a little bit about how you ended up in the insurance industry. You said you'd already sort of had a passion for this. So was that like in kindergarten when they were doing the drawing projects? You were like drawing out like policies and stuff like that.
Speaker 3It started with fall protection in kindergarten. I'd always get nervous when people would climb up the Lincoln logs the wrong way. Actually, it's an interesting story. I'll shorten it.
Speaker 3I bounced around a lot between the age of 20 and 30. I studied marketing in college and at the age of 30, I was working at a restaurant in addition to working at a bank, and it's a nice restaurant here in Phoenix. I love going back, especially now because I'm 44 years old I don't work there anymore. But my manager at the restaurant at Chelsea's Kitchen, her husband, was in the insurance business and he just always he was an agent and he still is and he just always seemed to have freedom and he seemed to be generally happy and one day he told me you would be good in this business and he made an introduction to me to go work at a very large firm and I was there for about seven months before I got a call from Insurica in 2008. And I moved here and I've been here for 14 years. That's how I got in it and I'm forever in his debt.
Speaker 1It's funny, I think most of us, in one way or another, kind of fell into this and then found our passion when we got here. That's interesting. That's how it happened. Tell us a little bit about your company, insurica.
Speaker 3Well, insurica is based out of Oklahoma City. That's our headquarters. Well, insurica is based out of Oklahoma City, that's our headquarters, our home office, and we have 29 or 30 offices around the country, and some of them are big and some of them are small. We were one of the first five offices here in Phoenix to join Insurica. It's largely comprised of many different agencies that were already existing, like ours. Ours started in the 80s and it was called Menard Ames for a couple decades, after Steve Menard and the late Wink Ames, and so we became Insurica in 2007. And we have a. So our central hub is Oklahoma City and then we're made up of 29 or 30 different offices from, well, we say, coast to coast now, because we do have an office in Florida, but for a long time it was mostly west of the Mississippi River or insurance management network, and here in Phoenix we focus a lot on the construction industry subcontractors, general contractors, anybody building anything and so inherently with that, there's a lot of workers' compensation that we deal with.
Speaker 1Sure Well, and of course, for those who don't know, berkeley Industrial Comp, we specialize in high hazard workers' compensation, so sometimes that's construction, heavy equipment operators, cell phone tower workers, so we see a lot of the same kinds of things and that's kind of over time, I think, how our companies have begun to partner a little bit. So that's fantastic. So, moving into maybe the next step, I kind of wanted to let Mike talk about this some, because he's moved I joke, all the time he's gone from the great workers compensation claim side to the sales and distribution side, the dark side, and I forgive him for that, but I thought maybe, thanks for pardoning me, that's okay. I know that now you have my pardon, life can move on for you, mike, but I guess you're both probably looking at different sides of the same coin honestly on that. And I was just curious on what some of the top priorities are for a successful agency. And then maybe Mike could talk about what he's seeing on his end from his role.
Speaker 3Would you like Mike to take that?
Speaker 2I mean, I think for me I'm not on the agency side, but Greg is correct but I've worked, obviously, with agencies throughout my career, both on the claim side and now the sales and distribution side, and I think the biggest thing that separates agencies and the ones that I think have the best for my vision are the ones that align with customers that have the same vision they do and care about the industries that they're in and then find carrier partners that do the same thing. So I think you have the most success, in my opinion, as an agency and as a carrier, in partnering with people that have a like vision. They have the same kind of mind for what they're looking for, for how they treat people, for how they treat their clients, for the services they like to offer and from my perspective, that's probably what makes the most successful agencies through my eyes. But I'd love to hear more, andrew, from you as to what you think kind of drives success for you guys and your firm.
Speaker 3Sure, and I'll just keep it specific to our office because I know our guys the best. We are very big on I don't even want to say selling through seminars, I'll just say we're very big on educational offerings and so we teach classes. On the workers' compensation EMOD score that's the one that I'm really big on the EMOD score, how it works, how people think it works, versus how it works in reality. And we dive deep into all the different mechanisms of the experience mod worksheets, from the stabilizing value to the expected losses, the W factor.
Speaker 3We get into that over a and it's really fun, believe it or not, it's really fun. We found a way to make it fun, or at least that's what people tell me. Every time they leave they say I had no idea it was going to be this entertaining. And on a personal level, I believe this system called workers' compensation started very nobly I believe the intentions were very good in Wausau, wisconsin, in in 1911, when, when it began and what I've seen it metamorphosize into over the last hundred and ten years, the system that's not even recognizable anymore from what it was when it was invented, which was simply a measure for workers to not have to sue their employer to collect the wages and medical expenses following an injury, because back in 1911, that took a long time there were no telephones, fax machines, there was no way to expedite the legal process.
