In this episode of Beyond the Challenge, we went back to some of our favorite interviews to see what some of our guests said when we asked them how they were finding their competitive advantage and staying relevant.
In this episode, you will hear from Nick Cecere, Executive Vice President and Chief Distribution Officer at Thrivent, Jeremy Bill, Chief Insurance Officer at Bestow, Brad Mendenhall, President, Insurance Solutions at Concourse Financial Group, and Rob Arena, President of Global Atlantic Financial Group.
Read the Transcript Here
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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; Techficient, transforming the protection journey with intelligent data and machine learning to drive better outcomes; and JourneyGuide, improving your clients’ retirement outcomes through interactive planning software.
Welcome to Beyond the Challenge. Here are your hosts, Kevin and Sandy.
Sandy: We have spent the last year talking to some of the most influential and forward-thinking leaders in the insurance marketplace. Their perspectives have been very well received by our audience and we thought it was time to put together another panel of our favorite guests to see how they were in finding their competitive advantage and staying relevant.
Sandy: In this episode you will hear from Nick Cecere, Senior Vice President and Chief Distribution Officer at Thrivent, Jeremy Bill, Chief Insurance Officer at Bestow, Brad Mendenhall, President, Insurance Solutions at Concourse Financial Group, and Rob Arena, President Global Atlantic Financial Group.
Kevin: During our interviews, we asked our guests how carriers were finding their competitive advantage and staying relevant in a changing marketplace.
Kevin: Let’s start with what Nick Cecere from Thrivent had to say.
Nick: Thrivent is in a wonderful space. We’re basically a Fortune 500 company, okay? We’re ranked number 351 in 2022. But we’re also a fraternal, and being a fraternal, the number one aspect of our fraternal is to take care of its members, which is our policyholders. And we get to enjoy some favored tech status as a fraternal that allows us to continue to treat our policyholders, our members like they should be treated as well as being able to do things through our growth and generosity efforts, through our charitable efforts in our communities, our Action Dollars, all sorts of things that we do to help our communities in terms of things outside of financial advice. And that’s what really separates Thrivent from the rest and it’s really unique because we have this uniqueness of being a faith-based organization grounded in financial advice but at the same time being able to build out programs in our communities so that we can help the communities that we serve financially through generosity, through service, through charity. And that’s really how we separate ourselves from the competition and, also, we have great products and services that we provide for our clients and members and we do great in the community. So those two things together, serving Christians around the United States, really separate us from our competitors, whether it’s a wirehouse, a broker dealer, a mutual insurance company, or stock company, and they’re all great companies, we just have this niche in terms of being a Fortune 500 company but still being able to do so many good things for people. And that’s what drives a lot of our advisors to us and that’s why they stay with us. Our retention for financial advisors is double what our industry cohorts see and that’s because of the reason why they join us and we’re really proud of that fact that we’re able to have advisors who believe in the company and also believe in the charitable and service commitments that we make to our communities.
Sandy: Nick thinks that Thrivent is in a great space being a fortune 500 company as well as a fraternal. He believes that being fraternal gives them an advantage because it allows them to treat their policyholders and members as they should be treated and Thrivent is based on giving back to their communities.
Kevin: That’s right, with Thrivent being a faith based organization built on financial advice, they can separate themselves from most other carriers with their service through charity philosophy. Now it’s time to hear from Jeremy Bill from Bestow.
Jeremy: Just as a little bit of background, if you’re not familiar, Bestow is basically a relatively new organization, we’re about five or six years old. So, our technology is very modern. We actually built our own technology for selling, underwriting, administering life insurance policies. And so we had the advantage of not having that legacy technology that we have to deal with, all of our technology is basically new, and so that actually has allowed us to do two things. One, it’s allowed us to be a little bit more innovative ourselves. We were one of the first companies that really offered that instant decision underwriting approach where you literally got a response back in a matter of seconds or minutes as opposed to days or weeks or even months so it allowed us to be innovative there. But what we’re doing now, which is really exciting from my perspective, is we’re leveraging that technology to support traditional insurance carriers. And so we recognize that there’s going to be a limit to how much we can reach consumers, how much of a difference we can make just on our own, but if we can harness the power of the industry, the huge balance sheets that insurance carriers have, and really enable them to do more with our technology, that’s a great opportunity for us to not only fulfill our mission, which is providing financial security to everyone, but also to utilize the great work that the insurance industry is doing as well.
Sandy: Jeremy sees a competitive advantage for Bestow being the fact that they are a new organization so their technology is all very modern and they don’t have to deal with legacy systems like most carriers.
Kevin: Bestow is also working with traditional carriers to offer their technology stack which will improve the overall innovation of those carriers and help provide financial security to everyone. Let’s see what Brad Mendenhall from Concourse Financial had to say.
Brad: Well, our competitive advantage in our opinion and our strategy is really to take that holistic approach. So, we’ve structured our organization to provide services around the financial professional. So, financial professionals today enter the service in a number of ways. So they have to have flexibility, flexibility to choose how they want to work with us, how they want to engage, what services they want, and the supports they need so we can opt around that and help them with all of those needs. So our goal is to work with those financial professionals that really understand that larger need and take a holistic look at the client’s needs. So, rom there, what we would simply do is help them with that strategy, make sure the strategy fits the client’s comprehensive needs and insurance is part of that overall comprehensive strategy, not just a single focus in today’s world. So it’s more complex but actually maybe in turn a little more simple as well is if you’re looking at the whole picture, it’s much easier to design that comprehensive solution all in one spot.
Sandy: Brad says their competitive advantage comes from their strategy to take a holistic approach to financial wellness. They are structured in a way that allows agents the flexibility to work with Concourse in any number of ways from life insurance to financial planning.
Kevin: It sounds like Concourse helps producers create a strategy that fits their client’s comprehensive needs with insurance being one part of those needs and not just a single focus. Finally, let’s hear what Rob Arena from Global Atlantic had to say.
Rob: Yeah, it does seem daunting when you think about the list of challenges that as an industry we face but, as I remind folks, there’s been other periods of time where we’ve had challenges as well, it’s just a different set of challenges and I think that’s always the case in any type of business you’re in, it’s just, when you’re in the middle of it, it feels overwhelming and different and fundamentally new. But if I just rewind 5, 10, 15, 20 years ago, we were faced with challenges, some of the same and some different challenges. And I think for companies like at Global Atlantic, whatever the company might be, it’s really important to understand what your value proposition is and how you stay true to that through these different market environments. I think where companies make mistakes is sometimes they try to do things that they’re just not capable of doing and capable of focusing on and they get a little bit distracted. I think one of the areas we’ve been successful has just been laser focused on the opportunities that we see where we fit, where we think we can add value, and trying to do a great job there and not get distracted by everything else going around us because, if you do, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed and it’s very easy to get sidetracked in what you’re trying to execute on.
Sandy: Rob believes that carriers need to really understand what their value proposition is and how to stay true to that through different market environments.
Kevin: He thinks that where companies make mistakes is that they try to do things that they are just not capable of doing so they lose focus or get distracted from who they are to their customers.
Sandy: I really enjoy going back and listening to our past interviews. I always tend to find something new that I missed the first time and today was no different.
Kevin: I agree, I always pick up at least one more tip that I missed the first time.
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