RHS 039 - Bryan Falchuk Explains the Move From Disruption to Evolution

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USAA! Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
Today, we have a tremendous guest. His name is Brian Falchuk.
And these are some of my favorite episodes because Brian is a guy that I have followed on LinkedIn for a while. Our paths digitally have crisscrossed many times, though we've never actually spoken.
And then finally, I can't remember if I reached out to Brian or he reached out to me, but we had a phone call last week, just kind of like a get to know you. Hey, we're both in this space.
What are we doing? Kind of thing. And within three minutes, I was like, dude, you got to come on the podcast.

And this is a great episode. Brian's got a tremendous book coming out and we're going to tell you how to get that book.
You definitely need to put this on your radar. Brian is also one of the partners and insurance evolution partners.
He's a former insurtech executive. He has been in and outside and around the insurance world in many different capacities, brings a tremendous amount of experience, expertise.
He's a TEDx speaker and just an all-around tremendous resource for our industry and someone who I am incredibly proud to share with you today. Before we get there, I just want to give a quick shout out to my people at Tarmica.
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All right. So with that, we're going to get on to Brian talking about just all things carrier, insure tech, not disruption, but like how carriers specifically are solving problems in our industry today.
I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Brian.
So dude, it's great having you on the show. We had an awesome talk.
Was it a week or two ago? And then I blew you off yesterday for our recording. And now we are.
That's totally fine. And that's life right now.
It's like all of a sudden you're like, oh, God, am I a father or am I a professional? Yeah. No, totally fine.
What happened was my dad normally comes and picks the kids up on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. So whenever I need real quiet time that's the time i schedule stuff and then yesterday he was like oh i could take him but i need you to drive him out because something was going on in his life and then yeah just you know whatever and then you're you're emailing me and i'm like oh what a dick no it's okay i've done that twice and i've like that's not me i'm super punctual so like i end up feeling it for weeks.
I'm like, I can't believe it. Or I was 15 minutes late.
And yeah, no, we, I think we, we all need to give ourselves a little bit of space on that right now. Yeah.
So, so dude, so, uh, I don't know how we hadn't talked before when we did, because what you're doing, I mean, I've, I've obviously seen your work and heard your name a bunch of times and, um, and you know, TEDx speaker, uh, you've, this is your third book, correct? Yeah. Um, you know, you've been, uh, you know, very well received self-help self-help author, you know, you're in the insurance space, you've worked in insure tech, like you have a really dynamic story.
And, um, it's always funny to me, I guess, when, when I find someone in the insurance industry who is as dynamic as you are, that I haven't had a chance to talk to yet. So I really agree with our conversation.
Yeah. I mean, our worlds kind of overlap a lot and I've been following your stuff.
And so like, yeah, I mean, when we, when we got on that first call, we just jumped in. Like it was as if we we were just continuing a conversation we were just having.
Yeah. So we're just doing a lot of research for that first call.
That's all. We're prepping for it.
But, yeah, it's kind of funny that it took us this long. So we're here now.
Yeah, we're here. We're here, and I'm glad we are because I want people, as many people as I can.
And, you know, I've been introducing you to some of my podcast buddies, too, because I think what you're talking about, the way you're highlighting companies, and the way you're talking about technology in our industry is a very, is very, is the healthiest way possible. And it's exactly the type of conversations that we need to continue having.
And also, I loved, and we'll get into the very specifics. And we'll, you know, about some of the case studies and stuff but i think one of the reasons why i want people to um start following you on linkedin and become part of your ecosystem is that uh you know you highlighted everything from ohio mutual to uh state workers comp fund to usaa and i think you really brought that full what i liked about book, and I'm not done with it, but I liked that you brought in, that you brought in the full spectrum.
It wasn't just like, let's laser in on these tech only, you know, startup and sure techs and say that they're the future. It was look what Ohio Mutual is doing.
I mean, this is the kind of company that independent agents, like this is their bread and butter as a company like Ohio Mutual. Yeah.
No, it's, and it's, it's not. So yeah, there's some, some big names in there.
I'm not going to lie, like getting some of those carriers to jump on board, like USA is in there. And that's the one that everyone's like, oh no, they'll never do it.
So like, don't even try. And I kind of look at it as like, well, look, if I don't have them now, then what do I have to lose by asking other than like, whatever I feel about it, like my dignity or so they say no, you know, like ask her to the dance.
And if she says no, well, you're not dancing with her right now. Right? Yeah.
So, you know, I've got the USA's of the world and CNA and AXA. But then I've also got Yeah, Ohio Mutual, who I love, like they're incredible.
And I'm lucky because on the insurtech side that was one of my accounts like I got to serve them I got really close with their team so I got to see them inside and out they're awesome you know you got like employers in there who's a public company but not so long ago they were a state-owned or state-run monopolist, not just market of last resort. If you had employees in Nevada, you had to insure with them.
And I hope this doesn't offend anyone. I think they would agree with this.
They were a mess financially, technologically. like their CEO says that he started in 93.
So he's been with the company 25 years and worked

