African-Americans Working To Recruit Young Minorities Into Insurance

In those days, Mr. Haywood noted, "it was difficult for a black man to get standard contracts." As a result, he added, his father was primarily involved in the nonstandard, high-risk market. "That has always been the challenge–getting standard contracts so that you can provide the best service possible and be competitive in your own community," he said.

When Mr. Haywood entered the insurance industry, he recalled, he was able to get contracts by making important connections through various associations.

He credited the Independent Insurance Agents of Indiana and its national parent (now known as the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America), as well as the CPCU Society and the National African-American Insurance Association (holding its annual meeting in Philadelphia this week) for helping him to get his career started.

Through these associations, Mr. Haywood said he was able to connect with people who could get contracts and business leads. Through the NAAIA (which he chaired from 2002-2004), he said he met other African-American agents and shared experiences, and thus was able to pattern his agency after their success.

Mr. Haywood followed in his father's footsteps at the start, but branched off to focus on the commercial side of the industry. His father, he said, gave him the foundation of his current business, but he has been able to "take it to the next level" in terms of the types of exposures covered and size of firms serviced.

In addition to insurance, his agency provides various risk management services and counts among its clients the Gary/Chicago Airport, as well as sizable nonprofits. Next year, he noted, his agency will celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Aubrey Branch, president of the independent agency Branch, Hernandez & Associates in Las Vegas, also credited relationships made through associations as helping him achieve success after he had questioned whether African-Americans could succeed in the insurance industry.

Mr. Branch, like Mr. Haywood's father, was a debit life insurance salesman early in his career. He moved to Las Vegas 15 years ago, obtained his p-c license and started his own agency with two other partners, who were white.

Speaking to the challenges he encountered, Mr. Branch said getting appointments with companies on the life side was "very easy," but "when it came down to where the money was on the commercial side, they made sure that was limited. Sometimes it kept you out of that arena."

Perception contributed to Mr. Branch's early struggles as well. He said he had not seen many African-American agents, and he was "almost under the impression that we didn't do it and couldn't do it."

The early years of the NAAIA (formed in 1997) and meetings with Mr. Haywood helped to show Mr. Branch (the group's immediate past chair) that African-Americans could succeed in insurance. He said that 12 years ago, he decided to make an investment in himself, traveling to Chicago to meet with Mr. Haywood, who introduced him to people in the industry.

Working with NAAIA, and putting together an organization of color where professionals could share common problems and experiences, was the turning point in his career, said Mr. Branch, who has since gone from insuring smaller "mom and pop shops" to working on accounts with large premiums attached–such as the MGM Mirage.

Such success has also allowed Mr. Branch to further his goal to bring more diversity to the industry–a vision he said was "not on a lot of people's priority lists" when he first started out.

Currently, he said, his agency is 100 percent minority-owned, run by Mr. Branch and his partner, Joe Hernandez. The agency's staff includes white males, women and people of color. "More than anything else," he said, "as much as we talk about diversity, I didn't want to just talk the talk."

Mr. Haywood also spoke about the goal of furthering diversity. He said one major accomplishment has been the fact that African-Americans are now able to interact with the various elements of the insurance industry and are viewed as just professionals. "Very good insurance professionals, who happen to be black–who happen to be African-American," he said.

Mr. Branch said he and other African-Americans have only ever wanted to "play in the same field as everyone else." He credited organizations such as IIABA with facilitating diversity and for saying, "we have to figure out a way to fix this."

Mr. Branch likened the struggle to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in baseball. It was a monumental achievement, but the challenge afterward became making it work for everybody.

Two ways to bridge this gap are effective communication and walking in the shoes of another person, according to Eileen Frank, president of the New York-based brokerage J.P. West Inc. Ms. Frank was the first woman to chair the Conference of Special Risk Underwriters. She also served as first vice president of APIW.

As an example of the need for communication, Ms. Frank cited a specific case regarding a young, bright and hard-working woman in human resources that she used to work with. The young woman's boss was disappointed in her work and assumed that she could not do the job. The woman, meanwhile, was waiting for the boss to explain the job to her, and when he did not, she assumed he harbored some sort of prejudice toward her.

Ms. Frank also knew the boss, and said she understood the challenges he faced in his position. The boss was an accounting expert but had recently assumed a managerial role in human resources.

Ms. Frank said she was able to foster communication between the two parties, and once that gap was bridged, the young woman turned into one of the boss' stars.

