'We're just getting started': A Q&A with Jonathan Coddington
For Johnathan Coddington, working in the benefits industry isn't a job; it's a calling.
Jonathan Coddington is a division manager at LD&B Insurance & Financial Services.
Paul Wilson: How did you get your start in the benefits industry?
I went to a small liberal arts college here in Harrisonburg and got connected through a business class with an insurance company out of Indiana. I started with them out of college working with individual life and health, annuities, LTC and a little bit of financial advising. I eventually wrote my first employee benefits case and found I enjoyed that.
When I transitioned over to group, there was a period of time when I was doing everything, but as things moved toward the ACA, it became obvious that someone who does everything was not going to work. You were going to have to focus.
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Around 2012, I was at a crossroads in my career. Either I could continue working here, or I was also getting recruited by some of the big houses. Our agency was mostly a P&C shop and they were scared to death of what the ACA was going to do to employee benefits. I told my bosses, “I don’t feel like you’ve invested in my side of the business.” They said, “OK, well let’s invest.” I told them I thought the ACA was an opportunity to continue to help people and so we talked about it and slowly built a business out of it. And since then, we’ve had a nice run on the self-funded side of things.
In 2014, we formed this idea of a consortium, which is just a way to help small employer groups self-fund in a less scary way. If you have 5,000 employees, self-funding isn’t a big deal. But our average client size in 2014 was 40 lives; that’s a tough business to self-fund and the products just didn’t exist at the time.
We had the idea to band these employers together and kind of use a buyers club mentality. We asked our clients, “What do you think?” and they said, “Awesome! But we don’t want to share risk.” They didn’t want to pay for others’ claims; they wanted autonomy.
I met a guy who had basically done that in the 501c3 non-profit sector and he said, “I’ve always wanted to try this in other areas.” So we did. It’s been very successful and we’ve had a ton of fun.
This isn’t a job anymore; this is a calling to educate people about what could be done with the money we’re already spending in the health care system if we knew how to spend it in a smarter way. We’re just getting started.
PW: Can you talk about the growing impact of transparency and data?
In order to improve health care, you need data. And the data has been hard to come by unless you’re self-funded. So we first need to work on that and then find the right partners to provide good data and then once you have that, the employer says, “Wait, 40% of my people are diabetic? I want to fix that. That’s crazy!”
Once they see something like that, it’s hard to unsee. The conversation then starts to change from price to quality—quality of life, quality of care, the quality of the employee. They want their people healthy. Then we have to go out and find providers who are willing to work on both cost and quality, and those were hard to find in the beginning. Now, they’re becoming more prevalent and I think that will continue as employers request and demand it.
PW: Many advisors tell me they struggle to filter through all of the options and noise and figure out the best partners and solutions. How do you manage that?
For the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to do it on my own, which is exhausting and not sustainable. But the way to manage that is with help from others. You talk to someone you trust and ask for recommendations and insights. That has changed the way I do things. Brokers love new shiny toys, because if you’re not growing, you’re dying. So if we see something that looks like a good opportunity to grow, we’ll spend a bunch of time on it. But it might just be fool’s gold. It’s tough. So I talk to advisors I trust like Derek Winn or Bryce Heinbaugh or some of my connections through Health Rosetta around the country who are trying these new things and ask them, “Who’s the partner you’re using? How are they succeeding? How are they failing?” I’m probably not going to compete with Bryce, because he’s in Ohio. I might compete with Derek, but if I walked in on one of his cases, what’s the point? He’s one of the good guys. I’ll just pack up and go home.
It’s about sharing ideas. A couple of years ago, I approached Derek and said, “Do you want to hear about what we’re doing?” We haven’t done business together yet, but it has created an opportunity to exchange ideas and contacts. I think it’s been really beneficial for both of us.
PW: That type of collaboration and partnership is one of the biggest recent changes I notice in the industry. Do you see more trust and focus on the greater good these days?
Yes. These days, it feels like there’s a subsection of the advisor population who are saying, “I’m not going to be able to serve everybody, but if an idea I have would help someone else serve their clients better, then that’s a win.” And the world’s round, and what goes around comes around. Eventually, things work out. And that has certainly been true in my career time and again. If you give, all of a sudden you receive something you weren’t even expecting.
We joined Benefit Advisor Network back during the ACA turmoil and it was career-altering for our organization, because you learn that the high-performing agencies are building deep benches. We were always stuck on the idea that the account manager did everything, so it was huge to learn that we needed to build a deeper bench. At an independent agency, you don’t have ready-made best practices from the mothership.
PW: How would you describe your average client? What are the unique challenges or opportunities in working with these types of employers in your part of the country?
We’re in a rural part of Virginia, so there’s a lot of agriculture and construction. There’s a bronze statue of a turkey not too far from our office; we’re the turkey capital of the world. We have a lot of local poultry farms and processing plants around here as well as the related industries that serve those folks. As far as our clients, there are a lot of construction companies, the service industry, but there are also lawyers and accountants. But it’s predominantly a blue-collar crew.
