Times of change: These brokers are ready to take action
The chaos of the past year has created a perfect opportunity for benefits brokers to take the reins and reshape the industry.
“I personally hate COVID. I’m sick of talking about it.”
During our recent Broker of the Year panel, Thrive Benefit’s Rachel Miner said what we’ve all probably been thinking to some extent over the past weeks and months. We get it. The world has fundamentally changed, and life as we know it will never be the same.
It was impossible not to talk about change and the pandemic, but Miner and her fellow Broker of the Year finalists–Tom DiLiegro of Benefit Advisors of Charleston, Mike Hill of Coldbrook Insurance Group LLC, Megan Zimmerman of Marsh & McLennan–as well as our 2021 Broker of the Year, Nielsen Benefits Group’s Ed Ligonde, demonstrated just how pivotal visionaries and good leaders are during these times.
Related: 2021 Broker of the Year: Meet the finalists
“You get to choose what lens you view life with,” said Ligonde. “The pandemic has been confusing and a hard time for a lot of people. What I believe we can do as people is to look at these times of adversity as opportunities.”
Looking out
Much like the passage of the Affordable Care Act created a dividing line between those who were passionate about the health care industry and those who just cared about the paycheck, we’re again seeing the cream of the benefits advisors crop separate and rise to the top. Our panelists are representative of a new generation of benefits professionals who look at chaos and see opportunity.
“The pandemic has been a good thing for our industry,” agreed Hill. “It’s given us an opportunity to do things that maybe we weren’t willing to do before–virtual meetings, using our time more efficiently. And before, we were struggling to get employers to consider alternatives, but now that everything’s changed, why not health care?”
It’s not just created a great openness to change, but for some employers, it’s opened their eyes to problems they’ve been overlooking. “For a lot of employers, it’s changed their landscape in terms of having to be flexible and having to find a work/life balance,” Miner said. “It’s been a big change in dynamic but has shown a lot of areas of weakness for certain employers.”
The panelists agreed that this change was imminent, and, as DiLiegro put it, the pandemic has “exposed the cracks that we already knew were there.”
Employers are ready to hear the solutions and new ideas that brokers have been promoting for years. “The innovation journey is different for every client,” said Zimmerman. “To know that it’s possible is always step one.”
Looking in
Capitalizing on this opportunity to redefine the employee benefits experience is in itself a monumental task, but it’s not the only one these visionaries are taking on. They’re also tackling an overhaul of their own industry’s image. As DiLiegro put it, “Who the hell wants to sell insurance?”
He went on to explain that insurance sales is just one part of the bigger story brokers need to be telling. “We‘ve all had stories where, sure we sell insurance, but we also have a moment when the employee comes and we can say, ‘hey we got that surgery covered 100%.’“
“We need to do a better job as an industry of telling our story,” Hill agreed. “If we just describe ourselves as brokers, no one wants to do that. But if we say we’re going to battle every day to fix a dearly broken system, help the average Joe put food on the table, that’s an inspiring story.”
When you put it in such terms, it sounds like an easy shift, but Zimmerman offered up a dose of pragmatism, highlighting the importance of introducing new industry recruits to bad as well as the good. “I’ll be honest with you: I have a family and a working spouse,” she said, noting the difficulty of balancing work and life, particularly as a working mother. “We have to have honest conversations as to why so many women are not rising to the top in our industry and the work/life balance we all need to strive for.”
Ligonde also shared his perspective as a Black man in the industry. “I think we’re way past the ‘I don’t see color, I don’t see gender,’ but we have to be intentional about it,” he said. We have a lot of credible impact. We’re working in a people business. We’re in a position where we’re trying to hire new people and I’m looking outside of our industry to see if I can find people with different perspectives, experiences.”
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