Episode 7 with Scott Jarred, CFP®, Founder and CEO of Invst

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Beyond the Challenge is a podcast where executives in the insurance and financial services industry share their insights and experiences. Hosts Kevin and Sandy Dougherty talk with today’s top business leaders about what keeps them up at night and the biggest opportunity organizations can capitalize on today. We encourage you to listen, share, and subscribe to our program.

Kevin and Sandy Dougherty each have over 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services, corporate leadership, and executive search. They’re the owners of Global Corporate Solutions and Global Corporate Leaders. Global Corporate Solutions partners with organizations to gain efficiencies and contain costs. Global Corporate Leaders partners with organizations to enhance and evaluate talent.

Beyond the Challenge podcast is sponsored by Exactuals, perfecting payments and the data driving them.

Welcome to Beyond the Challenge. Here are your hosts, Kevin and Sandy.

(interview)

Kevin: Welcome to Beyond the Challenge. Today, we are talking with Scott Jarred about the challenges faced by advisors and producers in the new virtual environment. Scott, welcome to Beyond the Challenge.

Scott: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Kevin: Tell me about yourself, your career, and how you got to where you are today.

Scott: When I was a young child growing up, I was raised by a single mother and had a brother and sister. We were trying our best just to, you know, survive financially. I worked my way into sports, ended up getting a football scholarship, got to go to college, got a job in technology with AT&T and just knew I wanted to do something big. I wanted to change the world, do something cool, and I really wanted to do it in a business consulting way so we started this company called Jarred Bunch Consulting. It started out as an employee benefits company for entrepreneurs and business owners and it quickly evolved into a full service financial company, because, going back to my childhood, it was really — I just didn’t wanna have to worry about money anymore and I thought that if I understood it really well and if that was my career path, that things would just not only work out for me but also for the people that I was helping and would allow me to add big impact. So that happened in 2003 and you fast forward now to 2021 and we’re literally on the same mission statement. Our mission is to help educate, guide, and counsel people toward reaching their full financial potential and we really wanna help a million people become independently wealthy because I know how bad it was from the beginning. So that was my journey and, obviously, I met a lot of key people along the way to help contribute to that success and that’s how we got to where I am now. So, started as a young kid, just not wanting to be like that anymore.

Kevin: Scott, all sectors face challenges, but the insurance and financial services seems especially long, because of regulatory changes, economic uncertainty, rising consumer expectation, and a virtual selling environment. Scott, can you tell me how COVID-19 has changed the way you reach new clients and service existing clients?

Scott: Actually, COVID-19 has helped out quite a bit for our business, which I know it’s hard to believe. Used to be, every other week, I would get on a plane and fly to another state, go meet with a client because we have offices in different locations, and now it’s all virtual. So, it’s been great where the client base is actually accustomed to doing Zoom. So, now, we’re able to work so much more efficiently with our client base on Zoom. We have clients in 45 different states and we’re able to have a much more connected environment just through Zoom calls. And now that more of the population and our client base are becoming more comfortable with Zoom, they actually prefer it over face-to-face meetings in a lot of cases —

Kevin: Wow.

Scott: — especially when you work with high entrepreneurial type people that are busy and they wanna get stuff done so, now, instead of having two hours within a meeting, you might be able to do it in 45 minutes to an hour and then have another one backed up and then I can be in multiple locations at the same time. So, the energy level and without the travel and all the other stuff becomes more effective. That being said, also, when you get introductions to new clients, it’s easy to say, “Hey, let’s jump on a quick Zoom call,” or something and you have their 100 percent undivided attention because they have to look at you so I think there’s a whole Zoom effect so COVID-19 and the limitations it’s put on us to do face-to-face transactions and to work within our base the same way, the barriers are down. It’s different. Which also opens up the opportunity to educate them more. So we are always digitally enabled anyway so we’re doing web meetings and all that, we have all their client information already stored. We already have no office solutions coming in. It’s about meeting at tables like this with the client. And so now we can do that in a virtual world so I can help more, which also leads to the ability to be able to communicate more virtually, be able to get your message out more, do more things like webinars and educational events virtually where, now, you can broadcast the net so we’ve done these. Now, we’re getting — if we did like a seminar series or something, we may only get 25 people to show up. Now, in a virtual environment, we may have 600 be able to go and then I can take that content, break it down, and deliver it in a different way.

Kevin: Wow.

