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Transcript

Ben Markland: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Insurance Leadership Podcast and welcome to 2026. Agents this year aren't necessarily selling more products, they're solving more problems, and they're doing better, so today's episode is about change, what was needed in the market and we've got a GA here that we're really excited to bring in, and tell us a little bit about how he came to be.

Alright, we're pleased to have Mark Lampen with us today on the Insurance Leadership Podcast. Mark is a GA that's worked with us for how many years now is Mark?

Mark Lampen: Probably been 12, 13 years with Morgan.

Ben Markland: 12, 13 years. And his son works with us now as well.

Mark Lampen: Yeah, Brent.

Ben Markland: Good friends with Brent. We like to pick Mark's brain a little bit. Mark's been on our podcast before, but if you haven't seen our podcast before, mark, let's start out a little bit. Just let us know how you got into the industry.

Mark Lampen: Yeah, it wasn't planned at all of course. Graduated college and needed a job, so the health insurance business found me. Started working on Golden Rule Insurance back in [00:01:00] 91, so been 34 years in the business. So I've seen a lot of changes and stuff and started actually on the service side, which looking back on it was great for the sales aspect. So I got to see what happens behind the scenes with brokers and stuff. We dealt a lot with the brokers back then with Golden Rule and so they gave me a good background of what brokers were expecting when they're calling in, they need help, so and so forth.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: So that transitioned into the sales side about two, three years later with Golden Rule Insurance, and it's been a fun ride ever since.

Ben Markland: You've been in the business a long time, I think you said 34 years. Your firm is health insurance specialist and I know you've been on the podcast before. What's keeping you engaged in the industry right now? What's something that kind of excites you?

Mark Lampen: There's a lot of things that actually excite me. I see a lot of changes going on. I see a lot of products coming out that could help the consumers both on the group and the individual side. And so it's the new things that are coming up that we could market to the brokers to take to their clients [00:02:00] and help 'em out. We've seen some incredible rate increases this year, unfortunately. And products like the Morgan White Gap plan has been a savior for a lot of groups out there. So being able to go and talk with a broker and talk to their clients, saving a 10 person group, 20, 30, $40,000 a year on the premium. It is pretty exciting when I can help a bottom line, being a small business employer myself, those are real dollars, real savings and stuff and it's, as health insurance is the number two or three item that costs the businesses the most.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: When you can help their bottom line by that much, it, that really motivates me, and I wanna go out and help more and more small, medium sized businesses save that sort of money.

Ben Markland: Great. I know we were talking a little bit earlier about AI. I know you guys are working with a carrier that's doing some AI underwriting.

Mark Lampen: Yes.

Ben Markland: And with how we work with carriers, we're seeing a lot of AI, not necessarily even just on the underwritings side, but even on the service side, we're seeing AI [00:03:00] agents as something that's actually, it's becoming a reality now. What are your thoughts on AI? Is this something that, that scares you? Is this something you wanna put into your back pocket? What do you feel about AI right now?

Mark Lampen: Yeah, I think AI, it's gonna be, of course, it's grown and growing and how it manifests over time. We'll see. But yes, one of our carriers uses AI underwriting, which is phenomenal, we could get firm rates on a level funded case within minutes, which, we pride ourselves on service. So if we get those quotes turned around to the agents, so on and so forth, it helps. But what they really pull out of that AI underwriting is phenomenal to zone in on the rates, but also there's no paper apps, so everything's done electronically, which speeds things up.

Three, four years ago we'd have a new group come into, it'd be just a stack of paper. Just being filled out. That's all of course been eliminated over time but the quickness of some of these carriers turning around, not only quotes, but implementing the new business with AI is pretty, amazing and who knows what it's gonna be five [00:04:00] years from now, 10 years from now. Like you look back on the internet, how it's evolved over the last 20 years. It's crazy. Now we're buying stuff. I don't even go to the malls anymore, thank God. I just do all my shopping online.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: Who knows where AI's gonna go even further, but if you're not staying up with it, if a carrier's not staying up with it and what it can do to help, speed things up time. They're gonna be missing out on something.

Ben Markland: Yeah. And I know you work with a lot of agents and you mentioned the transition from really paper applications to everything being more kind of tech-centric. Do you see that as a barrier to entry for some of these agents that if they're not up with the times, they're falling behind, right?