Speaker 3And you look at today and I work most closely with Natalie Dangles than anybody at Berkeley just because she's on so many of our claims and we get a chance to talk through each and every one of them and so taking the side of the employer has really worked well for me. Letting them know look, I know why you're upset with this but then kind of getting into the different state statutes and the different laws that make us do certain things, whether we like it or not, there's certain things that we have to do, there's certain things that we have to comply with, just like laws. There's a lot of things about the IRS tax code that I do not like. And so taking that approach for me, that whole general approach of understanding why the clients that we work with feel that they're not getting a good deal with workers' compensation and validating their concern rather than trying to tell them what a great system it is I've been doing that for 14 years and it seems to be very well received.
Speaker 1I think you're getting on something that's important there and that's just the importance of trying to make a complex system understandable.
Speaker 1And I think you know we see that on all sides, you know, from the employer to the injured worker.
Speaker 1You know it's a confusing process.
Speaker 1Shoot, we had a gentleman the other day on the other side of the country, not out West, who was thrown through a vehicle and lost a lot of his leg and is going through a difficult rehab and just trying to explain to him why we were trying to get him to one of the best hospitals, he was so frustrated with his care there that he had basically said I want to go home, I'd rather go home than be here. They were transferring him from the bed and caught his leg on the bed and maybe even fractured. I mean just things that you're like. Well, that's not great, but then helping his fiance understand that and getting his care transferred, and I think you're hitting on the other side of that, which is the employer, who could be frustrated. They're trying to run a business and they're wondering why this guy's not at work and trying to work through that element on their end and it is such a complicated process and there are certain things we have to do because the statute says that's how you administer it, so certainly a challenge.
Complexities of Workers' Compensation Claims
Speaker 3It just plays right into what you were saying. I think one of the most complicated things about workers' compensation, which is why I see so much opportunity in it, as opposed to the other lines of coverage. So think about general liability, think about automobile, think about property. Property and auto is a great example. If a building burns down, the ashes can't talk back. They can't create a story, they're not married to anybody. If an automobile runs into a pole or a car or it explodes, it's a bunch of twisted metal. It doesn't have a story, it can't talk. It's very factual. It doesn't mean those lines of coverage are easy and that they don't have their own innuendos, but workers' compensation every single time there's a claim, there's a person involved that's got his or her perspective. There is an employer involved who has their perspective rarely do those match and then you've got a claims adjuster involved who in most cases hasn't met either one of them or gone to the scene. Not that they should, it's just. That's the way it works.
Speaker 3And so you've got all these different parties involved trying to find an amicable solution, and that just on its own, given that that's the origin of every claim, makes it complicated from the very beginning.
Speaker 1I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2You hit on something there. That's kind of the gist of what we're talking about today, which is all the more reason for carriers and agencies to have such a good partnership, because you're trying to deal with this from an employer perspective and with your client, and if you don't have the greatest relationship with the adjuster or the insurance carrier or what have you, it makes your job that much harder. So I guess one of the biggest questions I have for you is what makes your life easy? So when you're looking at a partnership with a carrier, what are those important things you have to have? You know from an agency perspective, that really helps make you successful with your clients.
Speaker 3Well, I'm not a paid spokesperson, but I have about 700 or 800 attendees of my seminar that I gave for a decade and when the question would come up and they'd say, andrew, this is all great, we understand how the system works. Now, what carrier do you recommend? My answer that I gave on tape for a decade was I dislike all of them the same. I don't care which carrier?
Speaker 3you go to. It doesn't matter to me where you go, because the eMOD and the eMOD system is going to work the same, no matter who your carrier is, and some claims adjusters are better than others and that's just the way it is. So there's a lot of different ways I can help you, but I can't help you with that. And then when I met Natalie and Wes and Greg and our first meeting actually was a Zoom meeting, it was about three years ago you spoke our language. You spoke our language. We're talking about indemnity claims, we're talking about medical claims, we're talking about the 70% medical discount, and we kept going deeper and deeper and I thought this could be good.
