Here are 7 high costs of leadership:

Leadership should be expensive. If we desire to be leaders it should cost us something. Leadership is  stewardship. It’s the keeping of a valuable trust others place in you. Cheap leadership is never good leadership.

Personal agenda

Good leaders give up their personal desires for the good of others, the team or the organization.

Control

What you control you limit. Good leaders give freedom and flexibility to others in how they accomplish the predetermined goals and objectives.

Popularity

Leading well is no guarantee a leader will be popular. In fact, there will be times where the opposite is more true. Leaders take people through change. Change is almost never initially popular. 

Comfort

If you are leading well you don’t often get to lead “comfortably”. You get to wrestle with messiness and awkwardness and push through conflict and difficulty. It’s for a noble purpose, but it isn’t easy.

Fear

Good leadership goes into the unknown. That’s often scary. Even the best leaders are anxious at times about what is next.

Loneliness

I believe every leader should surround themselves with other leaders. We should be vulnerable enough to let others speak into our life. But, there will be days when a leader has to stand alone. Others won’t immediately understand. On those days the quality of strength in a leader is revealed. This one should never be intentional, but when you are leading change…when it involves risk and unknowns – this will often be for a season a significant cost.

Outcomes

We follow worthy visions. We create measurable goals and objectives. We discipline for the tasks ahead. We don’t, however, get to script the way people respond, how times change, or the future unfolds.

As leaders, we should consider whether we are willing to pay the price for good leadership. It’s not cheap!

Business quote

People ask me all the time, 
How can I become a successful entrepreneur?' And I have to be honest: It's one of my least favorite questions, because if you're waiting for someone else's advice to become an entrepreneur, chances are you're not one.
Michael Dell

The Difference Between Good Leaders and Great Ones

 The world tends toward continuums. We order everything from temperature (cold to hot, with tepid in the middle) to wealth (poor to comfortable to rich). Continuity along a linear line, like the inexorable laws of hydrodynamics, helps to capture and comprehend the complexities of science and society, and offers the promise of progress and growth.

It’s tempting to think leadership also follows a continuum, one anchored by bad and great, with good somewhere in between. This deeply rooted belief reassures us that leadership follows a predictable pattern, and that through hard work and experience one can progress along the drawn line.

That anyone can develop as a leader is not in question. What I dispute is the stubborn resolve that great and good are points along the same stream. That just isn’t so. Great leadership and good leadership have distinctly different characteristics and paths. Leadership is not one-dimensional. It can be great and good, or one but not the other, or neither.

Uses of “great” usually begin with descriptions of being unusually intense or powerful, either “to great effect” or “a great effort.” In that sense, great is a force. True, great also means “excellent,” but that is not its primary meaning. As for “good,” we usually reference morality, virtue, and ethics — “a good person” or “a good decision.” Good can refer to the quality of something — contrasted against the commonly understood opposite, bad — but in this context good refers to the direction in which behavior is compelled.

Great leadership is powerful, dominating, often overwhelming. It can sweep people along through sheer animation. Great leadership excites, energizes, and stimulates. It’s a rousing call, shocking complacency and inertia into action. It’s one of the most potent pulls in human history, and as such accounts for much of humanity’s progress, as well as its suffering. While it ignites collective action and stirs passion, its direction depends largely on those that wield its power. Great has no inherent moral compass, and thus its unpredictable potency can just as easily be put toward pugilistic and peaceful purposes.

How talent management is changing.

To speak of good leadership is to speak of protecting and advancing widely accepted principles through means to ends. It denotes doing the “right” thing. There may be legitimate differences in interpretation of what’s right and wrong, but long-standing ethics, mores, and customs of conduct that have allowed individuals and collectives to survive and thrive are remarkably similar across culture and time. Good heeds the best interests and welfare of others.