his way up. He's like, I had to bring my own computer because we only had these green screen

terminals in the 90s. You know, you got the state comp fund of California.
Like, again, yeah, it's a big carrier, but it's a state entity. So unlike employers, they are still part of the state of California.
They were a market of last resort. They have been through serious ups and downs.
And they have unionized employees. So the point is, it's all these different carriers in different functional spaces, different corporate structures, different ownership, different constraints.
We all face a lot of them, regulation and the jokes about the industry being slow and all that. But at the same time, like they're dealing with unions, they're dealing with, you know, ultimately reporting to the governor.
You've got companies that have to deal with the stock market and answering to analysts and the ups and downs there. And there's companies that are mutual and there's companies that are private and reciprocal.
Like the point is, every one of us in the insurance industry, agents, brokers, carriers, providers, you know, like partners, we all have different constraints that we face. And what I didn't want to do was write this book about these innovations or these companies that have done stuff and have anyone be like, well, I can't do that because like, oh, it's, you know, well, they're a startup.
They don't have any of that. Or they're, you know, they've got $20 billion in the bank, so I can't do that.
It's like, well, Ohio Mutual doesn't. They've got money for their size.
They're in good shape, but that's because they got themselves there, you know? And so it's like anyone should be able to look at these cases and kind of drop the excuses of why it's okay for them to just sit back and struggle and not do anything. Because I'll tell you, every carrier I saw when I was on the insurtech side started with the same, like, we're too far behind, we're stuck, we can't catch up, these new guys are coming in here and making us look bad, our customers want all these things, and we can't do it for them, yet they're doing stuff.
So it's this kind of, it's a message of hope, really. I mean, as silly as that sounds, but that's what it is.
See, that was my biggest takeaway from what I've read so far was the idea, you were breaking down the excuses that an organization may have for not innovating in ways. And look, there are companies that even I work with who are incredibly innovative in certain sections of their business.
And I still have to go log into internet explorer, not even edge, like internet explorer to, to reach certain parts of their technology. And, and, and, and I think, you know, at first I was very frustrated with that.
Um, as you know, I've been an agency owner for like four months now, but like like i was very frustrated at first because i was like how like i have to go buy a new 700 computer as a mac user and then figure out how to get internet explorer onto this pc because microsoft doesn't even support it is doesn't is a non-supported browser so i then had to you know i And I'm like, but then there's other aspects of this same carrier that are so innovative and the way that they approach risk and the way that they're using data on the backend, even though you have to, you know, you have to use an abacus to access it. The way that they're actually using that data is, it's thoughtful and it's, and it's creative.
So, so I think I thought two things things i said one um in general i think we need to stop giving carriers such a hard time totally um as long as they're pushing forward and two um there's there's no excuses you can be any size you can be a small little super regional or domestic mutual you could be all the way up to a a publicly traded company and there are possibilities here. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think that's spot on.
And it's like, we use the word excuses and I don't want anyone to take offense to that because they're real things. We're not dismissing any of it.
It's not like, oh, we're regulated. Oh, we'll get over it like you can do this anyway.
It's like, okay, you're regulated. That doesn't mean no.
That means you need to find something you can do that meets regulation. So like the Ohio Mutual example, one of the, this is the same for me because I was, so it's about their use of texting in claims.
And I joined this insure tech because I was one of their first customers. So I kind of fell in love with it.
Um, just from using it, one of the things Ohio mutual learned from several failed attempts and they're really honest and shared all of that with me. And it's all in the case.
Like, look, we didn't get it right. The first time we screwed up a lot and we learned from that.
Like, it's okay. This was like a 10 year journey for them to get, to be able to text with customers.
But they had some of the same concerns I had is, well, if you're texting, like some carriers will just give their people a phone. And I know like agents, IAs, it's really common.
Like you, you got to talk to them and it's the way people do it now. And they can't take your phone call.
So you shoot them a text from your cell phone, but guess what? Now that insured or that prospect or that claimant has your phone number. And so like, they're going to bother you in the weekend.
They're going to call you at weird hours, like, and they're going to expect a response. And none of that is going in the file.
And like, we can't do that in insurance. If you're negotiating a new, a new policy, like, so the underwriter promises or makes some indication of coverage in the claim discussion, but it doesn't make it into the underwriting discussion with the broker or the agent, doesn't make it into the file.
What happens when there's a claim that hits on that discussion? It's like, well, we don't have record of it, so we're not going to cover it. And the broker's like, I have all the texts.
So now you're getting into an argument about it. Well, you have to have all the conversations in the underwriting file, the claim file, whatever.
So you can't just start texting off someone's cell phone. If you do that, some carriers are like, oh, we'll take screenshots and we'll upload them into the files.
Like, do you know how painful that is? And you know how quickly people won't be doing that? I know carriers who gave a series of adjusters phones and they blocked out Friday afternoon

each week to upload the screenshots.

