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Transcript

Ben Markland: All right. Thanks for joining us, everyone. We are doing our Insurance Leadership Podcast here this week from the ICMG conference in Tampa, Florida.

And we're really excited we get to sit face to face with some of our guests this week. So we're excited about that. Doesn't always happen. We've got people from all over the country.

Today I've got with me Alicia Pequeno. She's with Zurich of North America. She's from Pennsylvania, so she got to get out of the cold to come down here and see us. She's the national distribution manager of consumer solutions manager for Accident health. That's a mouthful.

So, but, you know, we've talked with Alicia. She's got a pretty interesting history. So, Alicia, I want to start with the first question. Tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry. And now you have a background in television and news, which is very interesting. And now you've kind of transitioned to insurance and been doing that for a while. So tell us a little bit about what inspired you with this career shift.

Alisha Pequeno: Sure. I think, you know, nobody goes to college or graduates high school and thinks they're going to get into insurance, right? So we all have really interesting stories. But my story is I graduated college. I wanted to write for a newspaper. Realized that newspapers were kind of dying at that time, and got into television news.

And so I did that for about a decade. I was a reporter. I was a producer. I anchored a morning show in a tiny little town in Texas. And then I got really homesick for the northeast, for the fall and the seasons. And so I moved home without a job, and I started freelancing. I did traffic part time at a TV station, and at the same time, I was doing some freelance writing.

And so I was writing articles for an insurance marketing company, after a few months of doing that, they offered me a full time position. And so I came on board with, originally I was just doing PR and marketing communications. I branched out to recruiting agents. That company, when I started, there was only 12 people.

It was Ideal Concepts. And by the time I left, ten years later, we had grown to about 200 employees. Oh, wow. And so I sort of followed my career. My job's got bigger and bigger as the company got bigger and bigger. And so at some point I started doing business development for them. And so that was basically career relationships.

They were a large distribution company, doing individual health insurance. And so I started working with, by the time I left, we probably had 150 different carriers that we sold. And so I would go out, find those carriers, negotiate, you know, the commissions on those, and bring those market.

Ben Markland: So you dealt with 150 different carriers?

Alisha Pequeno: Yes. That's interesting.

Ben Markland: What did you find when you're working with those carriers? Like, were you able to kind of repeat from the same template, or is this the I know every everyone's got a little different flavor out there. And we you know, we work with a lot of carriers as well. Not near that many. But that's interesting. I'm curious what are what were some challenges and kind of figuring out how to get in the door with each carrier? Or did you find, like a secret sauce that you could kind of rinse and repeat?

Alisha Pequeno: I mean, you definitely start with the same conversation. But the really interesting thing to me was how the industry changed in those ten years. So when I first started, it was right when ACA was kind of launched. And so there was only a few carriers in the market, right? And they covered the entire country, UnitedHealthCare, Cigna, whoever else.

And then, as you know, now, it's a lot more, there's a lot smaller carriers, there's a lot of very local carriers. And so when we started, we only had a handful of carriers, five carriers, and we could cover the entire country. And then I started to have to meet with, like, these tiny little carriers, Harvard pilgrim who's in two states up north, you know, and I found that I had to actually, in the beginning days, had to educate them on what FMO was, what a field marketing organization is, and why they should pay us an override.

I remember one of the one of the biggest carriers now, when I first met with them, they were a brand new carrier, and I remember them asking me, but why would we pay you more than we pay like a field agent? And having to explain to them that we're going to bring you volume? It's one contract.

We take care of everything we do, all the licensing we do, all the administration. And that's why you're going to pay a small, but literally having to define what an FMO is and what an override is. And then there was some tough years there where no carriers wanted to pay overrides. There was a years where carriers didn't want to pay any commissions at all.

And those were really difficult years to have conversations on. Why should we pay you? Everyone can just go to health care.com and buy or healthcare.gov and buy, insurance. And having to really explain the value of what we brought to the table. So, you know, the industry again, it's up and down, constantly. And so having to explain that to carriers and work with carriers throughout, that was really interesting to me.

Ben Markland: Yeah. I mean, I think that's that's is an interesting concept that you have to somehow prove to the distributor of a product that they need a sales team in front of them, right? So they think, hey, why would someone come to to you versus coming directly to us? But, you know, that's kind of taken the mentality of we're the only ones out there.

And that's not the case. Yeah. So you know, we love working with farmers as well. And we certainly see their value. And and I just love the, the consolidation of of what what a team like you guys can do to take off of us or you know, the carrier in general say, hey, look, instead of us training the 500 field agents, we can Alicia out there and she gets the team to get it all.

All straight on the straight and narrow.

Alisha Pequeno: Yeah, sure. Stuff.

Ben Markland: And like you said, that equals volume.

Alisha Pequeno: So that's. Luckily, the industry has definitely changed since then. And I think carriers obviously know the value of of marketing organizations and brokerages.

