Building a foundation: A Q&A with Quincy Atwood

Paul Wilson: How did you get your start in the benefits industry?

My dad has been in the P&C insurance industry for 28 years; he got licensed the week I was born, so it’s easy for me to remember! Right before my last year of high school, he decided to start an agency. He wanted to serve his clients holistically and employee benefits was an area where he didn’t feel like he could previously provide clients with the knowledge and depth of expertise that they needed. That’s how Specialty Risk was born.

I left to play college softball and then moved to Texas. And like many 18-year-olds out there, I told my dad “I’m not going to work for you and I’m probably not coming home.” All the things we say at 18 before we later have to eat our words!

I was planning to get a Speech Pathology degree at Texas State, but due to my softball schedule, I couldn’t make it work. So I ended up getting a Bachelor of Applied Arts and Science degree with a Business emphasis. I said, “Dad, I’m considering insurance; can you help me find an internship that you think would be a good fit?” We found an agency that was on the same path as our company, so I interviewed for an internship there and got it.

I had no intention of working in employee benefits, but I told them I’d do whatever they needed and they asked me to audit their benefits processes. That was my introduction into the industry. I did that for about six months and then joined their safety division, where I worked with oil field clients as a risk control services coordinator, and kind of drifted away from benefits. But I met my husband and told him I’d like to move back home to Missouri. I felt like I owed it to my Dad to at least try to work at his agency.

The agency started with three people and when we moved back five years ago, there were about 15 of us working there. We now have 75 on staff. At that time, the groundwork was being laid for what we’ve done since with our different divisions and specialties. There was one other woman who had been hired for employee benefits. When I started helping Tiffany with benefits, I found that I had a passion there. It came naturally to me and my background enabled me to help build our workflow into what we wanted it to be.

Our benefits team now has five full-time employees and we’re adding a sixth. We’re in a very rural part of the country, but we’ve been able to break into a lot of opportunities because we’re challenging the status quo. We’re trying to bring innovative new ideas and to get involved with great organizations like BenefitsPRO and NABIP. We’re taking our education very seriously—all of us are on track for new certifications or designations. We’re invested in understanding the industry at a deep level.

We want to understand how our industry is changing. The recent Expo in Atlanta was my third and Susan Combs reached out and asked me if I wanted to speak. I was very excited and honored and it’s another example of how we’re working to get more involved. A big part of our journey as a benefits team has been the focus on education around things like compliance, understanding coverages at a deeper level, and just trying to be creative. Finding ways to differentiate has been a big focus for us.

PW: Can you talk about your day-to-day and the makeup of your team?

I’m a weird hybrid. Because of my background with workflows, I’ve found I have a passion for operations. Our agency has doubled every two years, and we’ve had a growth rate of nearly 33% for the past 11 years. It feels like we have new hires weekly; we had two more people start today. It’s a really fun time to be part of this agency and I can help with the issues that arise with onboarding and things like that.

Our benefits department was built to be an arm of our P&C side. So the first few years, we rounded out a lot of those accounts, but now we’re focusing on bringing in true benefits clients where we can potentially add the P&C side later. We have about 15 producers on our P&C side and they’re all licensed in life and health. They gather the information and then bring it to my team and we take it from there. They’re great at what they do and so are we.

I also wear the advisor/broker hat, but my goal is to have my team play that role and do that more all the time. But if there’s an account that falls in the 100+ space, then I get involved at the advisor level.

PW: What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities of working in your part of the country and with your clients?

Our headquarters are in SW Missouri, and 80% of what we do touches agriculture in some capacity. We work with a lot of commercial agriculture and feed lots, so we travel quite a bit for open enrollment. One thing we’ve found a lot is that not many brokers will go on-site to do open enrollment and get involved at a high level.

So we bring the technology piece and do a combination of in-person enrollment with the online aspects tied to it and that’s been a differentiator for us. I don’t care if you’re in western Missouri or southern Texas; I’ll send my team and we’ll be on site with you if that’s what makes sense. We’re planning two trips to Kansas right now for a blend of new business and enrollment. My day is never boring!

Most of our people live and work in the industries we work with and insure. My husband and I live on a 40-acre farm, we raise cattle, we have chickens and the whole thing. And many of the people who work here either grew up on a farm, live on one now, or have some connection to the blue-collar world. That is one of the things I enjoy; people appreciate when you understand where they’re coming from. I love the demographic we work with; we have a lot of commonalities, goals and interests.

PW: How are conversations about change and innovation going right now with clients and prospects? Are you getting more buy-in?