And it's like one of two things happen.

The adjusters phones and they blocked out Friday afternoon each week to upload the screenshots. And it's like one of two things happen.
The adjusters either just didn't upload the screenshots because it's miserable or they stopped texting because they're like, I'm not doing the screenshots. So little things like that, like you're regulated, there's coverage litigation, there's discoverability, there's DOI audits.
You need to have those conversations. So you need a texting solution that flows into the claim file or the underwriting record.
It's simple, but it doesn't mean you don't, you don't text. It means you just need to be mindful of that.
So all these things like they're excuses, but they're considerations. They're not hard constraints.
It's like walking up to a wall and being like, okay, I can't go forward. Well, did you look to your left? Cause there's a door.
You just need to, you know, look around a little bit and see how you can get through that barrier. And that's really what the message is about.
Yeah. I think, I think when I think excuses, I think that the same thing can be an obstacle or an excuse.
An obstacle is something that we understand as an issue, like this texting problem that you're describing, cause that 100% real. Or an excuse is that same issue, except you're not trying to solve it.
You're just staying put because you're using it as a reason not to move forward. And the texting thing is so real.
I have a cell phone and then I have two way text in that, that, so I have two way text in my agency through my main number, um, that automatically delivers that text message as a file record into my, into my account. So as long as I have the cell phone that I'm texting attached to a client file in my agency management system, every text that goes to that system.
Now, the problem is sometimes I pick up the cell phone because it's easier and I'm just like texting through here instead of texting through my computer, which I don't have the whatever that, but see, it's an excuse. When I pick this up, this is an excuse.
Figuring a way to two-way text is just overcoming an obstacle. And I think that these stories and use the word hope are of companies of different sizes and different makes and different, different stakeholders that are overcoming obstacles in their business and showing that it's possible.
If we, if you, if you can systematically start, you know, systematically work towards a solution, you can get there regardless of size or constituency.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what it isn't is a blueprint for exactly how to solve the seven specific things that

these carriers talked about.

So like, you know, just to keep on Ohio Mutual, like this isn't as much as I love Hi Marley

having worked there and I believe in it.

It's not to say if you want to text with your customer or let's get more broad, like you're having communication problems, whether it's in claims or anywhere else, like the answer is not necessarily do exactly what Ohio Mutual did and just go sign up with Hi Marley and you're done. It's like, well, there's reasons why they were successful.
Look into that. That journey they went on taught them a lot about how to be successful with it.
So it's not about the technology. It's not even about the specific problem, like CNA and Shift technology working together on fraud.
Like it's not to say, okay, if you need to solve for fraud, you have to work with Shift. Like I advocate for Shift.
I think they're awesome. What I learned through the case taught me that.
But there's lots of ways to solve for fraud. And maybe it's not really about fraud.
It's about something else you're facing, but the way that CNA story played out gives you some insight into how you're going to solve this problem you face over here. So none of the cases are about that exact issue and that exact solution.
They're about a story in our context with constraints and excuses or obstacles or whatever we want to call them

that someone had to navigate through to get to a solution and that might resonate with

you.

What do you think it is about the leadership of the companies that you highlighted and

their ability to overcome obstacles that's different maybe from companies that have not

yet taken those steps?

I think this is really critical.

There are a few things, so there's three overarching themes that came out of the book. And one of the key pieces in that, I think comes straight from leadership, but it can't be leadership alone.
Like it has to go in both directions. You need the people and you need the leaders, but you can't have one or the other.
You might have some success, but you're kind of getting lucky and there'll be a limitation to it. So what you see consistently is like Vern Steiner at SCIF, the state confundant of California, old state entity, lots of complications, all that kind of stuff.
He's one of the most dynamic people I've ever met. And I've gotten to interact with him on two different things, the book and another startup a few years ago.
Really cool guy. And he just like, he's excited and he cares so deeply about his people.
So like a leader who could look at the fact that they have civil servants and union employees and be like, it's us against them, you know, management versus the union. And so there are considerations, there are things that they can and can't do because of the fact that they're unionized or because they, I mean, even like their adjusters, their attorneys are in unions.
Like, I don't think anyone really ever thinks of those kinds of roles being unionized. California.
Yeah. And so, and they're state employees.
So, you know, you've, you've got that. And he's like, yeah, you know, there were things that we had to be considerate of, but, and he said this in the, in the quote I have in the book from him, and he's like, we would have done these things anyway.
So like, they're super inclusive. So they did a design build, um, workshop training program for the entire company.
When I say the entire company, I don't just mean like it's for the underwriters and the claims adjusters, or it's for the people in innovation because they have an innovation team now, or it's for IT. I mean everybody, like the administrative assistants, the first notice of loss people, the claims process, everybody did it.
Because if he realize, like, if you don't have the entire organization on board, and excited and contributing, it's going to fall flat somewhere, or it's going to feel like they're making us do this. It's not about leadership.
Like, yeah, leadership proposes some of the things that they've done. But they they have these workshops, they came up with 30 something ideas, 18 of them are either in development or being deployed right now.
So over half of the stuff that the employees came up with are all going live. But that doesn't happen if you don't involve your people.
Doug Dirks at employers, like not to stay on like workers comp, state fund kind of backings, but same kind of thing is it's all about the people. So he's very focused on like, you have to tell the people where you're going.
You have to listen to their reaction to it. And you have to take that in.
I worked at another carrier where the CEO had these all hands meetings around our new core system. And he's like, he's a fairly good leader.
He could set the tone and the vision and people took to that. And I think he was a good step up from the past, but you know how he started the meeting.
So he opens the phone call. We did it, you know, by like, um, a group, uh, dial in, he goes, I'm going to tell you about an update on the new core system.
It's being delayed. I've muted every participant.
I don't want to hear a single thing