Speaker 3We've heard some of this before and everybody's really good on the front end when we're looking to appoint a new carrier. Everybody's good, everybody's studied their notes, and so we put two or three companies with Berkeley Industrial back in 20, I want to say 17 or 18. And now there's a dozen or more trying to move everybody. And it's been so smooth and so good because the claims management has been so effective. And in my world that's the part that matters. I'm sure everybody at Berkeley Industrial is outstanding, but the facing people that I work with are the claims adjusters. That, natalie, the claims team, and here's the key thing the ability for the claims adjusters, natalie, the claims team, and here's the key thing the ability for that claims adjuster to get on the phone and talk directly with our insured has been monumental. And I'm trying so hard not to say names of companies, because I've got a dozen, and so here's how I judge the success of a carrier. It's not what I think, it's what my clients tell me.
Speaker 3And just an hour before we got on this phone call, I got an email from Wes, who had received an email from one of our clients, a masonry contractor, that again was just raving about the online system that Berkeley has all the tools. So that's the answer to the question, Mike, I know that's going to sound every bit of biased, but I do have six or 700 attendees of my seminars for a decade that will remember, because they thought it was a funny part when I said I dislike every carrier the same and I don't care where you go, just hire me and then I don't care where you go.
Speaker 3It's for carrier, and that's different now with Berkeley Industrial, that's different now, very different.
Speaker 1I paid him a lot, I promise you. No, I'm just kidding. I appreciate what you said and my, I guess, mission from the time. So I came up through a very siloed organization. So did Mike.
Speaker 1So in our beginning of our career where we work, claims never talked to underwriting.
Speaker 1We really didn't talk to agents.
Speaker 1I did handle some big accounts, but what I learned in the time since then, moving from there to later running a state funds claims department, was just how important communication is and relationships and so many of the things that go wrong on claims are because we haven't done a good job explaining why things are happening and getting buy-in from everybody who's there.
Speaker 1So that's been one of our big missions. And there's a big movement in claims right now of claims advocacy and I've talked about this on other podcasts but I kind of have an issue with it in that if my adjuster is the advocate of the injured worker but they're getting paid premium from a policyholder and then there are shareholders for my insurance company, then we're really missing the boat. And what I've really tried to hit home is we need to be empathetic to everybody who's involved and to listen and try to make sure we understand what's going on and communicate, because we represent a whole bunch of people, and the injured workers won, but so is the carrier, so is our company, so are the shareholders, so is your agency, and if we're doing our job well, then when it comes to renewals, things go a lot smoother for everybody.
Speaker 3Sure, yeah Well, and you've got I can put numerical proof to that when you talk about renewals of all the clients that we moved to Berkeley starting in 2018. And there's been a lot, not a single one of them has a moved away or be considered moving away.
Speaker 1Yeah, and that's a big deal.
Speaker 3So our retention is 100 percent, and that's not on me.
Speaker 2We talk about this a lot and I think, Greg, you and I did a podcast, probably last season but it was not with an agent Kind of talking about a similar topic. And it's interesting, Andrew, to hear what you had to say, because I think that sums up a little bit of what the world thinks of the insurance industry and how they look at carriers, honestly, I mean that's the time when I tell people I work in insurance, they're like oh all, right, bud, let's move on to something else, Like who's the big bad guy, Like that kind of stuff.
Insurance Industry Relationship Building
Speaker 2But I think you hit on something and Greg both hit on something, Berkeley in my opinion and Key.
Speaker 2Risk. Frankly, where I work is really different in that we're small enough that all groups can work together and have conversations and kind of constantly be in the know of what's going on with accounts and what's going on with agencies and who the right players are and who we need to talk to. But from your view, right? So for 10 years you told people it doesn't really matter which carrier, because they're all the same to me and I'm not really a fan of any of them From an agent perspective. What causes that dislike, right? So you've now had you work with Berkeley Industrial and it sounds like it makes your job a little easier. Your customers are happy and at the end of the day, that's probably what makes you happy. But what are some of the pitfalls you find carriers walk themselves into when it comes to working with agencies? That gives you that reaction.
Speaker 3So if you watch an NBA basketball game, after the game they go into the locker room of the losing team and they ask them questions. And the most common answer you hear from almost every player is they say some iteration of it is what it is and that's just how they like to answer questions in the NBA. If they lose, if they win, it's all kinds of different things, but the losing team usually says it is what it is and I don't know what that means. I've looked it up, I've studied it, I've tried to find a deeper meaning to it and they're just. I've heard a lot of answers for it just not a good one, for it just not a good one. And so the claims adjusters that I've worked with most of them at the other carriers have that syndrome.