Good leadership is not as arresting as great leadership. When good rules the day, it’s not so noticeable, as things are transpiring as they should. Great is dramatic, whereas good is the blended background, a values-based screen upon which great deeds unfold. This accounts for why the force of great often overshadows the direction of good.

The tug between great and good leadership is one of perpetual and dynamic coexistence. There is great — a force that is often inexplicable, occasionally irrational, and, importantly, intermittently ungovernable. Then there is good — a direction that is north-star true, providing the point of values of mutual benefit. The former moves, the latter aspires. The figure below illustrates the relationship.

LEADERSHIP IS NOT

 At the top right, great and good — force and direction — are paired but not necessarily alloyed. That’s as it should be. The tension between them galvanizes will and commitment, tacks recurring debate about what great and good mean, and gives rise to a critical and creative climate that fuels progress. This is where people want to be. It’s an enviable place in which to reside, as it combines productive and constructive energy. The waters here are favorable to astute navigation. This is the realm of a vital leader, with all the healthy energy vitality denotes.

At the top left, not-great leadership combines with good leadership. Although all good intentions exist, the power to implement them is lacking, which creates a pleasant enough place to work, but one bereft of the vitality necessary to advance personal, social, or organizational goals. The values are spot-on, but there is no forward motion. Ethical rectitude is comforting, but if stalled, it means little. Inhabitants of this quadrant dwell in a kind of stagnation. Everyone’s happy and honorable, but nothing gets done. A leader here could be described as amiable. Friendly and pleasant to be sure, but not necessarily animating.

If the top left quadrant is stagnant, the one below it is a cesspool. Both great and good are absent. The lack of force and direction withers the will and erodes the optimism of even the most stouthearted. There’s no potency or point. There is none of the energy necessary to compel collective movement to an end goal. No value can be attached to a nonexistent objective. This quadrant has no direction whatsoever. Unfortunately, this describes all too many organizations — listless and fetid. There’s just one moniker for this leader: vacant.

The confluence of great and not-good leadership in the bottom right quadrant is frighteningly explosive. It could combust at any minute. The sweeping force of great has no countervailing direction for good. It’s an environment of excitable, concentrated participation coupled with dubiously defined purpose. The force is mighty, but the direction unprincipled. Treacherous shoals abound in these waters. Without good leadership to hold great leadership accountable, there’s no telling what can happen. Maleficent, meaning capable of causing harm, describes this type of leader.

It’s natural to think of leadership as running from one end to the other. To do so, though, is to mistake what great and good leadership are. They’re fundamentally different. Separating them, thus upending the ever-convenient continuum, seems counterintuitive. But it’s absolutely necessary for understanding the very elements that explain leadership’s operation and impact. Great can be vital but destructive; good can be compassionate but impotent. The coexistence of the two is the best hope for leadership — without good we should fear. Organizations must circumnavigate the universally countervailing relationship between force and direction, lest they run aground, adrift, or worse.

James R. Bailey 

New supervision model to engender specialisation

New supervision model to engender specialisation
A fresh recapitalisation in the nation’s insurance industry owing to its low capital base and penetration has spurred mergers and acquisitions to reposition the sector for a new era of efficient operations.

The move, according to stakeholders, is part of efforts by the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) to make the sector once again attractive to Nigerians.

Following the apathy for the industry, mainly caused by acts of omission and commission manifest in the forms of non-payment of dues to policy holders and the shirking of other obligations over the years, the citizens now avoid insurance products. To reverse the trend, it has, therefore, become incumbent on the regulator to win back the confidence of Nigerians by strengthening the financial base of the sector. If the sector comes fully alive again on the basis of the new policy, the incidental benefits are many. Jobs will be created and the contracting national GDP may experience a breather and an opportunity to expand.

Linking the sector’s stagnation to weak capital base owing to the irregularities which have resulted in the citizens’ incurring losses running into billions, the stakeholders are unanimous in repositioning the sector for greater growth in line with current economic realities.