from anyone about this problem. It's like, okay, that's how you're opening the discussion.
Instead

of like, listen, I know everyone was excited for this. We're still excited for it.
We're still

super aggressive on the timeline. We're still going to deliver it way earlier than anyone ever

said, but we've made a decision to push back three months for these reasons that we think are really

critical because you guys told us it wasn't ready. You told us you needed this feature.

You know,

you know, said, but we've made a decision to push back three months for these reasons that we think are really critical because you guys told us it wasn't ready.

You told us you needed this feature.

You know, he could have, it was an opportunity to have the people bought in instead of being like, oh, great.

Now we're stuck, you know, and we're not allowed to speak because how dare we, you know, and

same thing, like all hands meetings, they got the whole company together for an annual

kickoff meeting. And he said the same thing.
He's like, we're going to go over the system, which was being delayed again. Go figure.
And he's like, and he said, we're going to have Q&A, and I'm going to tell you right now, I don't want a single question about the system. It's like, dude, that's the first thing you tell your entire company to start off this discussion.
Do you think people are going to feel open? Do you think they're going to feel safe sharing the ideas they have? Absolutely not. So you can't have it both ways.
And that was universal. And that goes across every single case in the book.
Yeah. I think, I'm going to try not to use any of the cliches, but as we're recording this, we have both Corona and, you know, protesting.
Um, and we have another layer, the, the rioting going on and then all the undercurrent culturally, um, not to mention businesses trying to reopen, you know, people from basically the entire spectrum, uh, trying to restart or recalibrate their life to whatever it's going to look like. And I had someone email me the other day and they just said that, you know, it was, I shouldn't even say email.
It was like a DM, you know, some message, some platform in some capacity, I can't remember it was LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever. They just were like, you know, everything has changed and it all starts with leadership.
Like everything has changed and it all starts with leadership. Leadership can never be the way it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
Like it can't be that version, that draconian version of leadership anymore that just will not work. It won't be tolerated, let alone you're not going to be able to keep the people and um you know that's a really interesting problem and the companies that you know some of the things that just in there and employers in particular just watching some of the things they do and um and uh and ohio mutual i know i know a lot of people in ohio mutual from life.
Man, you can see the difference. And particularly, I find don't watch the actual leader.
Watch the way the people underneath him or her operate, and you will know what kind of leader that person is. And that, to me, is the biggest game today.
That is the most important thing is how do we get our companies back to business in a way that makes everyone feel safe and heard and pointing the seat in the same direction, unlike it's ever been done before. Yeah, I completely agree.
And as you're talking about that, there's a trait in leadership that I think, and we talked about this when we were catching up last week or whatever it was, that I think people like Mark Russell is the CEO at Ohio Mutual, Vern Steiner, Doug Dirks, it's humility versus hubris. There's so much unknown right now.
so for you to stand up there and dictate what it is and that everything's fine or like

coronavirus every week there's a different answer as to how it works or what the issues are and like i don't want to spark a debate with anybody publicly about this but like that's that's just true like there's a lot we still don't know and it's not to put down any of what we do know or progress or whatever. So to stand there and say definitively, it's this or it's that.
Who are you serving? Well, the same goes for your leadership. To tell your company, let's say you had a spike in claims, you're on a liability line.
So it's not a short tail kind of thing. And just to say, it was this and we're over it.
Well, what happens next quarter when the next slew of lawsuits comes through or those judgments didn't go the way you thought they would? Or you've got a class action. I had this happen when I was running claims is we had a class action suit.
The floor had been set on those suits by the prior case. There was another one going on concurrently.
We didn't think it would settle before ours did. It did.
And basically, like, each of these in-class action, each suit in the same space kind of sets the floor for the next settlement. So it just keeps going up.
And they settled for 10 times what the last one did. So all of our reserving was shot.
And it was big dollars. Like, really,, really multimillion dollar change in reserves.

