John Keenan, founder of California-based Keenan & Associates and an industry icon, died Sept. 3. His company has grown from its inception in 1972 into being one of the top 20 brokers in the United States, having 9 offices and more than 700 employees. John built a great team.
I had the pleasure of knowing John for the last dozen years or so. This column is not written in memory of John; instead it's inspired by John, a person I have often called my idol in the business.
John was all about ideas. One of the guiding principles in his organization is market focus. Keenan focused on three markets: school systems, hospitals and government employers.
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One of John's innovations was to pool group life insurance experience so the individual employers and their employees received a better rate than they may have qualified for on their own as the size of the pool created pricing leverage through scale. This also protected the individual group from having a small number of claims adversely affect experience. Over the years, a full range of specialized services was created by the Keenan team to expand their value to customers in service and product areas related to benefits. They focused on building ever-deeper focus.
John was about 70 when I met him. He had turned over executive leadership to Sean Smith. This allowed John to do what he loved to do — think about the business. The entry of Keenan into the worksite market (shortly before I first met John) was one product of this. He saw great potential for his organization in the market, and over the past several years, this move has resulted in millions of dollars in sales, and improved family protection and financial security for tens of thousands of employees in the schools, hospitals and governments Keenan serves.
But John didn't stop there. Over the years he constantly thought about how to improve results, whether in the area of product, enrollment and enrollment systems, or support processes. Every time we had a discussion he asked questions and probed, always looking for insights and input that might help him find an edge.
He constantly analyzed the business and how it works, never sitting still, never resting on laurels. After an hour's discussion with John you would feel like you had just spent a day in an intense seminar, mentally drained, while he would proceed to sit down with another person and ask them questions, repeating the cycle. John had insatiable curiosity. When you combine that with his unstoppable drive, you start to see why he was a terrific role model.
A bit over a year ago, John asked me to read an essay he had written about the future of the worksite business. The ideas in it were his, and are not mine to share. But I can tell you that he wrote a hand written comment to me asking for my insights. He called me as a follow up because he valued my opinion. It's hard to describe how this made me feel — to me it was the equivalent of having Warren Buffet call to ask me what I thought might be good investments.
John challenged his team and the business associates he worked with to strive to excel. And he believed in the voluntary business. The final sentence of his note to me is "Worksite definitely has a bright future." Amen.
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