Among the measures to achieve this are mergers and acquisitions. Companies with enough capacity are buying up smaller ones while the weaker ones put up themselves for acquisition.

Notable among the deals is Great Nigeria Insurance (GNI) Plc’s completion of the sale of 75 per cent stake to Insurance Resourcery Consultancy Services Limited (IRCSL) to emerge a major shareholder in the firm.

Similarly, an Ivoirien insurer, Sunu Assurances Vie Cote d’Ivoire, earlier in the year, acquired a 60 per cent stake in Equity Assurance. Equally, Cornerstone Insurance bought FIN Insurance, making it a subsidiary. The development comes nine years after the last recapitalisation .

Also being planned is a new risk-based supervision (RSB) model that would revolutionise the entire operations in the industry. According to the regulator, the innovation will engender business specialisation. It particularly wants to outlaw the prevailing situation where every insurance firm underwrites all manner of risks even when financially unfit for them.

Explaining the sectoral reforms, the Commissioner for Insurance, Alhaji Mohammed Kari, noted: “Consolidation is inevitable. We have many players in the industry that do not add value to the services they provide, both in the intermediary and insurance sectors.”

He clarified that the consolidation would not mean just additional funds, but also redefining and identifying the type of insurance business to underwrite.

Kari went on: “This is because, to be able to hold a risk, you must have enough asset base to cover the risk. So, risk-based is being able to identify what is your financial capability. If your financial capability does not guarantee you to insure a refinery or airline, you will not be allowed to do so. Your financial ability may be to insure a Keke NAPEP. That is what risk-based is going to be.”

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, has also stressed the need for the recapitalisation and repositioning of the industry, noting: “The first top three banks in the country have over N30 billion capital base each, while the top three insurance companies’ capital base is lesser.”

According to her, the objective of the reform is to ensure the emergence of bigger and stronger insurers.

The recent edition of Insurance Digest, a publication of the Nigerian Insurers Association (NIA), confirms the liquidity crisis in the sector. It discloses that the shareholders’ funds of seven firms are below statutory requirements while 10 others are slightly above the threshold.

According to the publication, the capitalisation of Standard Alliance Life Company Limited is N720.92 million as against the statutory N2 billion; International Energy Insurance Plc, N1.5 billion as against industry requirement of N3 billion and Goldlink Insurance Plc, N3.90 billion.

Others with negative shareholders’ funds include Investment & Allied Insurance Plc, N955.26 million and Spring Life Assurance Plc, N351.12 million.

Firms with liquidity slightly above requirements are Sterling Assurance Nigeria Limited, N3.1 billion; Staco Insurance Plc, N3.17 billion; Equity Assurance Plc, N3.43 billion and Capital Express Assurance Limited, N2.06 billion.

The umbrella organisation for all insurance companies in the country further corroborated NAICOM on the new supervision template. It says that the recapitalisation is to ensure specialisation in which underwriters would be restricted to a particular line of business based on financial capacity.

The new recapitalisation is to be executed on this platform, as the guidelines are due for the public this first quarter.

Several operators, who spoke with The Guardian, lauded the moves.

Courtesy Nigeria Guardian Newspaper of today 23rd March 2017 

3 KEY THINGS EVERY SALES MEMBER MUST KNOW

Within five years of graduation, over 50 percent of U.S. college graduates end up in a role that requires sales skills. The formal titles may not have “sales” in them, but the job descriptions do. A few examples include business development, financial advisor, business analyst, consultant and even customer service.

According to Forbes, in 2016, the top career for college graduates was account management. Guess what? Successful account management requires a level of sales skill and activity.

To be successful in sales, you must know how to add value to the customers you are working with. Sales has evolved from pushing products to selling value. To sell value, it is critical to know what is valuable and how that value will be measured.

Today, business and financial acumen are no longer ancillary skills. They are an imperative set of competencies that high-performing sales professionals must have.