Mark Lampen: Yes, absolutely. And you mentioned my son who's been worth me for six years now, and i'm old school, so anytime there's a tech problem, how do I do something? I'm calling him in.

Ben Markland: Call Brent.

Mark Lampen: So yeah, you just calling the son to help out and you really need to do that. I'm trying to, challenge myself to stay up with that. And I would recommend [00:05:00] any carrier, any broker. You've gotta stay up with that stuff to help service. The one thing we can't get back is time. Keeping up with the technology and stuff, it's just gonna make things so much smoother. Put more business on your books. Service your clients a lot. So on and so forth.

Ben Markland: Yeah. And Mark, I'm gonna swell your head a little bit here because I think you mentioned you're old school, and I think really you're the perfect segue from an the old school broker, but yet, like you mentioned, you're open to technology.

Mark Lampen: Yes.

Ben Markland: And I think, actually we talked about this in one of our last podcasts we did is, what is the younger generation of agents, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses? And, obviously strengths being technology. They're born into it. They were never without a cell phone. They were never without the internet. But on the flip side of that, just the being able to look someone in the face and have a conversation or make a presentation in front of somebody when maybe their career started on Microsoft teams. And, we're seeing that the younger generation, the skills that maybe are taken for granted with the old school [00:06:00] guys of just the relationships and the handshakes and,

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: Maybe have a drink at a bar and talk about business. They're not as comfortable with that, whereas they may be exponentially more comfortable in technology, I envy what you've done as a GA to you're aligning yourself with the younger, the technology tech savvy. Yet you're still able to train these people how to embrace all these new things that are out there.

Mark Lampen: Yeah.

Ben Markland: I think that's a very important skill set to have. I think that's why you're successful.

Mark Lampen: Yeah. Thank you for that but I believe sitting down around the table still, before COVID hit, my competitors were the other general agents or UHC rep or a Blue Cross rep, what have you. And I'd be walking out of an agent's office another rep would be walking in.

Ben Markland: Yeah, they are.

Mark Lampen: You don't see that anymore, so it's an advantage to me, is I go out and see the brokers visit new brokers and shake their hands and they're like, I haven't seen a company rep in here and I can't tell you how long. So you're right that face to face you get to know somebody better. It's one thing to do is zoom and I think that there's a definitely a need for it and COVID taught a that be a little bit more efficient. [00:07:00] But I think some of the brokers that we've developed our best relationships with, are the ones that were able to go out there, shake their hands, get to know them face to face. You can't replace that, that human touch. And I think that's what has gotten away from a lot of the successful people. It's easy to do a zoom. Granted, we do 'em all day long.

Ben Markland: Yeah.

Mark Lampen: But it's also nice to get outta the office and shake the hand and get to know the person.

Ben Markland: You're right. I think you gotta be able to do both 'cause what AI will never replace is sitting across the table from someone,

Mark Lampen: Yep, absolutely.

Ben Markland: And being their friend.

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: And that's how you build trust.

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: Anyways I appreciate that. Alright, so on that same note. Once again, going back to your brokers and all of them that you've recruited and cultivated throughout the years, what's in working closely with those brokers, what changes are you seeing as we head into the coming year that you think they need to be aware of?

Mark Lampen: Wow, they need to stay, I don't know if relevances the right word or not, but educated on what changes are going out there, not only in the industry, but what different carriers are [00:08:00] doing. We're seeing more and more of these level funded carriers come into the market that are not your BUCAs, you are not your Blue Cross Uniteds and stuff, and just being open-minded, just 'cause they don't have the BUCA name with it. Learn a little bit more about those level funded plans or learn more about Gap, how Gap can do it. You wouldn't believe the number of brokers we run into, they've heard maybe gap insurance, but they don't know how it works. So when we've seen some of these 20, 30, 40% rate increases this year, which I haven't seen rate increases like this ever, it's scary as a small business person to see that. But the job from a broker is to more than just deliver that, come up with solutions.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: Outside the box. And we've run into many brokers over the years trying to teach 'em the GAP strategy, but they just wanna stay in their lane, manage their book of business. You're not gonna be able to grow. In fact, we see a lot of brokers taking some of that business because they're showing 'em a gap solution. These brokers need to sit there and have an open mind, [00:09:00] with other opportunities out there and not just learn about it, talk to the company reps. We tell brokers, Hey, don't believe me. Let's talk to some of the brokers that we've worked with over the years, here's some referrals. That helps sell other brokers for us is when we could give out those referrals and they they do a great job. We get brokers all the time saying, you need to talk to about the gap plan, they're not familiar with it. So just coming up with those outside the box thinkings on how to approach group renewals and stuff. Is what they need to do.