Speaker 3And when I want to get deep into a claim and this happens a lot with subrogation, this happens a lot with trying to retroactively change injury codes what I get from a lot of the claims adjusters and again, not all of them, there's a lot of good claims adjusters, you just get a lot of it is what it is. Mike, I hope that answers your question. That's the reason number one. There's 10 others, but I'll just stop at number one. That makes it hard for an agent like me, who's very passionate about what I do, to work with the majority of claims adjusters. It's just a lack of diving deeper into trying to find a solution once it gets difficult.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean I think it's a good answer. I think we talk about it all the time and there's a reason our industry gets a bad rap at times, and some of it's that it's more effort to do the right thing and it's more effort to put in the work Right. And so for a lot of people call whatever you want, high pending caseloads, all different kinds of things. You know, some things aren't a priority to them and I think one of the one of the differences that Berkeley and Greg does this we do this. Lower caseload, more time to work on the things need to be worked on. Understanding all sides of what's going on and being able to take the time to go deep on claims is something that we preach.
Speaker 2So I hear what you're saying, I think it makes complete sense to me and I think Greg would probably agree. I think a lot of insurance companies get a bad rap for exactly what you're saying. It's just it's easier for me to give you a quick answer and move on to the next thing than it is to really dig in and build that relationship with you, right? So I would assume, andrew, that when that happens you're like well, you know, you've lost credibility to me, or I don't have time for this or I'll find somebody else.
Speaker 2And it sounds like, when it comes to Natalie and other folks, I would assume it also buys a lot of goodwill with you and that when Natalie tells you something, you're generally going to say you know what, okay, I gotcha. And where do we go from here? Because she's built up that credibility and I think that that's a thing a lot of times it's lacking across the industry is building that credibility in that relationship up front, so that when I do tell you something and it's a tough conversation to have you know it's coming from a place of I've done everything I can do and this is where we are. But where do we go from here? And I think I I agree with you. I don don't know, greg, if you have thoughts on that, but I was just going to say.
Speaker 1I think you both are hitting on something that I think is important. It's just like it is helping the claim staff understand. It is that it's a relationship. Sometimes I think that gets missed. But like, if I went home, I've been married for 19 years, coming up on 19 years and have six kids, if I went home to my wife and I said have six kids, if I went home to my wife and I said it is what it is and that was the answer, I'm telling you we wouldn't be married 19, coming up on 19 years.
Speaker 1So, like, every relationship takes work and it takes understanding and I think sometimes on the claim side too busy. But if we don't take time to explain the why behind what we're doing and listen and get the information of why the customer's frustrated or why the agency's getting some heat on this, we can't get any better and sometimes Mike's right. We've done everything we can and it's still a bad situation. There have been claims that I've looked back on and I'm like man, it just doesn't seem fair and I can fill that myself. But I know what the statute says, what the judge has said and we're there. But if we don't take the time to explain that. Then again it's going back to that. It is what it is. That's not going to foster strong relationships.
Speaker 3And we have a number of those that you do finally just run out of an avenue and well, one of two things happens.
Speaker 3The client is either a lot more willing to understand okay, we've run out of every avenue and we're in this place where now we can say it is what it is and it actually means something or the client and Natalie and I have already had a few of these where you can at least go to the client at the end and say I know that you don't like the outcome, you know that I don't like the outcome, the claims adjuster doesn't like the outcome, but this is the law and as much as we don't like it, we're still all in the same team. This is the way it works. It doesn't mean we agree with it and they feel a lot better about that. They feel a lot better about that and some of the clients that we've put with Berkeley Industrial have been new business to us, but the majority of them they've been longtime clients. They've been moved over from another carrier and, with zero exceptions, they've all said the same thing Andrew, you were really big on these guys.
Speaker 3We weren't sure why you were so big on these guys. We went ahead and we moved. You know it wasn't. They didn't save any money on the front end. I'm very honest about that. You're never going to save any money because we're using rates and EMOD and class codes and EMOD and Classco and they're all happy, even the fencing contractor that's had a whole lot of claims. They're happy because they know these claims are ours. We're the ones with the people who are getting hurt, and Andrew and Berkeley are doing the best they can to try to mitigate the negative impact that these claims are having.
Speaker 1So we talked about some of the things that make that difficult. So, conversely, what are the things that build a strong relationship from the claim side with an agency? And I think, like you said, some are very siloed so they may not really have that interaction. But when there is that interaction, what fosters a strong relationship between claims and an agency?
Speaker 3Well, this answer I'm going to give is different than what I'd say a couple of years ago. Communication Now, that's not the new part. The communication is very important. It's cliche, it's overused, I understand that. But two years ago communication meant that we all got together for lunch and we got to know each other.