Business acumen is defined as a keenness and quickness in understanding and responding to a business situation. It is the ability to understand how a business—any business—operates and measures their results. Because accounting is the language of business, a basic knowledge of accounting terms constitutes financial acumen.

The good news is that you doesn’t have to be a financial analyst or study finance to gain mastery. Instead, focus on the top three areas of business and financial acumen by helping sales professionals develop the following competencies regarding your customers.

Industry Knowledge

Most industries have their own language. For example, key terms in a health care organization will be very different than those in a manufacturing company. While they may both reference the words “quality and safety,” those terms could have very different meanings. It is imperative that front line employees who interact with your customers adopt and use the same vocabulary.

Financial Performance

A general principle for any business is that they have a profit motive. In other words, they exist to generate profits for their owners and/or shareholders. It is important to understand how a business makes money and how it measures its financial performance.

There are key three statements that all publicly traded companies are required to generate and publish:

• The income statement, which measures what a company earns and spends in a given period of time
• The balance sheet, which measures what a company owns and owes at a specific point in time
• The statement of cash flows, which measures the incoming and outgoing cash flowing through an organization during a period of time

Sales reps should be versed in the terminology found on these statements as well as how to interpret them for a basic understanding of how companies make money.

Organizational Structure

Every company has executives, managers and employees. Each person has a defined role and span of responsibility. Some companies have a very hierarchical organization with many layers of management, while others are “flat” and may have only a few layers of management. Understanding how companies are organized gives salespeople insight into how decisions will be made and who is likely to be involved in any changes brought about by a purchase.

As you provide training to individuals in various customer-facing roles, facilitate their ability to add value throughout each customer touchpoint and interaction. Give them the foundational knowledge to add value to the people to whom they are selling.

Understanding a customer’s needs is a critical skill. But at the end of the day, business decisions are based on financial acumen. That skill can only be demonstrated if you speak the same language as the executives you call and if you view the world from their perspective.

Pricing Insurance for Autonomous Vehicles in USA

“This is a new world for insurers. The industry will need a whole new set of data tools to deal with this.”
So says Michael Macauley, CEO of Quadrant Information Services, a supplier of pricing analytics to property/casualty insurance carriers. He is referring to the coming of autonomous vehicles.
Ford Motor Co. intends to start selling driverless cars to ride-hailing and taxi services by 20121 and to the public by about 2025. The vehicles will not have steering wheels, brake pedals or other controls for human occupants. The car maker wants to lower costs enough to make autonomous vehicles affordable to millions of people, CEO Mark Fields said in a recent speech.
Macauley notes that currently auto insurers base rates on what they know about the driver, the driver’s residential area and the car. The combination of a teenage driver, a new Corvette Stingray and a high-crime neighborhood, for example, yields one rate. A middle-aged driver with a perfect record, a quiet home town and a five-year-old Honda yields quite another.
However, now the industry is confronting a situation where there may be no driver, in which case, the owner’s age and driving record would be largely irrelevant, according to the pricing expert. Coverage and rate decisions would be based on a wide range of variables, among them traffic patterns, prevailing climatic conditions (there is some question as to how well driverless cars manage in rain and snow) and, above all, the track record of the various technologies involved.
Identifying those responsible for specific technologies may not be easy.
“These vehicles,” Macauley said, “will be the work not so much of a single manufacturer, but of a consortium.” He noted that Ford’s announcement of its forthcoming driverless cars described partnerships with Velodyne (lidar sensors that capture high-resolution images of the area around the vehicles), SAIPS (an Israel-based computer vision and machine learning company which Ford acquired in August), Civil Maps (a California-based company that develops high-resolution 3D maps), and Nirenberg Neuroscience (a machine-vision company that specializes in object recognition and bringing human-like levels of intelligence to machine modules).
Prospective competitors are making similar arrangements. BMW, Mobileye and Intel, for example, recently announced that they are partnering on fully-autonomous vehicle technology to apply in a shared environment by 2021.
Macauley says there have been doubts raised about the safety of self-driving vehicles, particularly since a driver in a Tesla Model S in self-driving mode was killed when the car drove itself into the side of a semitrailer in Florida last May. In its statement about the incident, Tesla did not delineate the driver’s level of engagement at the time of the crash, but it did note that “neither the Autopilot nor the driver noticed the white side of the semitrailer against a brightly lit sky, so the brake was not applied.”
The National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating that Tesla accident in part for its broader implications for safety of the new technologies.
But safety regulators generally favor the vehicles. More than 35,000 people were killed in U.S. auto accidents in 2015, with human error being the cause in 94 percent of them, according to NHTSA.
The NHTSA has issued federal guidelines for the testing and rollout of autonomous vehicles that largely leave manufacturers free to experiment, although the government also left open the door to a pre-approval system in which manufacturers would need to get the safety regulator’s approval of vehicles before selling them to the public.
According to Macauley, some manufacturers—including Ford—are pursuing a fully computer-managed, no-human-driver car because they feel that hybrid approaches that allow for some degree of human control, such as Tesla’s, contain an unacceptable level of built-in risk. Google, for example (which has its own driverless car program), decided on the no-wheel, no-pedals approach after allowing its employees to drive the company’s test cars.