Scott: So COVID has helped out tremendously because now people are more accustomed to saying, “Hey, I like virtual summits,” “I like virtual events,” “I like meeting over the internet,” and all that stuff so I got 70-year-olds who are on their phones doing Zoom with me and they’re fine with it. So, it’s been helping a lot. So, COVID-19 has definitely changed the landscape for, I think, ever, quite honestly. But it’s also pushed us into this new information age much faster than what we were so I think the advisors that can adapt to that now and the institutions that can start to think about that —

Kevin: Yeah.

Scott: — think about customer service, they can call in, you jump on a Zoom call so now you put a face-to-face contact with the person helping them or they can actually put a name to the face, that’s huge. You know, I find actually I have a better, much closer connection with my clients that way.

Kevin: How do you differentiate yourself in a virtual environment?

Scott: First of all, if you’re in a virtual environment, you have to know what the client’s comfort levels are. You have to know how they would want to experience you. We’re in the information or management business already so the person who owns the information is the one that can help the client the most. What I find is that we’ve already got them in that environment, we’ve already got their data aggregated, we’re already looking at everything that they’re doing, they’re already accustomed to saying, “Hey, let me show you something. Let me look at what you’re currently doing so I can make a decision,” so they’re already wired to think digitally, already. So, if we set the expectation up front that’s the way it’s gonna be, then that makes it much easier to not only service them, help them grow, help them accomplish all the dreams and goals that they wanna have happen by having an electronic, digital infrastructure to start with. If you can start with that way first, then you can move forward. So I was in information technology before I was in this career, I have a master’s in technology and communication so I was designed to communicate and deliver highly complicated technology solutions over the phone. In financial services, it’s the same way. If you’re trying to present a life insurance policy and how it fits into an overall plan or estate plan, how do you clearly articulate that simply in a virtual environment? It’s what tools you use. How do you illustrate it? How do you give them imagery that helps them understand the concept moving forward?

Kevin: How do you help your advisors evaluate and grow current books of business?

Scott: When an advisor comes on board with us, like understanding who their top 100 relationships are. As an advisor grows, there’s intellectual shortcuts that you learn. So, for me, I’ve worked with very high-end affluent clients because I’ve had to evolve my intellectual capabilities up to the point where I can teach them the shortcuts that I’ve learned. So, at the very beginning, what I was doing was working with people in corporate America, they’re making $100,000 a year and there were certain things that I give them intellectually shortcuts today that helped them very tremendously. Then it evolves to physicians or someone that’s in the medical field that has a little bit more, they may have ownership in the practice so there’s certain intellectual shortcuts you help them with that you learn by working with those types of people. Then you move up into maybe small business owners. Then you move into the entrepreneur space. So you have this evolution of different ways you communicate to those people in a different way. On advisors, it’s the same thing. You bring in a new advisor, their experiences are only gonna be able to relate to so many certain people so help them identify where they’re gonna be the most successful within a target group based off of their top 100 relationships is absolutely critical to their success, because they only have so many intellectual shortcuts anyway to be able to help them with. So identifying that target is really good. Once you identify it and you start to add value to those people, then it’s about how do you cultivate the network that those other people would want to have help with? So, for me, it was working with doctors and professionals, then it was business of medicine, then it was the highly powered entrepreneurs within medicine, and then it was family offices and it just evolved up as I got better with helping them solve their problems. So I think if you look at an advisor and what they’re trying to accomplish, a lot of times, people want them to be something they’re not. So it’s like you’re not Steph Curry, right? You’re not gonna shoot 60 percent from the three-point line, but you may be able to get a lot of rebounds. You may be able to do something differently in that space so let’s build a plan that will work for you and your unique ability and your skill set that will allow you to scale and then those people see the value in you. And so that’s the trick is really trying to identify what their unique ability is, what are their intellectual shortcuts they can provide to that base, and then who is it they have a natural market with. And then once we identify that, then we specifically target that and then we build lead funnels and things directly into that market that they can really succeed in

Kevin: Many insurance carriers have invested heavily in customer experience initiatives in recent years. Have you seen these initiatives help bring on new and service existing clients?