Speaker 3As we sit here right now, I went a year working with Berkeley before I ever met Wes for the very first time. He've never met Natalie in person, Talk with her every week, Talk with her on email every day and I've never met her. But the communication is so good because we're always emailing, we're talking on the phone. Two years ago I wouldn't have said that that would have been possible. But the communication we are living proof as a team that the coronavirus does not have to stop everything. It certainly did not stop communication and we've got an in-house claims person on our team, Stephen Prey, who's outstanding, and so the communication between me and Stephen and the client and Natalie.
Speaker 3And on the front end, we can't forget about Randon Lessing on the front end going out there doing loss control. Our communication with Berkeley is constant and that's the number one. Again, I could go through 10. I gave one on the other side. I can stop at one with that, because that helps. And you guys know the laws too. You know how the system works right. You know how it's intended to work and what it's metamorphosized in 109 years later.
Speaker 2So what you were talking about, communication. It is cliche, but there's a reason. Everybody brings it up first, because it doesn't happen as often as you think it would.
Speaker 2I mean it's very cliche, but it's also standard that's not lived up to. You Like. It is not hard to be good, right, it's not hard to do the right stuff and do the things that you're describing. And it takes me back. I was on a call probably three years ago with a prospective client and I was in my claims role at the time and I remember talking. I was talking to the client and the agent was on the phone and I said what has your experience been and what are maybe some of the things you have with your prior carrier that you like, some things that you don't like? What are you looking for?
Speaker 2And the guy very candidly said, honestly as long as you if I call you for a claims update and you get back to me within less than three months. You're better than my prior carrier. But I mean, first of all it's just sad, but it's mind blowing that like that is the standard out there and it's not hard to be good Like this isn't rocket science right.
Impact of Communication on Insurance Renewals
Speaker 2Communicate, be proactive, actually put some effort into what you're doing and you will build credibility with people, and you'd be amazed at how far that goes. And so I think communication is cliche. I think it's very, it's a very low bar. It can be a very low bar in our industry at times.
Speaker 1Yes, and Mike, I'd even add to that too, I think just slowing down a little bit, listening. You know we get moving so fast, we're trying to get stuff done, but one of the things I learned I'm still learning it, but I get a lot of practice, like I said, with six kids at home is to slow down and listen, to slow down and listen. And you know, in high school I took a speech class but there wasn't a listening class, so everything's focused on talking. There's a lot of war going on.
Speaker 1They're talking about the peace talks right, but there's not peace.
Speaker 3listens, good point. Never thought about that.
Speaker 1Sometimes we just need to remember to slow down and listen, because you can't understand somebody until you really slow down, and that's not just hearing what they say, but making sure that they understand that you heard it, and that takes more time, for sure. So from a renewal perspective, you know on the claim side, especially in very siloed organizations, they may not have very much involvement in renewals and I'm always emphasizing with my staff that they have more of an impact in renewals than they think they do or they can. So how can claim staff impact renewals or make things easier on you guys when it comes to that time of year?
Speaker 3You directing that to me, or Mike, I'll throw it your way.
Speaker 1Andrew.
Speaker 3And when you say claims staff, are you talking claims adjusters or are you talking loss control?
Speaker 1I'd say both Loss control claims adjusters, claims managers, that side of the industry.
Speaker 3I think where that really plays into the renewal the most is we put a lot of as agents I'm guilty of this we put a lot of emphasis on the renewal date.
Speaker 3Right, this is when we need to set up the meeting, bring them flowers, send them a picture of our dog, try to get all ready for that date. And I think the renewal date becomes so insignificant when things are done properly throughout the year when they need us. I'm going to think into my renewal list right now, coming up without going through a big list, and I'm not worried about any of them. I'm certainly not worried about any of them with Berkeley, because the successes that make renewals easy happen throughout the year.
Speaker 2I'm not worried.
Speaker 3Again, I want to say client names so bad I could say six or seven of them that come up in the next four months with Berkeley. I'm not worried about any of them because as I sit down with each of them I'm going to be able to say we fixed this, we fixed that. We had a tricky situation over here and, gosh, that sure turned out well. And Natalie was all over that and can you believe she got it closed out at that low amount. And here's what that meant for your EMOD. And then here's what it would have been had it gone unattended to. This is what your EMOD score would have been. And then I can say something like with another carrier we would not have had that same outcome Because as an agent I don't talk a lot about claims.