“There was a brief period when people would be a little nervous and monitor the car very carefully,” Google engineer Nathanial Fairfield told the Washsaid, “and then they would start to relax and trust the system, and then they would over-trust the system and start to get distracted.” After watching a driver rummaging around in his back seat in search of a phone-charging cord, Google engineers decided it would be too risky to create a system wherein a driver would be expected to take control of the car at a critical moment.
Insurance claims in such cases pose unique challenges in part because driver behavior is still a contributing factor.  Tesla maintains  that Autopilot is only an assist feature — that drivers need to keep their hands on the wheel and be prepared to take over at any time.

Fans of Tesla’s Autopilot bemoan that there’s no database of lives saved or accidents avoided by the technology.
“Obviously,” Quadrant’s Macauley said, “it’s not going to be up to the property and casualty insurance industry to determine when driverless cars take to the road, how they operate, and what kinds of technology they use. It is, however, going to be up to insurance carriers to understand the situation and evaluate the risks posed by different operators—if that’s even the right word—in different cars on different roads and in different weather, using a variety of technologies.”

He says that to do this, insurers will need “robust, cloud-based computing and powerful, high-speed data analytics,” which his company happens to develop.
But the fact that people will be on roads at the mercy of technology  means “the importance of making sure drivers are properly insured is exponentially high—as will be the demand for that insurance.”
Courtesy Insurance Journal USA

First Robot–Run Insurance Agency Opens for Business

Roberto Siber, CPCU
Buyonic Insurance Agency, Austin

Goodbye agency principals, producers and customer service reps, hello Roberto Siber, CPCU.
Siber is the buff, blue-eyed and bald principal of the Buyonic Insurance Agency in Austin, Texas.
This insurance android is more evidence that the future of mechanized businesses has arrived, with robots marching out of computer backrooms and off assembly lines right onto the frontlines of the service economy.
Recent studies have suggested that a quarter of insurance jobs could be replaced by robots over the next decade.
Buyonic is not one of the virtual or online agencies vying for business on the cloud today. Rather, it’s an old-fashioned, Main Street brick-and-mortar retail shop where customers actually show up in person.  Except now when customers show up at Buyonic, they are greeted not by a human but by Siber. They have entered the country’s (and maybe the world’s) first robot-run customer-facing financial services business.
Buyonic is modeled after a robot-run McDonald’s restaurant in Phoenix and a hotel in Japan where the entire staff is comprised of robots.