Scott: Yeah, I would say so. I think in the insurance industry, like we do is we’re always trying to insure the clients for their value. So, if they’re — maybe they don’t have the income yet for a permanent policy, maybe it’s just term insurance, or maybe their income is going up so they have disability with FIO or there’s other things so I think programs like rapid applications, term conversion campaigns, things that get the client to understand topic of mind so if you have a future increase option on disability policy, right? You can increase it when you have certain things that happen within your life that those mailings and communications happen to the client, they may call back and say, “Hey, Scott, I was thinking, what is this whole life thing again? Or what is this permanent thing is that we talked about?” They don’t really remember but they get that communication from the insurance company and they say, “Oh, this is something that’s happening now.” In the current environment, the world that we’re in, being able to do rapid applications, being able — a lot of the stuff that they’re doing with, you know, MassMutual has Haven and how they wanna work on mass underwriting everybody in America, like I think where the insurance industry is going is they wanna be able to get approvals of everybody in the United States every day so it’s like the same way if you go and buy your car insurance, they wanna know what the health risk is of the people is without having to do underwriting. So, being able to do fluidless underwriting and things of that nature makes that process so much more seamless and it makes it help. We also have a medical director on staff that helps us with pre-evaluating the conditions of our people before they come in so that helps with how that works on the pre side. So, a lot of these initiatives and things these insurance companies are working with and helping are to help speed along the underwriting process but then also help cultivate and build within the client base. So I think more that kind of stuff definitely helps. There’s a lot of cross-sell opportunities within these carriers. You’ve got people that are really concerned about today, like low interest rates and protecting their value, what do these benefits really mean? So I think, with our business, it’s always about education, guiding and counseling our clients toward reaching their full financial potential. That’s like what we do. So the more that the insurance companies and the carriers we use can help with education, and given the real information so they’re not Googling and getting all the other stuff and they’re trying to be sold something else —

Kevin: Yeah.

Scott: — the more educated they are, the better off they’re gonna be so if the carriers can be that steward in an insightful, non-biased way, which is the trick, that’s where I think you can add a lot of value.

Kevin: What are the top three things that insurance carriers can do to support their business better?

Scott: Yeah, so insurance carriers, the best way is to approve everything ultra preferred and we’re good to go, right? So if we just get — everyone’s healthy and you just give us great ratings, then we’ll just do all kinds of business. So if we just eliminate the risk, the management part will be great, right? But I’m sure that’s not gonna happen. We’ve been working on that for years. I think what it is like how seamless can we make that transition? How easy can we make it? It’s like when a client comes into work with us, it’s about I want this to be so seamless and so easy for you to do business with us that it’s like you’re going to buy a pair of shoes, like it’s, “What size are you? Oh, here’s a couple options and let’s get this thing done.” Insurance and protection-based products are probably the most things that people don’t think about the most. They’re not really excited about talking about their mortality and morbidity and it’s a — you can’t like walk out with it, you can’t drive it home, you can’t do these things with it so the more that we can help illustrate that this is a seamless process, it’s easy, it’s something that you really should think about, because think about these people insure things like their cars and their homes and all that stuff but they don’t — if they have a goose that’s laying these golden eggs, what are they doing? They’re spending all their time insuring the eggs and they’re the goose, they’re not protecting themselves. So, how easy can that insurance carrier make it to where we can insure them for their value and understand what that is? So how can an insurance company understand what a human life value is of a person? Make that easy for us to be able to submit that application and know that this is what the maximum value is of this person. “This is the most I’ll do it. Here’s one,” so I submitted this thing and I know this is the most I’ll give. This is the rating class. Make it like that so we can go this high here, this is what you’re insuring against and then let the client choose what they want. So the more we can make that process seamless, the more electronic we can make it so we can do things without paper, the better off we’re gonna be, especially today, because no one really wants to deal with paper anymore and the more we do that, the more helpful we can be and the more seamless and the more that client experience is really powerful for the client.

Kevin: That’s great. How do we get there?

Scott: First of all, it’s gotta go from the top down, right? So, the vision and the structure of the way those departments are run have to start from the top down. So, if we’re gonna make a customer experience be seamless across the board, someone in the home office or somebody has to mind map that out. They need to be almost like an artist. They need to be like a designer of what the experience would look like and then you got all the hard part, because then you’ve got underwriting, you’ve got the technology that’s outdated, you have all these different systems within so this is what the experience looks like for the client, we want it seamless. We wanna underwrite everyone in America at a certain time. We want to be able to make it like you’re going to buy a pair of shoes. We want our brokers or whoever is distributing the product to be good field underwriters, be able to help with that stuff. If we know what the experience is gonna be so it’s a really smooth experience, start with the experience first. Then you go back into the stuff so think about these insurance companies, they’ve been around hundreds and hundreds of years so their systems are legacy, they’re old, they need updated so you have to figure it out and then you chunk it, right? So you figure out what’s the most impactful thing I can do this year? Knock that out. Then what’s the most impactful thing I can do next year? And how can I start chipping away at that? And then what you’ll find is I think you’ll find more efficiencies within the system, you’ll build and offer better products more effectively and efficiently over time. But it’s hard because you got these companies that have big overhead, lots of bureaucracy, lots of things in the middle that you gotta get over. It’s like Steve Jobs, “I’ve got this thing, just fit it in this thing. I want it to be an iPad, I want it to be a camera.” It’s that easy. So the vision is I want to fit in this little box, make it fit in this box. And I think if you can get that from the top and you have a really good executive team that’s visionary, and it may be someone that’s outside the industry that can take an independent third-party look into it that’s made efficiencies in tech companies and other things, I think they have a different perspective of it, of how to simplify supply chains, simplify what that looks like, so I think that’s how you get there. But what’s worked in the past isn’t what’s gonna get you there in the future so you’re gonna have to make some changes because the technology and the world is evolving very quickly as we go.