We do a little self-funding and quite a bit of level-funding and people are refreshed when you bring new ideas. Of course, everyone wants to save money, but they also want to know how they can control their risk. In the feedlot industry, the workforce is extremely competitive, so most of our groups have very robust benefits. We bring different ideas, and there’s been less pushback than many people might expect. Of course, you have some groups who say, “We love our carrier and network and we’re never leaving them; I don’t care how much my costs increase.” More power to them if they can afford it. But if you want to control your plan and build something specific to you, then we can go down that road.

PW: Have recent events made people more or less open to change?

At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone froze; nobody wanted to touch anything. “Let’s just stay where we are; I don’t want to cause any more disruption.” But now, I feel like we’re moving more groups than we ever have before. There has been a real shift and people are ready for a change; they’ve reached a point where they want to see something different and creative.

We work with a lot of agricultural businesses, but my department also gets to work with a lot of Main Street businesses. So we see both sides of things. The cost of living increase is obviously a big factor right now. Premiums are going up, you’re having to pay your staff more, but you can’t afford to not increase your benefits if you want to stay competitive. That’s been a challenge for people and we’ve been very creative presenting different options, depending on the group.

PW: How do you filter out all the noise and find the right partners and solutions?

Our vendor partnerships are something we’ve been examining closely over the past few months, as we look for people and companies that closely align with our culture. We are very focused on doing what’s right for the client, whether they end up working with us or not. My job is to best serve them, and doing the right thing will always pay off. That’s at the forefront of every vendor partnership we consider. “When everything hits the fan, are you going to stand by me and help defend this group? Are we going to fight this fire together or are you going to say ‘That’s your problem now’?”

PW: How do you stay motivated and not get discouraged or intimidated while trying to help change the industry?

I’m helping to build our agency and, by extension, our family’s legacy. I take a lot of pride in that. And there are 75 employees here; it’s my job to help make sure their families are being taken care of. That’s a lot of my why—making sure we’re doing our best for our clients and employees.

So many groups, especially in smaller towns, may have a great relationship with their current agent, but the broker might have been doing things the same way for 30 years. A lot of things have changed and if you’re not staying up to date on compliance and other factors, you’re going to pay for it eventually. There are a lot of small employers out there who need us and who don’t have the resources to do everything they need to do. It’s exciting to work to make changes, because our health care system is really a mess right now. I hate when we talk to a group and they get a 30% increase—I don’t care how you frame it or talk about it; you can’t justify that. My hope is that as we get more industry leaders involved and more boots on the ground at the congressional level making true changes, something will have to give.

I love hearing about examples like the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, where they don’t contract with health insurers and list cash prices for everything. That is so interesting to me; why can’t we build plans and networks working with people like that? Let’s build our own networks where we don’t have to go through the BUCAHs to get things done. We’re not there yet, but we’re building a foundation now for the future.

PW: What skills or qualities do you look for when building your team?

I need someone who is highly responsible; someone who doesn’t need a lot of hand holding. If you see a problem and don’t know the answer, work through the challenge with a little help. And because we do wear both a broker and service hat, I need someone who can have a high level conversation and be comfortable talking to a CEO and explaining why they should make the changes we’re proposing. That requires self-confidence.

Our team must also have a service heart. One team member was a respiratory nurse for eight years; she spent time on the front lines during COVID. Another was a pharmacy manager for 16 years, so she’s seen people who weren’t able to pay for their prescriptions because someone didn’t explain their plan. Your perspective is very different when you have seen things from other points of view.

PW: How can the industry do a better job of innovating, adapting and bringing in younger and more diverse candidates?

That’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed joining recent panels at the BenefitsPRO Broker Expo and NABIP with other great women. At our agency, our average age is somewhere around 34. I’m 28 and I’m one of the older people working here. Because I’m younger, there are many things about the history of our industry that I forget. For example, I’ve never felt like I didn’t have a seat at the table, so it’s important to hear about what other people have dealt with.

I think the perspective changes so much when you have more people involved. We all see the world differently. How can we properly serve a demographic if we don’t understand it? There are so many opportunities out there. Insurance isn’t the stuffy industry that people think it is; it can be very creative and innovative.

But you don’t understand the struggle of someone in a certain demographic until you’ve truly become involved with them. And that starts by having a conversation.

Read more: Unleashing the potential of benefits customization

PW: If you were talking to someone about joining the industry, what would you say?

We have a really strong internship program and do a lot of work with colleges and high school interns. One of the things that I tell them is that our industry is so much more than stuffy policies and working with insurers. We get to be true advisors and build and protect generations. Whether on the P&C or benefits side, we’re protecting family businesses and their ability to stay together in the future. We can change the direction of people’s futures.

PW: Finish this sentence: The key to success in this industry going forward is…

to keep looking in other directions. Something is always changing.