We talk a lot about corporate culture when it comes to succeeding at truly self-funding your health plan and that quest for quality. There are lots of businesses around here that have a strong culture. Their employees know their employer considers them an asset and they are willing to invest in them. It’s not always about the bottom line, it’s about taking care of people. There’s often an innate sense of trust between the employee and employer that can sometimes lead to quicker success for us when it comes to introducing new ideas, because we can leverage that relationship.
A challenge of working in a rural area is that a Center of Excellence like the Mayo Clinic is not going to be an hour away. We’re going to have to put you on a plane. Some people may have not left their home county in the last 20 years, so the concept of flying somewhere for care might seem pretty radical to them. “Yeah, you could just go to the local hospital, but we have a Center of Excellence that will take better care of you through the way we’ve built our benefits plan. If you’re willing to consider that, there are some incentives there for you.” It was slow in the beginning, but people are starting to take us up on it.
PW: As you look back at the pandemic, what changes will have long-term or permanent implications and what will likely fade away?
As far as enrollment goes, we transitioned everything online that we could, which was very unusual. Normally, we’d be out there shaking hands and seeing folks either one-on-one or in groups. This year was a lot of targeted videos on a specific topic.
The feedback I’ve gotten from clients is that last year’s open enrollment was the best ever, because they were able to consume the information at their own pace, on their own time, when they could pay attention. Also, some of our smaller groups who probably wouldn’t have used an enrollment firm in the past did use them and were able to work one-on-one with an enroller over the phone.
It was certainly a strange year, but we felt like we got the job done and for the most part, employers and employees felt served. Are we going to go back to face-to-face meetings? I hope so at some level. But certainly if YouTube videos and online enrollment are more beneficial to everyone, then we’ll do it. But I miss human interaction and going out to meet people.
The accelerated telemedicine uptake is another area that will likely stick around. “I’m not talking to a doctor over the phone.” Well, you had to and it actually wasn’t that bad. In our neck of the woods, mental health is a black hole. Access to care is tough. One potential bright side would be if people accept the idea that telemedicine is here to stay and is actually OK.
The other thing we’ve seen from our clients is a willingness to say, “You know, our people missed out on being taken care of during the pandemic by the medical community. We want to start a primary care clinic.” So they’re taking money that they’re already spending in their health care plan and they’re transitioning it to get into the supply side.
Our clients aren’t big enough to have something onsite, but we have a near-site clinic hopefully going up here in August that we’ve been working on for a couple of years. We’ve had employers come together who are willing to sponsor or help finance it. The clients will save money, the employee will save money and they’ll get better care. And from what I understand, primary care is often a loss-leader for a hospital system, so if we’re able to provide better primary care and still refer patients to the appropriate docs, then it’s a good deal for the health care community, too.
PW: What are your favorite things about your job?
To serve people is number one. Also, I love getting up every morning and trying to find solutions. The problem is never quite the same.
And there are a lot of people out there who are doing cool stuff, so I try to make time to meet those people in our industry. I enjoy talking with people who are trying to innovate and think outside the box and who are willing to share ideas.
And I love showing people that there’s a different way to do this and then watching them when they get it. Once they do get it, it’s going to be hard to talk them out of it. I love that education process, showing people things they didn’t think were possible.
PW: What’s one thing you know now that you wish you’d known when you started your career?
When I first started in the industry, we’d go to a conference with an unnamed large carrier and they’d talk about their profits, how well they’d done, the number of new cases they’d written, and we’d all congratulate each other and have a nice dinner. Was I representing the client there or was I representing the insurance industry? Until I got into the self-funded side of things, I always thought I was working for the client. I didn’t know another way.
Without the mentorship that’s available in this business to help me open my eyes to ways to do this differently, I wouldn’t be here. Yeah, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears and we had to put in the work, but without the mentorship, it wouldn’t have happened.
I wish I would have had that education sooner in my career, because then I would have been able to help more people make more change. But things are much different now. You always wonder if you could have done better, sooner to truly serve your clients.
PW: How can the industry do a better job of attracting new talent, while becoming more diverse and bringing in young people to keep its momentum going?
For much of my career, I was the youngest guy in the room. What kept me coming around and interested was the ability to learn and to grow. The industry is changing so quickly now that it will be appealing to the next generation. Many people in the upcoming generations are not just in it for the money—they want to make a difference. Maybe I’m biased, but I don’t know of too many careers right now where you could make more of an impact and more of a difference and leave more of a mark than the advisor role today. There’s a lot that gets wrapped up in this: social justice, mental health, all kinds of stuff you wouldn’t have thought of 20 years ago or even five years ago.
Sales is tough, and you have to go through a lot of “nos” to get to a “yes,” but if you’re willing to put in the work, it can be a very rewarding career. And frankly, those are the people we’re going to be looking to hire next. The last few people we’ve hired have come straight out of college and they’re looking to make a difference. It’s been great to see them assimilate into the culture while also bringing in their own ideas and ways of doing things.
PW: Finish this sentence: The key to success in this industry going forward is…
Putting the patient, the provider and the payer on the same side of the table. Working together with aligned incentives to give us happier, healthier members.
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