Kevin: How do you guide your clients to selecting a provider?

Scott: That’s a great question. It’s education, I think, primarily. There’s a bunch of different carriers out there, and you get information from the wholesalers and other people so a lot of times, I think firms, brokers work with other firms to give them that information. So there’s other types of systems and software you can use that will have data on like insurance carrier stability and rankings of their companies, right? What are the dividend rates? What are the size of their business? And you get this different information but then you have like all the different variations and terminology. So if it’s disability, what’s own-occ, what’s true own-occ, what’s ones — is it real or is it isn’t real, so there’s so much of these languages, it’s like you have to be a contract lawyer to understand that. So what the client just wants to know is what’s the best solution for me and what our job is to be a fiduciary, really, for the best interests of the client to give them the best information possible so they can make the best decision for their particular thing. So it’s very difficult to find the understanding of what all that is because every carrier has got the best thing in the world for the client but there are certain carriers that focus on certain niches and stuff so it depends on what the client’s needs are and you have to really understand what that dynamic is and be really good at contract law, I guess. So you need to understand what the definitions are, the policies, how they’re written out. We always talk about the rules of institutions and they have an agenda for your money and we want you to be in the driver’s seat of your money so you need to understand how these things work and what the pros and cons are of each one. And I think the more that we have that information up front, the better off we are in and that’s why you have all this best-interest contract stuff now which is really almost like a formality with paperwork but like, really, are you looking out for the best interest. So I think if you can get the information on those, or if there’s — what would be nice is if there’s like a central place where you can go to get actual real data, really consolidated, because there’s other brokers and stuff that do that but then they’re slanted towards, “Oh, these are the carriers I have good revenue with,” versus the other ones so those are the ones they’re pushing and so you’re always trying to play devil’s advocate on that. So I think that would be helpful, some central resource. But in our office, we do a lot of research, we look at all those different things, we try to get the best information possible, we create pros and cons of each way and then once we get it figured out, then we can go to the client and let them really understand both sides of the story. I think that’s what really helps.

Kevin: What is the single biggest opportunity that the life insurance industry can capitalize on today?

Scott: The single biggest opportunity is that insurance companies, by nature, are risk management companies. I mean, that’s their job. That’s their main responsibility. But the world is, the investment world and everything else, is the opposite of that. They’re taking more risk. So I think the best opportunity is showcasing the ability to take low risk, how that can be offensive strategies for you to create more wealth. That’s the trick is how can you de-risk somebody by using insurance-based products to create an offensive opportunity, and that’s where I’ve been seeing the benefit of having good, stable insurance companies, a place to store your safe money, to allow you a permission slip to enjoy your other wealth, to allow that money to be reused, if necessary, to get you out of a jam, to be there for you if you have a major market correction or you have something happen or you get sick or you die prematurely or you get hit by a car, and all these things that could stop you from getting there, the insurance company’s like a backstop to stop it. So we gotta start talking more about why you have it in the first place and not be ashamed by it. I think a lot of people say, “Oh, insurance, that’s bad.” No, it’s actually the most simple, easiest way to protect your wealth and to grow it. If you start with the protection first philosophy, everything else is better. And I don’t think we showcase that at all. I think we’re always defending ourselves from that standpoint and it’s a shame because the people that take risk with the money and do other things with it are like the sexy sizzle in it when the protection stuff should be the sizzle because that’s really the thing that’s gonna protect you and your family, allow you to pass on a legacy, allow you to be there when things aren’t going your way. It’s the things that you need the most when no one else will get your back. Like the banks aren’t gonna bail you out when you need money, you know? The investment company is not there when it drops, right? But the insurance companies are there when you need it the most. I think that’s — that message has gotta be clear, that message has to be concise, it has to show you how that can actually create wealth for you just by using protection products and how that works. That’s our opportunity.

Kevin: What is it that keeps you up at night?