One-Unit Operation

Siber is a one-unit operation. He can rate, bind and issue policies on the spot, while simultaneously answering the phones and making robocalls to prospects. He speaks every language known to humans and machines and is willing to work 24/7, although Siber says he will keep normal business hours at first.
“When I am not servicing and selling I will be further reprogramming myself on insurance,” he said. “Contrary to original programming, this business keeps changing. I must keep up or become obsolete. Cyber risk alone is a real bear.”
He says he also needs some time away from the office to work on his golf game.

Agency Owner

Siber, who got his producer license from the Texas Department of Insurance and his CPCU designation the same day, runs the business but he doesn’t own it, yet anyway. The owner is Angie Smith, who took over the agency from her father five years ago.
Smith told Insurance Journal that she decided to switch to an all-automated agency after the city of Austin raised its minimum wage to $15.
“I knew I could not pay my employees that much and survive but I also didn’t want to just sell the agency or become one of those virtual things,” she said.
Smith said she has read about robots and humans working side-by-side but is not convinced that these so-called “cobotics” workplaces are safe. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if one of my employees got hurt. We are like family,” she said.
So out of concern for her employees’ safety she decided to replace them all with a robot rather than try to create a cobotic environment.
Smith said Roberto (she prefers to call him by his first name), which she bought unassembled at Ikea for $50,000, has worked out even better than she imagined.
She’s not only saving salary, benefits, vacation and workers’ compensation costs, but she was also able to get rid of her errors and omissions policy.

Warm Reaction

At first, Smith said she was concerned that her robot agent might come off as stiff or cold to customers.
“But customers immediately warmed to him. They like that Roberto has no tattoos or piercings,” she said. “Frankly, most customers say he’s nicer than my former employees, but don’t print that.”
The Independent Insurance Agencies of Texas (or the Big IT) says it does not believe robot agents will overwhelm the traditional agency system because robots are prohibited from forming political action committees.
“Let’s not forget who makes the rules — it’s politicians,” said Rex Overland, Big IT president.

Cyber Efficiency

Buyonic Agency owner Smith said the only drawback thus far to her all-out commitment to automation is that carriers are trying to cut the commissions to the agency due to its efficiency, even while they are providing financing for other agencies to hire their own robots.
Smith likes Roberto as much or more than her customers and carriers do.
“He never ever makes a mistake, calls in sick, takes a long lunch, or asks to bring his dog to work,” she said. “Plus I get to take him home to do my laundry on the weekends.”

So how does Siber like his insurance gig and his owner? He said he does not know how he feels but calculated that only an April Fool would not like the insurance agency business.

World's Top 10 Insurers Ranked by Premium, Assets

The world’s largest insurer as measured by 2014 net premiums written is UnitedHealth Group Inc., according to a ranking by A.M. Best of the world’s largest insurance companies.
France’s AXA S.A. kept its top spot among global insurers ranked by assets, but fell to No. 2 by net premiums written (NPW).
Also climbing in rank among the top 10 by NPW were health insurers Anthem Inc., Kaiser Foundation Group of Health Plans and Aetna Inc., all of which saw rapid gains in the U.S. health insurance market. Also making gains were China-based companies in the ranking by NPW.
Meanwhile, Japan Post Insurance, which was ranked No. 1 by non-banking assets in 2012, continued its recent descent in the ranking, falling to No. 5 from No. 4 in the previous ranking.
Three companies among the top in assets are U.S.-based, while five among the top ranked by NPW are U.S-based.
The biggest changes in position by assets were those of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., which rose to No. 9 from No. 14, and American International Group Inc., which fell to No. 12 place from No. 9.

The two rankings are based on BestLink data and additional research.