Ben Markland: Tell me, I know GAP is really that's your probably top strategy, but are you approaching any other strategies for sale? We've got agents now that are selling IKRAs, we've got agents doing reference based pricing. Are there other strategies that you're proposing or is Gap where you really like your hat?

Mark Lampen: We sit there, we try to stay in our lane. We don't wanna be everything to everybody.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: Gap is probably 80% of our business. Absolutely. And it's, we're growing it by 15, [00:10:00] 20% a year. So it's not slowing down, these out-of-pockets are going higher and higher for these groups. The rates, as we talked about, are getting outta control. That's our main strategy. But we do have some other products. We got some level funded. We're eager to hopefully get the in pocket plan back. I think that would be a big home run again. And for us is we get the individual gap plan back in 2026, hopefully. So we just try to stay in our lane. We're not trying to be everything to everybody. There's some other much bigger brokerages that want to do the dental division, this and that, and that's great but, we just pretty much stay in our lane.

Ben Markland: Yeah. So Mark you mentioned in Pocket plan, which is an individual gap plan that we had available for a short amount of time and we're now working on getting this back to market. But I think that really begs the question. I know you said you're not everything for everybody, but you really, when that product came out. Your focus went from really what you'd been doing for a long time in group insurance and you changed, you switched switched [00:11:00] path a little bit and really focused on individuals and you were really one of the first adopters of that product for us, and you gained a lot of momentum in a short period of time, so tell me a little bit about your strategy and how you were able to really just switch gears because really a lot of times the group broker and the individual broker is not the same person, he probably might not even work for the same agency.

Mark Lampen: So we got heavily involved in gap insurance about, I don't know, 12, 14 years ago, right when Obamacare was coming in and stuff, we saw some changes but before that, we did a lot of individual, we were doing millions and millions of dollars of individual, major medical business, some curious.

Ben Markland: It wasn't completely foreign to you.

Mark Lampen: It wasn't foreign, but, we've seen the writing on the wall commissions were getting cut in half overnight with the individual and that's when we made the switch over to the group and we had great success with the group gap business and it just was a untapped market. So going back to, how did we turn that switch on? I got excited when I saw that product. I seen what it did for the [00:12:00] group side. A lot of brokers aren't doing group individually anymore, they specialize, but we were able to tap into a lot of those brokers that we've known over the years that did that. And we keep a good database of brokers. And we could attack 'em and we went nationwide with it and stuff, we started, our pocket just started growing and it got out there and it was a shame it got turned off when it did. No fault of, Morgan Whites at all, but we're excited to see that coming back and we're gonna gear up for it in 2026. That's just one of the products that's gonna keep us relevant in the market to the brokers and bringing it out there, so we're super excited about that. Coming back in 2026, hopefully.

Ben Markland: Yeah. It's another untapped market.

Mark Lampen: Yes. Absolutely.

Ben Markland: And you identified that early on and said, you know what? We want to get on this train.

Mark Lampen: We sat there, we saw, I was talking to a broker yesterday, a family of four in southern Illinois. You know what the premium was for a high deductible, $3,900.

Ben Markland: Wow.

Mark Lampen: That's with a $10,000 deductible. They subsidies and stuff, that's a whole nother discussion there. But who has $10,000 sitting around for a [00:13:00] family, four or five.

Ben Markland: Yeah.

Mark Lampen: And you want to help those, my goal is to help those families, everybody's gonna have medical emergencies along the way.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: And if we could cut that out of pocket down, whether it be on a group side, individual side, that's what my whole passion is with the industry anymore. It's definitely changed ever since really over the last 6, 7, 8 years with these out-of-pocket, just going up tremendously. And the premiums going up with it.

