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EP # 244 Insuring Southwest Florida: The Danis Insurance Story
Ryan and Danielle from Danis Insurance bring authenticity and expertise to this enlightening conversation about navigating Southwest Florida's complex insurance landscape. Their journey into insurance—Ryan through an accidentally booked class and Danielle via funny faxes inviting her to "come to the dark side"—speaks volumes about how unexpected paths can lead to fulfilling careers.
As sixth-generation Floridian Ryan explains, the transition from being a captive Nationwide agent to establishing an independent agency during the 2008 recession proved challenging yet transformative. Now equipped with approximately 50 carriers instead of one, Danis Insurance tailors solutions that truly serve clients' needs rather than forcing them into limited options. This flexibility is particularly valuable in Florida, where major national carriers often don't write homeowners policies, creating a piecemeal approach that benefits independent agents and informed consumers alike.
The duo dispels common misconceptions with refreshing candor, particularly regarding agents' influence over claims decisions. "We would love to be able to help more sometimes, but we don't always have the option," Danielle explains, highlighting the separation between agents and adjusters. They also address concerning trends including the difficulty securing umbrella policies due to Florida's uninsured driver problem, while noting promising signs of new carriers entering the state. What truly distinguishes their approach, however, is an ethical commitment to proper coverage. As Ryan emphasizes, "We don't want to sell the cheapest policy because that'll come back to bite you when claims happen." It's not about adding extras—it's about refusing to remove essential protections just to save clients a few dollars.
When not helping clients navigate insurance complexities, Danielle teaches morning yoga to destress, while Ryan balances parenting two sons with occasional boating escapes. Ready to work with insurance professionals who prioritize relationships over sales? Connect with Danis Insurance at 239-939-7697 or info@danisinsurance.net to experience the difference proper coverage makes.
Danis Insurance
Ryan and Danielle
15065 McGregor Blvd Suite 109 Fort Myers, FL 33908
239) 939-7697
info@danisinsurance.net
DanisInsurance.net
It's time to check out your neighbors on the Good Neighbor podcast, where we bring good vibes, great neighbors and local businesses in Southwest Florida together. Here's your host, Cabo Jim Schaller.
Speaker 2:Welcome Good Neighbors, episode number 244 of the Good Neighbor podcast. Today we have Good Neighbors Ryan and Daniel from Danis Insurance. Welcome, Hello. Hi, Pleasure to get to introduce you guys to our listeners and share a little bit about what you guys do. So let's jump in and obviously your insurance right, but why don't we explain a little bit about what type of insurance you guys are involved with?
Speaker 3:Well, we're a local agency and we do everything from commercial to homes, to cars, we work with builders, we work with restaurants. You know a little bit of everything across the board.
Speaker 2:What type of insurance? Is it property PNC, or is it?
Speaker 3:PNC and commercial, as well as life insurance.
Speaker 2:Wow, you do cover quite a bit there, huh. Lots of options, so let's back up our stories a little bit here. I guess both of you or you know Ryan first. How did?
Speaker 4:you get involved in the insurance industry. I got into it young. I got into it about 21 years old by accident. I took a class to. I wanted to take a class to be an adjuster. I ended up taking a class to be an agent. I packed up and moved all my stuff up to Orlando because that was the time before online courses and things like that. So I moved up there, had the wrong class but stuck through it and said you know what? I'm going to do it. And here I am, 25 years later.
Speaker 4:Still doing it right Sometimes life has a funny way of directing you in the right direction. And here I am, 25 years later, still doing it right.
Speaker 2:Sometimes, life has a funny way of directing you in the right direction, and Danielle how about? You.
Speaker 3:Well, I actually was a receptionist for another insurance agency and we kind of referred business back and forth to each other. So Ryan started sending me funny fax messages, because this is back when faxes were important. He would send me funny fax messages because this is back when faxes were important. He would send me funny fax messages telling me to come over to the dark side and come work for him, and so, when I was 18, I got my insurance license and started working for Ryan.
Speaker 2:Very nice, Very nice. See, it's all meant to be. So let's talk about. Obviously, Ryan, you didn't start out by owning your own business, did you?