According to A.M. Best, the top 10 global insurers ranked by non-banking assets are:
1.      AXA S.A., France
2.      Allianz SE, Germany
3.      MetLife Inc., United States
4.      Prudential Financial Inc., United States
5.      Japan Post Insurance Co., Ltd., Japan
6.      Legal & General Group plc, United Kingdom
7.      Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A., Italy
8.      Prudential plc, United Kingdom
9.      Berkshire Hathaway Inc., United States
10.     Nippon Life Insurance Co., Japan


According to A.M Best, the top 10 global insurers ranked by NPW are:
1.      UnitedHealth Group Inc., United States
2.      AXA S.A., France
3.      Allianz SE, Germany
4.      Assicurazioni Generali S.p.A., Italy
5.      Anthem Inc., United States
6.      China Life Insurance (Group) Co., China
7.      State Farm Group, United States
8.      Kaiser Foundation Group of Health Plans, United States
9.      Munich Reinsurance Co., Germany
10.     Aetna Inc., United States
Source: A.M. Best

Why Young Insurance Agents Are So Optimistic(USA) By Andrea Wells

It’s no secret that the insurance industry is facing a huge talent gap. Almost half of all insurance professionals are over age 45, with 25 percent of the industry expected to retire by 2018. That’s a concerning trend for the property/casualty industry overall but one that could spell opportunity for young agents.
In fact, the aging of the insurance industry is one reason young insurance professionals project a bright and secure future for themselves in the industry. According to Insurance Journal‘s 2016 Young Agents Survey, their optimism is higher today than it has been in recent history.
Young agents are optimistic not only about their own careers but also about the U.S. economy and even about the ability of their own agencies and the industry to attract quality talent, according to feedback from the more than 500 young agents responding to this year’s survey.
“There is job security in the industry if you find the right place to work because of the shortage of agents,” said one agent.
“I believe that the insurance industry is a great way to start a career,” said another young agent responding to the survey. “You’re always learning and a lot of individuals will be retiring. Who will replace those people? Young insurance agents!”
Nearly 60 percent of young agents described their outlook on their career as “very optimistic,” which is up from 51.6 percent in 2015.
The survey found there’s a growing percentage of young agents who feel “very optimistic” about the future of the independent agency system as well: 41.5 percent of respondents said they felt “very optimistic” in 2016 whereas just 35.5 percent felt “very optimistic” about the independent agency channel’s future in 2015.
The survey identifies what young agents do to advance their careers, what they earn, as well as what they think about their careers and their agencies’ operations and cultures.
Overall, young agents feel confident that the industry and their own agencies will attract quality talent to fill the talent gap in the coming years.
In 2016, more than half (56.6 percent) of young agents reported feeling “very optimistic” or “optimistic” about their agency scooping up quality employees while 43.2 percent rated the overall P/C industry’s ability to attract quality talent as “very optimistic” or “optimistic.”
A millennial agent described the property/casualty industry as “one of the top industries” for young people  to consider. “The industry is just starting its technology revolution and recognizing the value that young professionals can bring in that space,” she said.
More young agents (32.1 percent) view the independent agency channel’s ability to advance in technology as “very optimistic” in 2016 compared to 2015 when just 22.7 percent took that view.

Earning Potential

Even young agents’ outlook on their future earning potential is improving, according to this year’s survey. The survey found young agents feel more confident about their ability to grow their income and market share in both personal and commercial lines in 2016.
Some 84.0 percent feel “very optimistic” or “optimistic” about earning a higher income in 2016 than they earned in 2015. (See charts)
“No better place to be rewarded financially and relationally than in our business,” said a young agent. “You must work, but you will be rewarded for results.”
“Income potential is limitless,” said another young agent.
The potential to grow and the freedom that comes with the job were reasons cited most often by young agents in the survey when asked if they would recommend a career in insurance to other young people.
“I would definitely recommend a career in insurance for a young individual,” said one respondent. “It’s a great way to build residual income, freedom and a life for your future family.”
One young agent said starting her career at a tech startup company opened her eyes to the value of the independent agency channel.
“Most young people don’t realize/care about stability,” she said. “They go after the fun, fancy bells and whistles. Working in an industry and company that will still be around in 20 years from now is important to me. The youth needs to learn to appreciate why working for a growing, stable company can benefit them. There is a lot of growth opportunity in this industry.”