Ben Markland: And that doesn't look to stop any tough.

Mark Lampen: No, and that unfortunately that's the nature of the business right now and who knows when it, how it's gonna end. I'm a small business employer myself. I sit there and I see our deductibles going up or premiums going up, and we're a healthy group still going up by double digit each year. How can a, these business con, maintain that. And keep benefits the same. Yeah, the in pocket's was a great product, it is a great product, and it'll be back. I'd feel confident about that so looking forward to it.

Ben Markland: Okay, so outside in pocket, tell me what else that you're optimistic about in the industry.

Mark Lampen: I'm not sure if I'm [00:14:00] optimistic about anything else. When we see these rate increases, on groups. That's stuff out of our control. Reference based pricing is a good strategy. Is it catching on yet? Certain parts maybe not. But there's other carriers out there outside the BUCAs that, they can turn to, to get level funded quotes. But optimistic, I'm not sure if I'm optimistic about anything else other than just using the tools that we have right now. To help the bleeding for these groups.

Ben Markland: Sure.

Mark Lampen: That's all we could really do.

Ben Markland: Optimistic that there will be a role for an insurance broker for all of eternity.

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: 'Cause we're out there to help people with their finances, like you said, a small business owner a double digit rate increase that could cost someone their job. Or the alternative is you have to raise a deductible or out of pocket so high that if something happens financially, someone's could really be hurting.

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: And maybe that's the silver lining, is that what you guys are doing is a very important piece of the pie.

Mark Lampen: Absolutely, 'cause it's not just the health insurance, [00:15:00] it's all these the tariffs going on and the prices of everything else going up.

Ben Markland: Yeah.

Mark Lampen: So it's compounded for a business. We're just dealing with one portion that we can control and boy, it will save someone, 20% off their group renewal is huge.

Ben Markland: Yeah. It's funny you mentioned tariffs. We had A-A-P-B-M in here talking to us about a month ago, and I was a little ignorant to how some of that works. But one of the things that he said that really unnerved me a little bit was, I believe it was like 80% plus of the ingredients that go into our pharmaceuticals come from China. So even if we create the medicines in the United States, the ingredients are gonna be hit with a tariff. Pharmaceuticals and as well as I do, that's a big part of a lot of groups medical spend is,

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: Is their medications. And the good news is I think, the federal government has, it's on their radar. I think, the PBMs are out there doing what they can do, but, I don't know if they got a target on their back from the federal government as well, [00:16:00] but what it really boils down to is, I don't know if the tariffs will go away. The more stuff we're getting from overseas.

Mark Lampen: Yes.

Ben Markland: The more we're gonna pay even with the same end result. I think that was interesting and unnerving at the same time.

Mark Lampen: And I deal with, say all kinds of businesses, speak of the tariffs, we deal with the people are getting wood and metals and stuff from Canada. And they're getting squeezed there. And to be able to help, we've helped some lumber companies in southern Illinois saved tremendous amount of money by using a simple strategy. And that's the thing that is, that just boggles my mind with some of these agents out there that don't want to promote it, but it's such a simple solution. That's the thing about such a simple solution that you guys bring to the table. And if an agent's not bring these solutions to their clients, it's a shame.

Ben Markland: Yeah. Eventually someone's gonna bring the solution.

Mark Lampen: We see it all the time.

Ben Markland: If you get too comfortable and you don't really, if you're not advising and learning the [00:17:00] strategies to help your customer and you're just staying in the course, eventually someone's gonna beat you.

Mark Lampen: Yeah. And fourth quarter of course, is busy for this industry. And people just, they're onto the next renewal. What can we do just to get it pushed? And it's a shame 'cause I think some of these businesses are not given the time because, most people renew one- one, that they're not given the time from the agency standpoint, there's only so much time to deliver renewal and a solution, and they're onto the next one. And I don't know if I've ever told you this is what really got me involved and excited about Gap Business was first company I ever sold to was actually a friend of mine. He had a nursery and we don't do hardly any personal business, but he was a friend of mine. I wrote it for his nursery. He had a 1% rate increase with Anthem back then. This goes back 12, 13 years. Most agents, 1% sign it, we're onto the next one. We're not even talking about it. It's not even discussion. But I sat there and he had a thousand dollars deductible. [00:18:00] We took him up to a five. I said, you can either take it 1% and be done, or let me show you a solution, bumping up the deductible to 5,000 or we could save, it's like a six person group, we saved them almost $15,000 a month in a year in premium. That's big for a sixth person, whatever.