"There's still a divide, and people don't always cross the gap," Ms. Frank said. "Managers lose good people because they're not crossing the gap, and good people wind up not performing well because they're not communicating effectively with their managers."

Ms. Frank also noted that aside from communicating, understanding is necessary. Most people, she said, never put themselves in the shoes of the one Hispanic person or the African-American in the office and try to imagine what it is like to be surrounded by people who are not like them.

"Minorities in this country have learned that they just have to bite their lip and go in and do what they have to do to get the job done," she said. "But imagine how much of your energy and focus dissipates just trying to deal with the fact that you're isolated."

In this regard, Ms. Frank agreed that associations are helping. She said organizations such as the NAAIA and the Association of Professional Insurance Women provide networking for people who feel isolated. By being able to contact others who are, or have been, in the same situation, individuals are able to bridge their own gaps, she added.

Responsibility also lies with minority and women professionals who have had success in the industry, Ms. Frank added. Those who are company owners, or people of experience, she said, have to step up and "grab the hand of a young person, or a woman," and help them by explaining how they can advance their careers. "We have to teach, we have to preach. We have to struggle a little bit with trying to come up with ways to bridge the gap."

Mr. Branch spoke of the same obligations. He said he and his partner both feel a commitment to help people of color break into an industry that was closed to them for a long time. "As I told my partner, we both have a commitment and an objective to make sure that people of color understand the insurance industry," he said.

Trying to get young people in particular to understand insurance and view it as a possible career choice is a challenge for all within the industry, and this reality is no different for younger minorities.

Mr. Branch said he has a son who vowed not to go into the industry because he did not want to knock on doors and sell people insurance. When Mr. Branch got involved on the p-c side, he said his son began doing more backroom work for him, such as working with computers. His son is now a college graduate and is about to get certified as an employee benefits specialist.

Mr. Branch said his son found an area in the industry he liked, and, he added, that is the key to getting young people involved in the business. He said being an insurance professional is like being a doctor–there are many different specialties one can pursue.

Unfortunately, both Mr. Branch and Mr. Haywood noted, when younger minorities hear talk about insurance, they only think about being a salesman on the life side.

Associations are working to reach young minorities in high school and college to offer opportunities for internships, and to educate them about the wide choice of opportunities in the insurance industry.

Mr. Haywood, in stressing the areas open to young workers, said positions are available in human resources, legal, claims, underwriting and administration. For those with an entrepreneurial spirit, Mr. Haywood said they could be brokers or agents.

Speaking to further challenges that face minorities in insurance, Mr. Haywood cited access to the marketplace–and he said this challenge goes beyond accessing contracts. Minorities, he said, need to have strong marketing plans that allow them to get business before they can think about getting markets in which to place accounts.

Mr. Branch said focus is the key. People of color coming into the business, he said, need to find an area in which they want to concentrate, and then branch out from there. He said they need to educate themselves properly in how insurance works.

Ms. Frank suggested minorities should rise above some of the mechanisms that were originally set up to help them succeed.

"The very things that are put in place ostensibly to help people are, over time, converted into the things that obstruct them," she said, explaining that among workers, there is "always still the assumptions that you can't do–I don't know how to do, I won't do–the things that need to be done to move forward."

However, she added, "the reality is, too, there are still people out there who just don't open the doors," stating that efforts by entities such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprise and the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise, "in my view, often times are used to relegate people to be set aside, and marginalize them, minimize them, and not really allow for them to truly participate."

One obstacle that still rears its ugly head in insurance and in society in general is how minorities are viewed negatively by some individuals. For example, Ms. Frank said she has seen that handling of claims is sometimes different when dealing with minority clients. "We've had a couple of situations come up where claims adjusters essentially just said to clients the 'you people' kind of line."

Asked if she believes it is an industrywide problem, Ms. Frank said she does not represent every company, but she has seen such behavior from enough different insurers to generalize. "I think it's a regional problem," she said. "We write across the country, not just [in the New York area], and I see it more in the South than I see it here. It's ugly. It's very ugly."

As for discrimination against minorities in the workforce, Mr. Haywood said it has eased up, and part of that is attributable to carriers recognizing the shift in demographics in the country.

He said as America continues to "brown," with growth among minority groups, carriers look to work with Hispanic and African-American partners who can relate to such prospects. "That's really why you see diversity programs," he said. "It makes good business sense."