So that was a huge shock.

So I thought back to the last quarterly reserving meeting where I presented that claim.

And I remember the CFO nodding as he's hearing me give a view on it.

We're holding this for it right now.

Here's our reasoning for it.

Yes, there's uncertainty, but we feel pretty good about that. And six weeks later, I come back about 10 times as high, nine times higher actually.
And, you know, it's like, how certain was I when I made that statement? How much was I trying to tell him like, there's no issue here, you know, move along versus just being like, look, this is what we think it is. The reality is there's risk.
And I don't know. I think this is what it is.
We're making our best efforts. Here's all the data behind that, but anything can still happen because it's a heated situation.
I think that's really critical. I think the people who are willing to admit that and take the feedback and take the guidance and listen to your people, like that's the first two of the three pieces of advice.
One is your, your employees have the answers and the others, your customers have the answers. Like you have to listen to your customers and you have to listen to your people.
And if you tune them out or you tell them what they think, or you tell them what the final answer is when it's still really early on and there's room for things to move around you're going to fail and that's i think that's a universal truth in leadership yeah i um we need problem solvers not people with the answers because the answers aren't the same anymore it's a new test it's a whole new test this isn't this isn't you know you know in the you even look 10 years ago, right? Look five years ago, the answers, the test was the same test. Maybe a couple of the questions changed, but the same test, it's a completely different test today.
We're not taking the same, the Scantron looks different. You know, there's no Scantron.
We're not even using number two pencils anymore, right? Like this is a completely different thing. And, you know, I think, I think it is at all times, eyes wide open, ears open, listening, learning, reacting.
And really, what leadership is, is less about having the answers and more about willing to take responsibility. And that's, that's what it is, I think.
Yeah. And I'm hoping that our, our, our agency owners who are listening to this, uh, you know, our producers who are writing accounts and on the front lines, talking to businesses and leaders of businesses who are addressing these exact concerns, um, carriers working with agents, understanding, trying to develop.
I just, you know, I look at, at the, at what the role insurance is going to play

in the next five to 10 years in our society. I don't know that there are very many industries as important to our future as insurance.
And I think both our carrier professionals, our vendors and our, and our agency force needs to take that responsibility seriously, because this is this. Comp is going to be a disaster.
A disaster. BI, what happens when the riots are over and they finally have a chance to come back to the BI discussions and they start trying to help these companies with their BI? It could change everything, right? BI may not have been triggered by coronavirus, and I have a view on that, but it would be by rioting.
100%? It would be by looting. 100%.
Yeah. 100%.
So that's a no-brainer. But what I'm talking about is they're going to come back to these discussions they were having pre-rioting about whether or not BI is covered in COVID and whether or not carriers will just be a mechanism for distributing these dollars and all

these different discussions they've had. And, you know, I don't, you know, I'm very interested in

your opinion on that because I have my own as well. But like, there are going to be crazy

decisions made that are passed down to insurance organizations of all sizes, agents, carriers,

and their vendors. And we have to be flexible.
And we need to step up because, you know, people's lives will be changed by the work that we do over the next five to ten years yeah i think that is absolutely right there's no question about that and this is a major um a major shift point for us and like you know the book goes into a lot of like technology and cx kind of stuff like customer experience stuff and and that's no question that's been pressured to change. We're talking about some more fundamental kind of economic demand side paradigm shifting type stuff to use lots of cliches, but that's the reality.
I can't remember if we had talked about this offline, but like one of the other big things I've been talking about with people is, you know, there's been lots of talk about AVs, autonomous vehicles. So, you know, the move to autonomous vehicles, shared vehicles, is personal car ownership going to go away? Or if you still have a car, but it's autonomous, it shifts from personal auto to product liability, you know, kind of coverage.
So for the personal auto insurers, that's a big question mark. And a lot of them have been playing around and thinking about, you know, what do they do long-term? Like CSAA, the AAA carrier out in California, you know, they're in the book and they talk about that as one of the things that they think about.
Well, I don't care what any predictions are that they're like, oh, in two years, every car's gonna be autonomous. The reality is that's still a ways off.
And until like there are enough cars off the road that are personally owned or that are autonomous. And so it's like, you know, instead of personal auto, that's a ways off like decade plus easily.
I would say decades, but who knows, but it's a while. The average car on the road is 12 years old.
So you at least need to turn over the fleet once to have a meaningful change here. But now you have something that suddenly is threatening personal car ownership for a different reason in the here and now that's not dependent on tech.
And that's everyone suddenly is at home, like tons of coverage of that, you know, like miles driven down, frequencies down, all that. There's lots of give backs and like that's, that's pretty widely known.

Well, the question is what happens as people start to go back to work

simultaneously,

you have companies that were never for remote work that had to be okay with

it,

had to put all the tools in place and saw what happened as a result.

And you do have a lot of companies that are like, actually,

we are going to be flexible on where people work. Oh,

we can give up all these leases like nationwide.