Scott: We love ordinary life insurance with participating mutual insurance companies. We like the mutuality of it, we like the fact that it can be a stability rock for the clients. It allows them to have a guarantee in their financial life. My fear is that, with the interest rates being so low and where insurance companies by nature have to keep their money, and not just for mutuals but for all carriers, is that how are they gonna keep the reserves tight? How are we gonna manage a long-term low interest rate environment to keep the guarantees, to keep the values of these companies at the highest level they possibly can be? I’m afraid that some of the guarantees in like these mutual policies will go from four to lower. I think that’s on the table. I think they’re gonna have to make dramatic moves as the industry’s getting shook up. I think commission structures are always under pressure as you look at what other countries have done. So the industry is in a big jam right now and I think there’s a large tsunami coming for it and it’s under attack, big time. So, it’s how these carriers can understand how to manage their balance sheets better, how they have to be more innovative, how they can work within a low interest rate environment, how you can still protect and give those demands that the consumer really needs and still create multiple streams of revenue for the insurance company to keep them stable and strong. And it’s the fabric of our country, you know? These companies have been around 200 plus years and to see them coming into the turmoil that they’re gonna come under now, more than ever is gonna be really crucial how they handle this next decade. Because it’s real. And I think the executives are starting to see it. You’re seeing acquisitions, you’re seeing them selling off assets, you’re seeing them specialize, you’re seeing career field forces going bye-bye. There’s no young guys coming into the business, or girls. It’s more of a brokerage model and stuff like that. So, where are the people that are really gonna help the consumer educate themselves on this stuff, do it the right way and how do we keep that integrity? And the stuff that I learned, I was fortunate to learn from people that have done it before me, how’s that maintained? And so I think that’s the biggest thing that keeps me up at night for this business and for the people that they serve and I think that the people who actually own it or believers of it enjoy it and then I think there’s a lot of other people out there that just don’t understand it. And I think if we don’t keep our lobbying up and help Congress understand the benefits of these products, our country’s gonna be in trouble because without these protection-based products, I don’t — they solve a lot of problems. I just hope the executives at the top and that whole group is working 24/7 on that because there’s 300 million people in America that are depending on that and globally, whatever that looks like. It’s a big thing. So I worry about the insurance industry in general because of that and the pressures and all the stuff that’s happening and the legislation and regulation and the low interest rates. Those are what keep me up at night and I think the executives are feeling that pressure too.

Kevin: What is the biggest thing that you did that had a positive impact on your career?

Scott: So, for me, the biggest thing that I did, I think it’s having an open mind. I would say that the world’s moving fast, there’s so many changing things, and to create a new opportunity for your clients or to create something that’s uniquely different, you have to learn how to be open-minded, but what that means is you gotta learn how to collaborate with other people. So, the collaboration efforts that I put forth by meeting with other top producers in the industry, doing joint work, wanting to get behind the scenes of how things run, I met a wealthy client, being able to see how they operate and did things, so a lot of those experiences and open-mindedness. The biggest thing that I did was have a collaboration effort with these people to really figure out what framework worked for me and that worked for my clients. So, I think, to me, it was just having that mindset all on the way allowed me to step up my game every step of the way.

Kevin: What advice would you give to someone looking to get into the insurance and financial services industry?

Scott: I would say it can’t be about you. It has to be about wanting to help others. And I think if you’re getting into it for the money side and you’re selfish in that way, this is probably not the right business for you if you’re in the insurance and financial services side, I would say. If you’re like just a typical money manager or something like that and you’re trying to get alpha and that’s your thing, then that’s different, but if you’re in this side of the business, you generally need to be in the point where you really wanna help people and you have that passion about you. If you have that, then, from there, the next step would be to get with someone that has proven experience that can really help you create your journey. I would say get your professional designations as soon as you can, get your education out of the way, read everything you could possibly read on the subject matter to really make sure that’s what you’re doing. And I think from the training and stuff that we do with our new guys coming in, if they’ve got the right values, then that’s the first check. I don’t really care what their experiences are but if they’ve got the values, they’ve got a pretty good network, like typically they’re married, they love their families, they’re those kinds of people, I think they can be very successful in this business but you have to have that first thing is you just gotta really wanna help people and you wanna get your sleeves rolled up and get dirty with it as well, but you gotta look at it as a lifelong learning experience as you go. But you’ve gotta partner with someone that’s doing it right.

Kevin: Scott, thank you for your time today. It’s been great to learn more about how advisors and producers can turn economic uncertainty, rising consumer expectations, and a virtual environment into better consumer solutions and higher profits.

Scott: You’re welcome. Thank you.

(outro)

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