Speaker 3I talk a lot about claims outcomes Because claims are going to happen. I'm not one of those agents that goes out and says I will catch your guy before he lands when he falls off the ladder. I don't make that promise. I say you are going to have claims and my job is to work with the claims adjuster to make sure that the outcome of that claim is minimized, and so that makes the renewal really easy if you do the right things throughout the year. On the loss control side, brandon is in communication, always offering this service. Do I need to come see you? But then we haven't even talked about the resources online. We've got a masonry contractor that's in it for two hours a day pulling down fall protection and safety goggle training and every language imaginable and he thinks it's the greatest thing in the world. It's like a video game to him. So the renewal is not hard when you do the right thing during the year. It's just not.
Speaker 2You make a good point, Greg. You said something earlier and, conversely, from the carrier side, I think it's getting our teams understanding. And you said I think you did say that earlier, Craig everything they do has an impact and I think people get so focused on.
Speaker 2Well, it's just one claim, it's just one decision on one claim and this is one reserve on one claim, but to a customer and to an agent that all matters. And so throughout the year, if you get to the end of the year and Andrew's point you've done all that well, so you've practically communicated what's going on. Everyone has an understanding of where we are with the claims and why we're doing what we're doing. It makes any conversation you have around renewal much easier, and I think it's always on us as leaders in our organization to make sure people understand that, the greater kind of big picture that they're involved in when it comes to their everyday job, because I think when you realize that, it's easier to do the right thing right.
Speaker 2When it's like oh, whatever, it's one team, I got 100 of them, it doesn't really matter. It does matter and it matters a lot to a lot of people. And so I think it's a mindset that I think I always try to remind my client staff of, that I always try to remind anybody I'm working with every conversation you have, everybody you deal with, every meeting you're on.
Speaker 2Those things make a difference. And, to Andrew's point at the end of the year, when he gets there and he's going through his list, it's made his life easier and that at the end of the day, I'd imagine what really matters the most is am I able to retain my clients and do it successfully and not have to run around after everybody trying to get to an answer? So I think from our side we need to focus on that a little bit more in terms of every decision we make has an impact on a broader scope of things.
Speaker 1I agree, mike and Andrew. I like how you talked about outcomes, because ultimately, I think that's got to be the big piece to think about is, at the end of the day, a good outcome for everybody. If we do our job right, then the employer understands what's happening, the interworker understands what's happening, they've gotten the best care that's going to help them get back to doing the job they were doing as quickly as possible and we're going to minimize their pain and suffering because they're back doing their job and they're back earning their wage and back in the employer's got that person that they can count on to do the work. And so I think, thinking about those things you know cheap, but these injuries are so bad that if we don't get him the best possible care now, we could be paying for it for the next 20 years and he would be paying for it in his ability to have a good quality of life. So I think there's a lot to think about on outcomes.
Speaker 1And you're right, it's something we do every day, year round. It's not something that should be. It's time for renewals. Let's go ahead and have that claim. Reviewer.
Impact of Automation in Insurance Industry
Speaker 3Right, right, you know some things that along the way throughout the years I've said almost in, by accident or just a normal conversation, but I pay a lot of attention to how people react to. As an agent, you want to know am I saying things that are landing? Am I saying things that are resonating or not? Like a big thing that I started back in 2012 was return to anything, because return to work was confusing the physician because, they'd say, oh, you hurt your shoulder, you can no longer paint or hang drywall.
Speaker 3And I would be the guy saying well, return to anything means they don't have to be doing that, just anything, anything at all. And then we can keep that worker on payroll. We can keep the worker happy because they're on payroll, we can keep the insured happy because that's remaining a medical only claim with a 70% discount. When the first time I said return to anything, I didn't think much of it, but the reaction was so profound that I went online to GoDaddy and I bought that website. I bought the domain return to anythingcom and so I own that now. And then I later on said claims outcomes because every agent likes to talk about, we'll reduce claims and claims and claims for all lines of coverage. And then it started to occur to me people don't care as much about claims. Of course we care about claims, but we don't care as much about claims as we do the claims outcome.
Speaker 3You can take two different workers with the same broken ankle and one of them can end up costing $17 and the other one can end up costing $17,000 for the same injury. So it's the outcome of the claim that I'm focused on, not the claim itself, which I've already conceded. They're going to happen. So what's the outcome of the claim and that's what I work on closely with Natalie and with Wes and Rand and what's the outcome of this going to be?