They're keeping four campuses.

They're walking out of all their other leases.

Thank you. like actually we are going to be flexible on where people work oh we can give up all these leases like nationwide they're keeping four campuses they're walking out of all their other leases state auto has two campuses in um in columbus alone like they've got their main building then they had additional space they're already out of the additional space they're redoing parts of their headquarters and consolidating in like a lot of carriers are looking at giving up their leases and and then you know that stretches to other industries like twitter and facebook have already said that i know people in the creative world so a really interesting interview with um i think it was one with ralph gilles who's the head of design for fiat chrysler globally and he's like we started to see designs coming out of our designers like we've never like everyone has a style so you kind of expect when they're on this project like their sketch is going to look like x is like they're coming up with totally new design languages for their style because they're working from home so a lot of companies are thinking about that now what happens if you're you know two income or one income earning family with two cars because those cars were going in different directions at the same time you had to have two cars what if you're working from home now so the average number of cars per person in the us is 0.83 what if that drops to 0.8 so like not a big shift or 0.75 again like numerically that doesn't sound like a lot that's billions of dollars personal auto premium so you start to think about that like it's not avs it's not 20 30 years out that's right now it's you know the average lease is three years so how many of those cars like we're thinking about it my wife and i are both working from home my son goes to school in town so it's like do we need to have two cars so like mine's paid off so when her lease is up i don't know you know maybe maybe we downsize to one car i ride my bike or run a lot of places too so like do we need cars so there are interesting new discussion points that are going to come up that i i think the industry's in for some interesting shifts yeah yeah i um you know and then, and the other interesting part is, is cars go, you know, it's, there's so many things here.
Like just think about as cars go electric, I've insured two Teslas in the last two weeks. And right now the way Teslas get rated are as this highly expensive and yeah, they're expensive to fix.
And they're being, I think, I think they're being're being overrated personally but as as rating history starts to extend and we start to see what the crash history is on these things um and more uh more auto mechanics are able to repair teslas for less i mean today they get what one in every thousand cars that comes in 10 000 cars that comes into an auto shop is a Tesla. So they don't know what they're dealing with, but as these cars become more frequent, the parts are on hand, the technicians, um, understand what they're dealing with more.
The cost of repair will go down. And I think what we're going to see is a dramatic, you know, I think driven cars will see, we'll also see a dramatic decrease in the amount of claims that we have because anyone who's ever driven or sat in a Tesla, it's almost hard to crash.
Like it's hard. I mean, I just look at the technology in my wife's Ford Explorer.
If I get too close to the car in front of me, it literally breaks for me. And I'm like, what the heck is going on? So, you know, this kind of stuff is going to be bringing, is changing the dynamic of these companies and how we serve, you know, how we serve our clients.
Where do agents, you know, since agents are probably the primary listeners to this show, where do they spend their time? If you're hawking home and autos right now, you need to have a real value proposition besides price because that market you know it's just think of what you're able to pull from lexus nexus these days just if the carrier has a lexus nexus not if they have all the other databases built in i mean you it's going to be pretty soon if you have the vin you need nothing else yeah nothing else that's it that's all you need why do you even need the driver if the car drives itself it's a tesla why do you need to know who the driver is yeah yeah i mean look i just got a competitive quote um i didn't provide them any information i used to be insured by that carrier like a decade ago and i they even knew what my coverages were now for people in the industry maybe like dude maybe they're like, dude, that's old hat. But I was like, okay, I downloaded my deck page because I'm like, I got to make sure.
And it's like, oh, how do they know what my coverage is? Well, because it's all out there. It's all through the DMV, and that's registered information.
It's available. So, yeah, I mean, how are you going to continue to access the information that's there, but also thinking about how the exposures change? Like what we were just talking about is a frequency versus severity question.
And it becomes more of a med pay issue. Like, yeah, the cost of repairing any car with advanced technology, like advanced safety equipment is expensive, but the real issue is going to be on the med pay side.
And whether, you know, you're, medical bills are expensive. There's no question about that.
And even more complicated today. So what's your understanding of bodily injury? What if people stop getting hurt in car accidents? Well, so there's that question too.
So then like, there's no question. There's a huge shift potentially coming in what auto accidents end up looking like in the actuarial experience for them.
And I agree with you on Tesla. Plus like the sensors come down and they're highly aluminum intensive and that's very expensive to repair.
But Ford did that with the F-150 and they're going through process with that and other car companies will continue to do that. Same thing with carbon fiber.
so like yeah maybe five or ten years out but the general body shop space can't deal with those cars yet but they will be able to like so you know as a technology and the ability to work with it comes out it's like a kia stinger i saw a repair on a front end collision with you know the five mile per hour bumpers activated so not like not a major accident it's like 39 000 yeah which is like that car barely costs more than that so it's not just teslas i think there's 100 you know i 100 agree with that i like to use tesla because everyone gets no but it's perfect but like the stinger's not getting rated like a tesla no and and that's what i understand is is you know and then you look at you know at at like state minimums, right? I mean, some states still have like 15, 10, 15,000 state minimums. New York is 25,000 state minimum.
You can't repair a fender bender on $25,000. Like you said, you bump into a Kia, a Kia, and, and you, now your at fault liability is maxed out.
Yeah. And, you know, I, I, I, this guy I insured the other day, um, he had, he had a rear end accident.
He rear ended, um, a Mercedes $27,000. It was a 20 mile per hour.
Like he was going 20 miles an hour, slammed on his brakes. It was, it was at, it was in a city environment, $27,000 because of all the sensors and get the bumper back on.
And, and if he had state men's, he's coming out of pocket for that. Yeah.
And that's just the Mercedes. It's not even his car, right? Yeah.
That's not the damage to his car. That's just the damage to the car that he hit.
So it's like, you think about that, you're like, if frequency goes way down,