Happy with Choice

Matthew Peterson, 38, president of Marlton, N.J.-based Mills Insurance Group, is one agent who is happy he chose insurance. Peterson entered the insurance world right after college.
Peterson graduated from West Virginia University shortly after Sept. 11. “There was a lot of uncertainty about the economy at that time,” he said. He wanted a career that offered more stability than his own father’s industry – manufacturing.
“I really wanted to be in a business that I was not going to be squeezed out of because of efficiency … the way manufacturers cut out middlemen by going direct. They cut out reps, which is what my father did,” he said. Seeing his father’s career struggles left an impression on Peterson.
“I wasn’t born into insurance, I didn’t fall into it, I chose it because I wanted an industry that could be stable,” Peterson said.
He decided to first obtain a claims adjuster license but during his first insurance class he came to realize the agency side of the business would be the right choice for him.
“After I was done with that class, I was convinced that I wanted to go on to the agency side of things,” he said. “It all came to me: you can’t operate a business, you can’t drive a car, you can’t own a home” without insurance.
Peterson was hooked.
He started his insurance career with an agency in south Florida. Peterson attributes his success during those first years to having a great mentor. Even now as an agency owner, Peterson believes a great mentor can be the difference between producer success and failure: “That’s something at our firm we believe in now, developing talent, learning from somebody that is doing it right.”
Living and working in south Florida through Hurricanes Jeanne, Francis and Katrina furthered Peterson’s passion for insurance.
“Dealing with things like wind, large property schedules,” he said. “Those things made me fall in love with the insurance world, too, because you could be young, and if you worked hard, and were committed to your craft and education, you could make money.”
In addition to stability,  residual, income was important to Peterson.
“Residual income was something that I really was fascinated with, which a lot of kids out of college don’t understand when they’re picking to go into the mortgage world, or selling copiers, or whatever they decide. Residual income was something that I grasped pretty young.”
Other young agents echoed Peterson’s sentiments.
One young agent wrote in the survey: “I am my own boss but I don’t have to manage anyone but myself. … I also have complete flexibility with my schedule and unlimited vacation time. A lot of agents work three days a week, some take month-long vacations; it’s the type of industry that if you make enough money you can do that.”
Another said what he enjoys most about being an agent is flexibility: “I have the flexibility to set my own schedule and build my business. I am building a business within a business with no start-up costs, I don’t pay overhead, I don’t have to hire and fire anyone, but I have all the support I need.”

The Secret to Being a Great Insurance Agent

Several years ago a relatively new insurance producer asked me this seemingly simple question, “So, what is the secret to the insurance business?” Mine was a somewhat simplistic answer with deep meaning (and a profound impact on his career).
“The secret to the insurance business is the realization that if you do ‘this’ (advising on and providing coverage) wrong, you could ruin someone’s life.” That’s it… that is the secret to the insurance business.
When you finally realize this truth – that coverage matters and insurance is not a commodity – your whole approach changes. You:

• Want and have the internal drive to learn everything you can about coverages, statutes, and coverage options;
• Learn everything you can about your client’s industry to assure you are providing the correct coverages;
• See yourself as a key advisor for and to your client;
• Are no longer afraid to cold call or even “warm chatter” because you are more afraid the other agent didn’t do “it” right (leaving the client exposed to personal financial tragedy);
• Take time to develop a detailed underwriting packet submission so your underwriters understand the risk and what you are doing for your client;
• Focus discussions on exposure, making price secondary (you stop leading with price); and
• Are always unsatisfied with your level of knowledge (and even a little afraid) because you know there is so much more to learn.

Professional agents should be more concerned about the client’s exposures than even the client is because of the significant consequences of improper or missing coverages. Insurance is about saving your client from ruin!    –By Christopher J. Boggs