Speaker 1I think that's huge and I couldn't agree more. One of the trends that we're seeing and I don't know if Mike sees this I get an email probably every day from some vendor that's telling me how they could make my life easier by automating things, and so a lot's changing, and I think there can be good things that come with that. Absolutely, I think you've hit on some of those, but have you noticed changes in service from claims related to automation? What's been better, what's been worse? What things out there are you seeing that are really great tools, or what are things that maybe have been lost in that?
Speaker 3It's worse a hundred percent of the time. It's worse 100% of the time. Now, automation though on the surface that covers a wide spectrum, right? So here's an example of automation you call a number and they say for English press 1, spanish press 2. That's automation, but that's not a really big deal because it's quick and then you get a person on the line. But another form of automation would be when you're 19 prompts in and you still don't have the person in the recording doesn't know where you're going with it, and that's an automation. That would be.
Speaker 3A complete failure is where the company that's implementing the automation doesn't know where to stop. They're trying so hard to A save money on wages and B get the person calling redirected to the right department, but that's no fun for the client, that's no fun for the consumer, and they know that. And so I don't think it's effective, and certainly not in the realm of what we're talking about, which is, I mean, what did I say a half an hour ago? With a property loss, you've got ashes. The ashes don't have a story.
Speaker 3With workers' compensation, you've got a human being, oftentimes with kids, oftentimes married, oftentimes with their own version of the story. How do you automate that? I think we're years away from being able to have the artificial intelligence to be able to understand the tone of voice, the compassion that's needed, even the iambic pentameter in which somebody is talking their anger level, to be able to automate that. So I don't think it's possible. I could be wrong, I've been wrong on a few other things, but I don't think it's possible, not today.
Speaker 1Well, you hit on something that drives me crazy. I just got a new credit card and I was trying to get the login, because my wife does all the bills, and she was like you need to sign in and get the login so I can take care of this every month. And I was like, okay, I'll try to do that. And of course, everything doesn't work. The password's not working, Nothing's working. So finally I'm like I'll call and you can't figure out.
Speaker 1You're like none of these six choices actually are the choice that will get me to where I want to go. So I don't know, I'll try this one. And then it circles you back to the main menu again and like you end up doing that a few times. And then eventually I got hold of somebody after going through the prompts enough times, and then I talked to that guy for 10 minutes, showed him. You know, it was like telling him where I'm clicking, what I'm doing, and he's like you know what? I really can't help you, I'm going to have to send you to the next level, and so you know, here I am half an hour in.
Speaker 1All I want to do is be able to pay my credit card. It's like as simple as that. Like I just want a way to log in and be able to do this, and by the time that's done, I'm so frustrated and the only thing I can think are negative things about that organization. Right, so it's definitely a challenge.
Speaker 3And what bothers me about that a lot too, is that the company that has decided to do the automation they know that it's not any fun for the consumer, and so you typically see that in businesses that have little or no competition. So if a carrier implemented that, they would probably lose a lot of clients pretty fast and they'd say that was a bad idea because there's other carriers.
Speaker 3When a hotel does that, they know that they've got such a huge corner on the market that they can get away with that, because the choice is to go stay at some hotel you've never heard of, in a town where you've never been. For the firms that have a lot of competition when they implement automation, well, there's a reason. They don't. They'll lose customers, because the customers do have a choice.
Speaker 2We're already dealing in a world where we're not generally having super fun conversations, right, people are hurt People. You know you're dealing with a lot of different parties and if you add in that extra layer of frustration of getting to somebody, you're already starting the conversation with an angry foot right, like that person's not coming in all excited, like oh hey, how's your day? They're coming in ready to go because you've made them hit six different prompts and figure out where you are. And I think it goes back to the communication piece you were talking about earlier. In that make it easy for me to work with you right, Like at the end of the day.
Speaker 2Just make it easy for me to do my normal job. The way I look at it at Insured. The way I look at an agency is. You have a lot of other things to do, and what my goal is is to let you do those and not have to worry about this over here. You can if you want to, but I'm going to make this easy for you.
Speaker 2And it sounds like that's how the personal industrial does everything else. But it boils down to that, to me, of if automation is going to be a good thing, it's a tool, not a replacement. So it's something an adjuster or somebody might use as a tool to help them do certain things, but it's not a replacement for the thought process that goes into it and the conversations that are had and the relationships that are built off of what we do, because you really can't replace that. That's a hard thing to do, I agree with you next to impossible. So I just think automation has its place and its time and its purpose. But yeah, if your automation is setting you up to already have an adversarial conversation to begin with, you've already lost.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, and I'll say my last part on it just with this. If I'm going to buy tickets to a concert, automation is fine. I know where I want to sit, I know the price range that I want to pay. Go ahead and send me through all that, fine. If I'm talking about somebody who just broke their leg in six places or he's bleeding out of his ear and I'm really concerned about this person, please don't make me go through that. So it depends on the industry. It absolutely depends on the industry. 100%.
