As a growing number of insurance carriers attempt to sell small-business coverage direct to consumers, agents will need to be more than mere policy peddlers and price shoppers to remain relevant for their customers.
That's the message I delivered to the “2014 Organic Growth Exchange,” a conference for independent agents held earlier this month in Arizona. I realized early on that I was preaching to the choir with this assembly, made up largely of members of the Beyond Insurance Global Network, described on its website as an “exclusive peer-to-peer group of best-in-class independent agencies and brokers that serve their clients as diagnostic, consultative Trusted Risk Advisors.”
The group was launched by Scott Addis, president of The Addis Group in King of Prussia, Pa., who invited me to deliver the keynote address at his event. I met Scott in 2003, when, as Editor in Chief of National Underwriter, I profiled him and outlined his agency's loss-control emphasis. In that story, I highlighted the fact that NU had chosen The Addis Group as the year's “Commercial Insurance Agency of the Year” even though Scott insisted his firm did not sell insurance for a living. Instead, he positioned Addis as the risk manager for its clients.
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