Ben Markland: Yes, it is.

Mark Lampen: So he goes, all right, we'll do it. So two weeks after it went into force, guess what happens? The owner falls out of a tree on his farm onto a fence post, went through his leg.

Ben Markland: Oh, geez.

Mark Lampen: So, I tell you that story because the way we designed the gap plan back then, which is different than yours right now. He actually came out ahead, about $10,000.

Ben Markland: Oh wow. Okay.

Mark Lampen: Zero in pocket. I'm like, I think I have something here. And this was before I even, most agents even heard the word gap insurance.

Ben Markland: Yeah.

Mark Lampen: So we started running with that. And once we found the Morgan White product, which was all encompassing, didn't have exclusions, we just ran with that even further. That's what got me really excited about Gap Insurance way back then.

Ben Markland: Interesting. So you went out on a limb with [00:19:00] a new type plan and customer number one was extremely happy with it.

Mark Lampen: So he could take a 1% rate increase and be done, we saved him some money and put some extra money in his pocket on top of it.

Ben Markland: Nowadays a 1% rate increase would be a huge win.

Mark Lampen: Yeah, absolutely.

Ben Markland: We wouldn't even be talking about gap.

Mark Lampen: It wouldn't be talking about it. Yeah.

Ben Markland: So I like that. I appreciate you telling me a little bit about how this all got started. Let me ask you this, if you were to start over today what would it look like?

Mark Lampen: Boy, I dunno if I'd do anything different, 'cause you learn from everything that you do along the way. This business is changing constantly. I wish I would've sat there and gotten more involved. I was that agent for so many years as a GA, just marketing the same products, not think of putting all the eggs in one basket. And I wasn't teaching myself. Those companies come and go. So constantly working on seeing what else is out there. Is there another product that we could bring to the brokers? We get approached all the time, market this plant or that plant, that's not for us, but companies we [00:20:00] do bring in, we want a good company behind it. The service, we know that we're gonna do it. It's gonna be there for the long term. It's very easy to go out and talk to brokers about the products that we market, 'cause we believe in them. We know the companies stands behind it, the services there, which is key to us, we brag about our service to the brokers. But I wish I would've learned more about gap insurance a long time ago. Even before it was really needed. So I just, keeping an eye open. I'm constantly listening to podcasts, what other agents are doing. Trying to learn from other GA's, what they're doing, how they're marketing. 'Cause if you're not challenging yourself that way, you're just going through the motion.

Ben Markland: I like that. And this is the top podcast you listen to, right?

Mark Lampen: Absolutely.

Ben Markland: So I like that you said what you would do differently on the positive side, let's share with the audience, is there any place where maybe you tripped and fell at some point, that if you could go back, you'd [00:21:00] say, you know what I did here, that was just the wrong move.

Mark Lampen: Yeah. Bringing on too many companies too quick, when I first went into business for myself, 20 something years ago, I wanted to be that everything to everybody. But I wasn't getting anywhere. Once I, a few years into the business, I'm like, the more I focus on what I did right, and the companies I aligned myself with, it really helped put me on a very good path, for the rest of my career and stuff. I would say, trying to be everything to everybody trying to please, everybody can never do that. That's what I was trying to do.

Ben Markland: That's right.

Mark Lampen: And I couldn't, there wasn't enough hours in the day.

Ben Markland: Mark, we appreciate you coming on here and talking with us again. I know you're a second timer now, maybe on the third time we'll get you a ring or something like that. But we appreciate you joining us and all your knowledge in the industry and I hope this time next year, we're talking about much more success.

Mark Lampen: Absolutely. No, I appreciate it. It's always a great time to get together with you guys.

Ben Markland: Alright, thanks a lot.

Mark Lampen: Alright.

Ben Markland: Thanks for listening to the Insurance Leadership Podcast, we'll see you next time. And remember, [00:22:00] simple solutions, real results. That's great leadership.