I recently wrote about a GA case in which, if it stands, agencies’ standard of care will be about as high as possible. The only possible solutions are to complete thorough coverage checklists, which require the proper use of the checklist by the agent, or to use a Scope of Work contract that delineates exactly what the agent will do, which is typically very little when these contracts are employed. There is also the CA case that increased the standard of care there far above

A while ago, I heard an executive at the IIABA declare that Progressive would soon be losing money because they were spending so much on advertising. I’ll be blunt: this is an ignorant statement. It does not matter if a carrier spends $1 million or $5 billion on advertising. The nominal amount is completely immaterial. What matters is the return on investment for those dollars. If the return on investment is 18% for $5 billion but only 12% for $1 billion, spend the $5 billion

​A year ago, I spoke at a limited membership insurance conference. The organizer introduced me as the best consultant, but the worst consultant ever at branding themselves. Maybe because I’ve lived in cattle country most of my life, I’m a little hesitant about the thought of branding myself. But he was 100% correct that I’ve done a horrible job creating a big brand. I find it frustrating that people with a much better brand get a lot of work because of their brand. However, s

Many producers and entire agencies are nervous about competing for larger commercial accounts. Perhaps they believe they’re too small, they don’t have all the services, they don’t have all the carriers, or they don’t have whatever. ​Success, especially in sales, is built on using your strengths rather than focusing on your weaknesses. Sales success is also built upon your competitors’ weaknesses. ​ Focus on your strengths. Whatever your strengths are, build them stronger, adv

A recent, very well-written article with great points, “Why Prevention is the New Protection,” by Daniel Grimwood-Bird, prompted me to write this article. His points are dead-on accurate about how a majority of auto accidents are almost 100% preventable with the right risk management tools. ​Excluding catastrophe losses, almost 100% of property claims are also preventable. Even catastrophe claims can largely be mitigated, minimized, or eliminated. And yet carrier pricing give

Those are the numbers from Brown & Brown’s January 27, 2026, analyst call (as reported in the Insurance Journal on January 28, 2026) regarding the revenues lost to a start-up (likely meaning Howden) in 2025. Per the statements made on the call, most employees were not producers, and most were in benefits. This fascinates me on multiple levels. First, Howden is making waves because of the many employees they’re allegedly taking from other brokers. In some cases, I find it funn

This industry uses many confusing terms. Some words have multiple meanings, which, without context, are fairly useless, and some words don't mean what people think they mean. When you’re in the business every day, it is sometimes easy to forget the importance of taking time to explain to clients what these words mean. Here are a few that sometimes cause confusion: Blanket: This is simple. For 99% of humans, this means some kind of warming device, usually placed on a bed. When

Have you ever seen a suspense movie with unexpected twists of who is on whose side? Or a spy movie where two enemy states find some reason to work together to destroy some other third party? Well, that is sort of what happens between plaintiff firms and insurance companies. On the surface, they spend a ton of money convincing the public and courts that they are mortal enemies. However, both achieve greater success when plaintiff firms prevail, provided the wins are not so sig

I was listening to the Michael Lewis podcast, “Against the Rules.” The season involved what I consider to be the highly unethical methods designed to attract people bad at evaluating odds to gamble on sports and then gamble more. I highly recommend the podcast and his books. Hearing the old-fashioned bookies was one of the best parts of the podcast. One of them used terms identical to insurance terms. If you have a good underwriting model for judging risk and odds, you want t

I was speaking to a group of agents and offering serious advice requiring hard decisions. These agents represented an organization in trouble. One agent approached me and advised that my recommendations were solid, insightful, and correct. However, her self-awareness enabled her to advise me that my recommendations would not work because neither she nor the other agents possessed the self-discipline required to save the organization, let alone to change course to achieve succ

I’ll be blunt: Most insurance applications stink. I don’t know who designs them, but whoever it is should be fired – unless you are a conspiracy theorist. If so, then you know insurance applications are written poorly on purpose so insurance companies can later deny claims when insureds provide incorrect answers. This is an important point. For example, a large portion of cyber applications are warranty applications, and yet the questions asked are somewhere between nonsensic

Why can’t carriers generate quality loss runs and underwrite appropriately using those loss runs? I know, I know, they’re just waiting on AI to do all this for them. If that is the case, I strongly recommend all underwriters immediately begin looking for new jobs because your employer is not going to give you AI as an underwriting tool. They’re going to replace you even if they shouldn’t. However, AI cannot work effectively with incomplete and inaccurate data. I was reviewing

Recently, a few of my clients have identified structural issues within agency management accounting systems. I won’t pretend to understand all the technical factors within these systems. The net effect is that gross numbers may be materially overstated while the net numbers are correct. That is a problem, and absolutely no one should ever accept the response, “Well, the net numbers are correct so don’t worry about the gross numbers.” For example, agencies often run aged accou

I read the Wall Street Journal daily, and one of my favorite wealth writers, Jonathan Clements, recently passed away. Another columnist, Jason Zweig, wrote two articles about his passing. One included several insightful passages Clements had written regarding human psychology and investing. One that hit home, from April 8, 2007, was, “Think you’re immune to confirmation bias? If you are a regular reader of this column, ask yourself this question: Why do you keep reading my ar

Carriers have a growth problem, and they only have one likely solution to generate organic growth. A recent research paper, “Valuation and Long-Term Growth Expectations,” by Angel Tengulov of the University of Kansas, Josef Zechner of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and Jeffrey Zweibel of Stanford University, identified key variables in determining long-term growth. In other words, what factors best predict long-term growth? A factor that improves long-term g

Hardly a day goes by without the industry press covering an employee lawsuit, usually involving a salesperson, where a competitor has poached key people. “Poaching” typically means that the new employer enticed the employee(s) to leave in violation of the employee’s contract. Sometimes the suit involves entire teams. One recent headline described how one broker poached 140 employees at one time from another broker! That would hurt! Often, the new employer is sued along with t

The legal standard of care requiring that insureds read and understand their insurance policy is absurd. The typical standard for written communications with the average consumer is to write at an 8th-grade level or lower. Insurance policies, however, are legal contracts. To read and understand an insurance policy requires more than an 8th-grade level of reading ability. It is unreasonable to place the burden on the average consumer that they must read (i.e., have a duty to r

Historically, the P&C market rode a seven-year wave, give or take. The market would be soft for around seven years, hard for around two to three years, and repeat. During the soft market phase, the carriers who had plenty of surplus and were unwilling to compete on price wrote the accounts that came their way and waited for the hard market. When the hard market arrived, they had the surplus, the capacity, to write everything at their price. They would grow significantly and p

This is how the phone call began. The prospective client told me that I’d been recommended as being very good, but expensive. He was not sure if “very good” was worth “expensive.” That caught me by surprise because in the scheme of things, I am definitively not expensive. My hourly rate might be high, but I’m not expensive. Many moons ago, when I was just getting started consulting, I had the great luck of finding the best mentor anyone could ever hope to find. He was a true

Consulting, to varying degrees, involves seeing into the future and advising clients how to best navigate that future. As a consultant and holding myself to a little bit of accountability: were my projections of the future of insurance distribution correct from about 10 years ago? In particular, a decade ago, I opined about which of 10 new insurance Insurtech distributors were likely to succeed. I advised my clients regarding why they should pay special attention to certain o