but severity is way up, how does that impact things? I mean, I'm not an actuary, so I don't understand all the dynamics of it. But I do know that things are a changing.
And I think to bring

this back to your book, I think what you're talking about in here is that all these obstacles

are solvable. And that mindset that you outline, I think is important because too often, I think when someone like you would come on a show like this, what people are really dialed in for is give me the three-step process.
What's the three-step process that gets me to that solution? It's like, no, like, let's talk about the mindset. Let's talk about how they're doing it.
And then you can apply those learnings and methodologies to your own business, but you're not getting a checklist to the answer. Yeah.
And so this is, this is when I get into the discussion about like, wait, your first two books are self-help and then this one's business. It's like, okay, well, I've been in insurance for 20 years.
So like, this is more in my home space and the self-help stuff. There's a reason why I wrote those, but I kind of see them as the same.
It's like the first two books, self-help for an individual. This is self-help, but the individual is an insurer or an industry, if you will.
And, but the approach to me is the same. Like there are self-help books that are out there that are like workbooks, you know, answer these three questions and add the sentences together.
And then you have your life mission statement or whatever might not work that way they're introspective I think this is the same story it's like and that's why I'm not like question is fraud answer is shift done exactly like CNA did it's like no you're not CNA so it can't be exactly the way CNA did it even just the people are different so it is like well what are you facing okay here are some things you need to think about to guide you. Like how do you engage with your customers to learn more instead of presuming what they want? Sheffy from Coverage said in their weekly roundup the other day, she's like, this is an industry within different customers.
If you're working on things that customers don't care about, stop it. And obviously there's some things you have to work on that customers don't care about.
Like, so it's, it's not as black and white in that, but if it's a CX thing, if it's a customer facing thing, stop it. Cause they don't care.
Yeah. So why are you, because you said they care? Well, did they say that? And we've all been guilty of that.
You know, I worked on something with, uh, like the fourth thing customers wanted was what we were working on. And of course it got spun in the presentations.
Like one of the top five things is like, no, it's like 20% wanted that. 80% wanted the first thing and you're not even paying attention to that because that felt too hard.
You know, it's, so one, I have to give a shout out to Chevy. I adore her work.
I also disagree with her a lot of times, but she is one of the best provocateurs in our entire industry. And I know it was a provocative statement.
Yeah, she's the best at those. Her and Avi.
But she's knocked it wrong. Two of them.
And I really like, I once had, Avi called me one time, and we were just, you know not out of the blue, but, and we were just talking and we probably talked for like two and a half hours, just, just wrapping. I never talked to him before.
He's another one of those guys. And, and Jeff is the same way.
But, um, to her point, you know, that's been one of the biggest lessons that I've learned owning my own agency is when I started building this thing, I was like, this is what customers want and this and this. And at the end of the day, you know what customers want? To not have to think about this.
That's it. They don't care if you do it in paper.
They don't care about e-sign. They don't care about any of that crap.
Anyone, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, they use it, but they use whatever you tell them to use. If I sent them an application in the mail and said, hey hey sign it and stick it in the mail and send it

back they'll be like okay no problem I'm good okay no problem like they want you know phone all this stuff like it's yes there is a shift in what in some of the things but what they really want is to not have to worry about this they want to know that it's taken care of and that to me has been this mind shift where I was working on all this stuff and this funnels and this automation and I'm looking at the analytics and I'm going no one gives a shit yeah they're not even looking at the freaking video proposal things that I'm they're not even watching them yeah and uh and and like I just think it's crazy because I know people,

and I'm sure they're not lying.

This is just one case study to your point there.

Was, or one thing,

video proposals are the future of personal lines insurance.

I had someone say that.

And I know that that person believes it,

and I love that person to death,

and I do not doubt that their experience has been that.