Speaker 4:No, I actually started out underneath another agent Back in the day. I was a captive nationwide agent. They kind of had a mentor-mentee program, I guess you would call it, and I spent a couple of years as an associate under another agent and then spun off onto my own, and so it took about four years under another agent and then I spun out, and here I am now, I can do this, I got this, I know I can handle it.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about challenges for that transition. Whether personally or professionally, we all come across some type of challenge that challenges us. But we can look back at now and say you know what? I'm in a better place now because of it.
Speaker 4:Is there something that happened along your journey that you can point back to? A couple of things. They all kind of happened about the same time period. Like I mentioned earlier, I was a captive Nationwide agent and Nationwide as a company that's all I could sell. But they transitioned into the independent channel. So all the book that I had built up with Nationwide I had to purchase back from them to become an independent agent. So that was a little bit of a challenge. You get your book rolling and you're making some money and they tell you you got to pull it for now.
Speaker 2:So we did that.
Speaker 4:That happened to come right around the time of the Great Recession of 2008. So not only that, we had a lot of foreclosures and I mean it all trickles down. I mean we're all built around the service and housing market and when that goes down a lot, it trickles to a lot of different channels and, you know, insurance wasn't an exception. So that was a tough time, tough couple hits there back to back, but it was the best thing that ever happened. I said, being an independent agent, I have so many more options to get my customers more than just kind of one bullet in the chamber. I got you know all kinds and, like I said, we can just do a whole lot more with you know customers and we can represent them a little bit better than just being, you know again, captive to one carrier and kind of being their subcontractor slash employee.
Speaker 3:Now we have approximately 50 carriers instead of one.
Speaker 2:Wow See, and that's great, because you know it's not hey, this is what I can do for you. It's kind of like, what do you need me to do for you? And now you've got the options to give them what's best for them, because every situation is just a little bit different.
Speaker 4:right it is. And Florida is really good for independent agents because a lot of people come from back up north to Midwest and you know, state, farm or all state or nationwide, they'll write your homes, your cars, they'll write everything. You only have to go to one agency because they write everything. Well, down. Here in Florida it's different. Not a lot of the big carriers write homeowner's insurance, not all of them write umbrellas, so you kind of have to, you know, piece it together a little bit. So it gives independent agents a lot more flexibility than you know, say, a captive agent would have.
Speaker 2:And with our weather and seasons, lately we've had I don't want to say an exodus, but we've had a lot of the home insurance. People leave the market as well, too right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's been multiple carriers that have gone out of business, but a lot of them have transitioned into different setups on the back end to create more options so that they don't have to go out of business, finding ways to get more reinsurance and financial backing. So there has been a handful. But you're also seeing a lot of new companies coming in now and trying to come back into the state and help with the rates and whatnot.
Speaker 3:It always fluctuates, so it's going to go up and then it seems like it's starting to come back down a little bit now.
Speaker 2:And that's good. That's good. Let's along those same lines. Let's talk about maybe some of the myths or misconceptions surrounding your industry that we can kind of maybe clear up for our listeners today.
Speaker 3:Well, a big one is people think that agents have a lot of pull when it comes to claims. Once we put the information in and we put the claim in, we really generally don't. We're lucky if we know anything that's going on along the way. The claims adjusters are very separate from agents and people. We would love to be able to help more sometimes, but we don't always have the option and people really do believe that. You know, we can just make a phone call and hit a button and you know, get the claim approved and magic happens. And here's a check. Doesn't work that way.
Speaker 4:Yeah, along with what Danielle said, the adjusters are trained to be adjusters, we're trained to be agents and the companies don't want us saying something that would contradict the adjuster and putting the company in a bad spot. So they keep us informed on a claim but they don't give us the. You know we can't write a check. We can't, you know, check all the logs of all the reports and all the inspections and all that. We don't have access to that and it's for a reason they don't want us giving the policyholder the wrong information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, then they get their hopes up, and then they you know, yeah, it's better that way. So do you notice anything? You've been in the industry for quite a while now. Have you noticed anything changing or trending as of late?
Speaker 4:Like Daniel mentioned before, we're starting to see a lot of homeowners carriers start to get back in the market. That's a good thing.
Speaker 3:Another big one, though, is for some reason, liability has become an issue now, like with umbrellas Due to the uninsured auto, like uninsured people that drive in Florida that have caused a lot of accidents, and it's caused so many really large liability claims for people with umbrellas that a lot of companies don't want to offer umbrellas anymore, or if they do, they don't want to write them over autos. They only want to write them over properties or you know just um. It's just a lot harder to get.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so you mentioned Ryan. You're from Southwest Florida originally.