Ben Markland: Now, are you seeing a lot of the commissions coming back on the individual stuff that that kind of went away?

Alisha Pequeno: Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's in waves. It depends on the administration. Like what what president is in there. That's right. It depends on how much money they made last year versus this year. And so, but I think it's, it's starting to stabilize the past few years that I worked, with ideal concepts that started to stabilize.

And so things kind of leveled out.

Ben Markland: Now, how would you guys react to that if you had a carrier that was paying an override? And then maybe they had a bad year and they decide the way to cut the cost is we're going to just get rid of the override. How would you how would you guys react to that does that mean no more sales or.

Alisha Pequeno: Yeah, unfortunately, you know, you can't work for free. That's right. And and it was it's really insulting to ask a brokerage to, to continue to enroll people and not pay them. And it's really the only industry you would do that in, right? I mean, you wouldn't go to a lawyer and say, can you do this for free?

I mean, I know there's like pro bono cases, but like, outside of a charity case, you wouldn't ask anyone else to work for free. And that's what a lot of the carriers were doing, for a while there, but I think they were also trying to not only cut costs, but there might have been some carriers who were trying to curb the number of enrollees they got.

You know, they were overloaded and, you know, didn't want the business.

Ben Markland: Right.

Alisha Pequeno: And so at the same time, there were carriers, you know, their commissions were cut down. And so one way to kind of help, bring in some revenue was to branch out to supplemental health products. And so we did a lot of that at that company.

Ben Markland: Gotcha. That's fantastic. Because you led me into my next question. So, one of the things, Alicia, that you've told us about was that you really, valued working with mentors. And I know your journey to Zurich kind of brought you under some mentors that that really kind of shaped your career. Tell us, give us a little bit of advice for others about finding and learning from a mentor.

Alisha Pequeno: Sure. Absolutely. So I again, unique journey. We all have one. But when I was at Ideal Concepts, I ended up actually marrying the president of the company. Okay. That's one. And that kind of became a conflict of interest, obviously. And so once we got married, we decided that I would go out and find another job, couldn't go work for another brokerage because that would be in direct competition with my husband's company.

And so, the first thing that I did was turn to my LinkedIn page, and the connections I had already made, I'd already worked with 150 carriers, like I said. And so I had contacts out there. And instead of going to, you know, Indeed or something like that, I just immediately reached out to my contacts and said, do you have any positions I'm looking for business development or sales?

Or a do you know anyone who is? And luckily, this industry, it's very small and and everyone I think is very supportive. And everyone, of course, sent me leads, jobs. The one in particular that I was very interested in is, Ronald Kowski and Chris Howard, who are both at Zurich.

They were previously at Chubb, and I worked with them very closely when I was at Ideal Concepts. I'd probably worked with them for 5 or 6 years at that point. And I had always admired them. And so when they left job and went to Zurich, that was one of the first people that I reached out to. And I just said, do you have anything?

Because in my life I found that if you find somebody that you enjoy working with, you'll probably like working for them, right? In addition, I admired both of them, both as human beings and men, and also, as, you know, their career paths. And I wanted to model my career after theirs. And so I figured, why not go straight to the source, work for them, learn from them. And that's what I did. So it took a little while because they didn't have a position available when I first asked them. It took about nine months. But I was persistent. And at the time I was doing other interviews with other companies. I turned down some offers, but I was really, really focused on getting with Zurich because of those two men. And luckily I worked out.

Ben Markland: Yeah, absolutely. You know, sometimes you meet people that, you know, wherever they go, they're just going to be successful. Yeah, not a bad thing.

Alisha Pequeno: Yeah. I was just going to say is, are you allowed to say that? Yeah. You ride their coattails, right? They're going to be successful and you admire them. And you think they're going to continue to be successful and you want to be successful. Why not? You know, attach yourself to them and grow and learn.

Ben Markland: Absolutely. Well, let's pivot a little bit to, what you're seeing in the insurance market right now. So I know, you know, you have, a close connection with the supplemental products. That's something that I know you do a lot with. What do you think are the products, technologies, strategies? You know, what is what is a game changer out there right now? What do you see kind of coming down the pipeline?

Alisha Pequeno: Sure. So there is, as there is every year, right in this world, there's some unrest, right? With a new president, a new administration and the new, laws and regulations coming out, there's going to be change. And I think change in the industry is always an opportunity.

So right now I feel like nobody really knows what's going to happen. Are they going to, keep the expanded subsidies? Are they going to make them smaller, or are they going to make open enrollment shorter?

Or are they going to loosen up the reins on short term health? You know, we're all not really sure. we need to try to prepare ourselves for that. And I think you can kind of strategize in that way. We know that health insurance is going to continue to be expensive, no matter which route the president takes.

And we know that people are going to continue to have large deductibles, that are unaffordable for some people and supplemental health. We know that that's going to continue to be important, to the industry, it's just a matter of which products are going to work for that.