My experience thus far could not be farther from the truth. You know, I've sold every personalized policy I've sold so far has been emailing a PDF and jumping on the phone with them.
Not Zoom, not video proposals. I even sold one belly to belly across the kitchen table.
like I guess you, you know, so from my perspective, I completely agree with you, like, and Sheffy for that matter, like, we need to stop working on the shit that we're being told we should work on and work on the stuff that our clients actually want us to work on. Right, right.
And, and I think they want choice in that. And that came out in the USAA case is like, if someone wants to talk to us, we need to do that.
And if they don't, we need to do that too. And if they want one and switch to the other or, or a CSA, like the case there is about offering Lyft vouchers instead of a rental car.
Cause not everyone wants to rent. Like I lived in the city in Boston.
I couldn't get a rental car cause I couldn't park it anywhere. And the insurer probably wouldn't have paid for me to put it in a lot for like 40 bucks.
Yep. So I don't want a rental car, but Lyft didn't exist back then, but I would have loved to get Lyft credits.
I love that. But you know what? Sometimes you need both.
And they initially were like, it's one or the other. And they're like, oh, the body shop called them last minute after they returned the rental car to be like, oh, you know what? We just found a problem with the pain.
It needs, you know, we need to touch it up and let it cure for another day. They're like, well, now I don't have a rental car and the place just closed.
I need a ride. Well, how about we get flexible because they chose one path.
We're not going to lock them into that because our intention is to get them from point A to point B in their life because that's what the coverage should be about. So having that flexibility.
And on the video stuff, man, I hope it doesn't go that way. My bank just sent me an escrow analysis as a video.
I'm like, I don't have 12 minutes. I just need to know what the number is like, do your video, but can you just send me the information? I don't want to sit through this and it's like flowers and the sun is shining.
I'm like, you're taking more money from me. I don't need the little animation.
Can you just tell me what it costs? Yeah. Yeah.
I get, I, I, I, and there are people who want that, right? And there are people who want that. And I think, you know, just to kind of wrap this conversation up, which has been tremendous, we could talk for another hour.
But like, I think that you said it. This is not a time for hubris.
It's a time for humility. And I think a willingness to be flexible to what your customers want knowing that if you have 10 customers that could be 10 different customer experiences 10 different paths yeah you go 10 for 10 all different and being able to receive all of them uh that takes humility because oftentimes we want to shove them down a path because our hubris tells us that's the way it should be.
And I think that's the failing because I say all this, yet the most recent proposal, which I'm hoping the guy signs today or tomorrow, was a video proposal. That's what he wanted.
He said, I don't want to get on the phone. I'd rather email or text.
So, I did a video proposal for him. But the first 20 that I signed, they not now a single one of them wanted it, nor did they care.
And, you know, so it's like, it's, it is about, I think, having the humility to be flexible. Yeah, I think you're completely right on that.
And I just couldn't agree with that point more. Yeah.
No, I, that's awesome. Yeah, we could totally talk for hours.
And then we we can bring Avi in and go for like six hours. That'd be fun.
So, um, all right. So they, people have listened to the show.
They're obviously bought into what you're doing. They want to get the book.
They want to learn more about you. Where do they do that? So the book's available everywhere.
Um, pre-order right now coming out June 24th and you can, uh, you know,le, Audible, like all that, the Audible's coming. Or you just go to future-of-insurance.com.
You got to use the dashes. And you learn more about the book.
You can see the carriers that are in it. You can get a link to the pre-orders and I'm adding them as each one of those channels comes online.
So it's future-of-insurance.com. Sweet.
So we'll have the links up in the show notes. If that doesn't, if you can't remember that, although you should be able to remember that, um, or just go to Amazon and pre-order the book and push, push the rankings up.
You want to have a, uh, a bestseller here on the show. We always like to give everyone a bestseller and I don't think you can go wrong guys.
I mean, I'm telling you, like, even if you're an agent and you don't nerd out on the carrier stuff, you're going to learn how to solve problems. I've already, you know, I shouldn't say learn how to solve problems, but you're going to learn how these companies are solving problems.
I'm telling you, it's going to open your eyes to what I think is, and obviously what Brian does as well, is how we are going to get past these obstacles moving forward. Yeah.
And maybe some of those listeners will be in round two of the book because I do believe we as an industry have the capacity and the intelligence to keep moving this forward. And there's cool insights going on every day.
And I want to keep hearing them. So yeah, I want people to get the book, but I want them to do something with it.
And then I want to hear from them. I want to know how you're, how you're innovating, how you're evolving and changing, despite all that we face.
Yeah. So guys, great follow on LinkedIn, follow on LinkedIn, get on the newsletter, go, go check everything out.
I'll have all the links up in the show notes, but absolutely grab this book. You're not gonna, you're not gonna be disappointed and, and connect with Brian on LinkedIn because always sharing good stuff and that's I think where I originally just came across your work and

been a fan ever since man so thanks for spending some time with us yeah thanks a lot Ryan and ditto man Thank you. So close twice as many deals by this time next week.
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