Speaker 4:Yes, I'm actually a sixth generation Floridian. I was born in Naples and I grew up for the most part in Cape Coral, graduated Cape Coral High and never left. I like the area. I hate cold weather so I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:Lucky, lucky you. I blame my parents for not being born down here, but I got down here as quickly as I could and Danielle, how about you?
Speaker 3:Well, I was actually born in New York, but I lived most of my life in Las Vegas, and I've lived here on and off throughout my life, because my family lives here.
Speaker 2:Very nice, very nice, but we love it down here. That's the reason we call it paradise for a reason. So I know owning a business can be very demanding of your time, but when you do get a moment, what do you enjoy doing outside of work?
Speaker 3:Well, I teach yoga every morning because it's just a great way to de-stress when you do work in an industry that tends to be a little bit more stressful. And then I have two crazy cats that entertain me.
Speaker 2:So you're not the crazy cat lady, are you?
Speaker 3:No, that takes three, I only have two. There you go. You're close, the crazy cat lady, are you? No, that takes three, I only have two. There you go, you're close, I'm close but not quite.
Speaker 2:And Ryan, how about you?
Speaker 4:I have two sons. One's actually graduating next month and one's just turned 11. So when I have any time out of here, they take up a lot of it. I'm really involved in a lot of. Both of them play soccer, so I've been involved in competitive travel, soccer, parenting for a long time. Personally, when I get time away from those two things, I do like to go out on my boat and, you know, take my car out for a drive, things like that. Get outside and, you know, just relax, because that time is few and far between it seems.
Speaker 2:Yep, unwind and get out and enjoy life down here a little bit. Is there one thing you wish our listeners knew about Dana's Insurance?
Speaker 3:that maybe they won't be too familiar with. Hmm, well, I really don't know.
Speaker 4:No, no, I mean we're just, you know we're a small agency. I mean we got, you know we're a smaller agency but we have access through Nationwide a lot of other carriers. I mean we have access to, you know, all the carriers that the big, larger, independents and things like that have in town. We all, all the agencies that are independent in the area, we all, with the exception of one or two carriers here or there, we all deal out of the same deck. So relationships are what's important to us. You know we want to build a good relationship with our client. We want to give them the right coverage. We don't want to sell, you know, the cheapest policy because that'll come back to bite you when the claims happen. So we want to build that relationship. We want, you know, we want to get to, you know have a good long-term you know relationship with the client Because, like I said, whether you go to me or Danielle, or you know you go to another agency, it's like most of us are writing the same policy.
Speaker 2:So it really does come down to, you know, the relationship between the agent and the client and that customer service and making sure you know, ethically, you're doing the right things for the customer as well too, not just trying to sell something or add something on just to make an extra buck. It's about what's best for you and your scenario, absolutely.
Speaker 4:Correct and actually it's the reverse. It's what not, it's what other agencies take off to get the sale. You know we're not adding. I mean it's such a price savvy market right now with inflation and everything like that. You're not adding on whistles and whistles and whistles. But I mean you want to make sure everything's correct. You don't want to take something away that, in the event of a claim, the customer really needed, but to get the sale and to save them $50,. You didn't do it, it'll get you every time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they'll come back and get you, like you said, when you need it. It's the time that you wish you had it, but to save a dollar, somebody took that out. So how would our listeners go about contacting you if they wanted to learn more or had some questions?
Speaker 3:Well, our phone number is 239-939-7697. We're located off McGregor Boulevard, and then our email info@danisinsurance info danisinsurance, spelled out dot net.
Speaker 2:Very good, any last words for our listeners today.
Speaker 3:Have a wonderful week.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, thank you for your time, jim. Like I said, if anyone has any questions or wants to reach out to Daniel or I personally, just give us a call and, like I said, you'll talk directly to us.
Speaker 2:Very good. Hey guys, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. Thank you for being such good neighbors and we hope to see you out in the community soon.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Jim have a great day.
Speaker 1:Thanks, jim, we appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast, bringing together good vibes, great neighbors, local businesses in Southwest Florida. To nominate your favorite local business to be featured on the show, go to CaboWaboJim. com. That's CaboWaboJim. com, or call 239-427-4100.