And so I think that's what you're trying to figure out, like what's going to be the most attractive to people. What's the simplest to understand? And what's going to help people cover those gaps going forward.

And I think the other thing, the big word in the industry, in all industries is probably right now is AI. And how are people utilizing AI to help them help sales help their internal companies or, you know, and so I'm always interested talking to brokerages and technology companies and what they're doing with AI and what they're planning for the future.

Ben Markland: Yeah, there's there's a lot of people here this week that are doing exactly that. So I'm learning as well. Yeah. And it's funny what you mentioned about the premiums. And I didn't have a personal experience with it because I've had a job for the majority of my life and I've had employer sponsored health care. But my father recently, he's kind of in semi-retired, semi working for himself mode.

And he kind of got a little sticker shock, too, because if you're a working American and you want health care, you're going to pay for it. Yeah. And it's a it's a little bit of a shock from when you come from an employer. I just remember him saying, you know, this affordable health care isn't affordable at all. And I was like, yeah, well, you know.

Alisha Pequeno: Yeah, even the people who do have group coverage, you know, there's still care. Sorry. Companies are paying for that coverage and it's becoming more and more expensive for them. You know, when I worked for my old company, I used to actually shop for our group health insurance. Again, you started as a startup. You kind of wear many hats. And so I just kind of continue to do it even when we grow to 200 employees.

And it's it's devastating. You want to be able to give them health insurance, really good coverage with really low deductibles, really low co-pays, things like that. But sometimes it's just unaffordable. And so if you compare that health coverage with a gap plan or with an accident plan or some other type of coverage to help make it affordable for them, I think that's really important.

Ben Markland: So, listen, we talked about your background in television and news, and we know you're an effective communicator. So I like to just know what you think is a strategy or how you found when you're working with agents to most effectively communicate the value of the products that they're offering.

Alisha Pequeno: Yeah. Awesome. So I don't work directly with agents very much. I work with brokerages. I work with distributors like yourself. I do agent trainings, but a lot of times I'm not talking directly to the agents. And so that is actually sometimes a little difficult for me because I would like to talk to the agents. You know, you want to talk to the person who's talking to the client, and sometimes you know, there's 2 or 3 people in between.

There's might be a distributor and then an agency and then the agent. And so things get lost in communication. And so that is difficult sometimes. But I think having an open conversation all the time, I try to make myself available as often as I can. I try, to suggest trainings. If I hear a strategy from one brokerage, that they are, you know, comfortable with me sharing with another brokerage.

I'll do that. But I think, you know, I just want to be there to answer any questions. I want to be there to be a sounding board for the brokerages. Do you think this would work? Whenever we do, you know, for instance, you know, bonuses or things like that. I'm always asking the brokerage, what do you think would motivate agents?

I want their I want communication from that. I want feedback from them. And I think I learned that from working with 150 different carriers. I learned what kind of carrier representative I want to be. Because you had carriers who were really communicative and, like, you know, they you could call them any time they answer emails.

If they don't know the answer to a question, the let you know, but they'll get back to you. And that's the kind of communicator that I want to be. And then there's, you know, there's carrier representatives who you saw them once a year. Right? And that's it. And I don't want to be that person. That's right.

Ben Markland: Yeah. You know, we we had someone come speak to us not too long ago, and and what he was really pushing was what you kind of mentioned. Just just respond. And you know, in today's society I think the bar is extremely low. If you tell someone you're going to do something, if you just do it, a lot of people are shocked.

Yeah. If you tell someone you're gonna get back to them and you do it, people are shocked. The bar is so low. So it's it's kind of unfortunate, but you can set yourself apart by just doing what you say you're going to do. You don't have to have all the answers. Nobody has that expectation. But, you know, also working with a broker that doesn't truly understand your product puts you in a dangerous situation.

You end up doing damage control, right? So because they're going to sell it. And if something goes wrong, it's on a point somewhere else. Right. So you know, obviously that's the communication on that is important. And we've seen it a lot just with the amount of different brokers that we work with. And, you know, we love the ones that are there.

They're everything we do, every presentation we do, every email we send out there, they're calling us. So, you know, just getting in front of them. But, you know, there's there's all different flavors of people out there, too. Yeah, absolutely.

Alisha Pequeno: And I think that's it's, I'm trying to set Cedric apart in that way. Our products aren't that much different from another carrier. You know, there's only so many things. You know, you can't do a lot of unique stuff in the insurance world because of all the regulations. So you can have an accident plan and might be a little better than somebody else's accident plan. But if the service that you give is ten times better, if they like you, if they like how you communicate, if they feel that they trust you, you know, that's going to set you apart,

Ben Markland: Right. When, when they can relate an accident plan to Alicia. That's that's what matters about. Yeah. Right. So, Well, Alicia, I appreciate you joining us. It's great. Good learning a little bit more about you. We've worked together for a little while now, and, I've learned quite a bit today, but we appreciate you joining us. And for everyone out there, we appreciate you watching with us today. We'll see you again.