Speaker 1I think there's certainly parts of our industry that benefit from it, but they're the things that happen behind the scenes, because automation does not work with relationships behind the scenes because, automation does not work with relationships.
Speaker 1They just don't, no, so it's got to be the tasks that are slowing the adjusters down so that, hopefully, what it's doing is giving back time so that those adjusters can call, you can call, the engineer can spend time if there's some things going on in the background that it can speed up, that we're taking their time up. I agree I don't know that it can substitute in those areas at all. Well, andrew, I've really enjoyed visiting with you today. One thing I've been doing this season is I just felt, like you know, post COVID the world's become pretty polarized, you know, in general, and there's a lot of anger and frustration and I think a lot of that's probably warranted. But one thing I want to do is put some good vibes out in the universe, and so I've been ending each of these episodes with whoever our guest is, to ask if you don't mind sharing a memory of a time that you were truly happy and what were you doing and who were you with. So if you don't mind sharing that with us, andrew, I'd love to hear it.
Speaker 3You're asking a father of a four-year-old girl and a six-month-old boy. I spent a lot of my time laughing. I live there and you know it's a career. There's always with what we do, there's always the little nuances, the paperwork, the things we have to do, where we're not necessarily in a state of bliss.
Speaker 3But, as far as overall general happiness. A friend of mine he's from Michigan, he's a fellow agent and not in Sherka, but he told me about the book the Gap and the Gain, which is all about living in the gain. So many people we start here, we want to be here and we spend all the time worrying about how much further we have to go. That's called living in the gap. You're not happy living.
Speaker 3Living in the gain is okay. I still started here. I want to get here, but look at all I've already done so far, and it doesn't mean you're lazy, you're still trying to get to. Wherever here is. I'm using air quotes, people are listening, but you take time to think about. Okay, I've actually come a long way and that puts you in a happy state where happiness to me is not a fleeting moment. It's not a particular beach, it's a way of living. But the one thing that does come to mind is you asked that question. I was last week with my wife at the masters in Augusta Georgia and that was happy.
Speaker 3We were very happy. We'd been wanting to go there since we got married 12 years ago and while I live in a general state of contentness and fulfillment and happiness, that was extra happy because we just had an absolute blast.
Speaker 1That's great.
Speaker 3It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2That place is amazing. I've been one time and it's unforgettable.
Speaker 3As you're asking that question, that was the immediate thought was the Masters last week with my wife. That's where we were, that's who I was with, but that doesn't mean that I got back from that trip and immediately became unhappy. It's just a better way to live. I've found.
Mindset and Enjoying the Journey
Speaker 1Well, I'll tell you. The other night I guess it was two nights ago, while we were having dinner, I had each of my kids tell me their walk-up song if they were a baseball player, and that was a blast, it was the funniest thing. Even my seven-year-old you know, it was like my 10-year-old was saying his walk-up song would be Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourne. I'm like dude, I didn't even know. You knew what that was.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's a good one.
Speaker 1But it's those little moments for sure, and you got to hang on to them and enjoy them. And I think in the episode before this my host had said the quote you've got to be where your feet are and sometimes that's hard to do with phones and everything else, just to remember. I think that goes back to what you're saying about the gap and the gain.
Speaker 3It's where your feet are. It's a great book and it's just been a long time, but just puts you in an area. Here's the thing we're never going to finish everything that we're trying to do, whether it's per day, per week, per month we just aren't. So people that I see that are unhappy. They're always thinking about that thing they still have not yet accomplished, that's living in the gap, and so you live there and you're unhappy and you're rushed and you're hurried and living. The gain is okay, I still have the same. I'm not lazy, I still want to accomplish a tremendous amount, but started here and now I'm here. Look at all this that's already been done. You deserve to pat yourself on the back and take a little breather and be OK with that, knowing that you're going to get to the other stuff. So it's more of a mindset, not a moment.
Speaker 1I love that. I love that. Well, andrew, I really appreciate having you. Always fun to have you along too, mike, for the ride. And just remind our listeners that we air these every two weeks and we'd love to have you join us in future episodes. And I'll leave with our little tagline to do right, think differently and don't forget to care. Thanks, guys.