I recently attended the First Republic NextGen Conference in Monterey and spoke to the group about managing the insurance purchasing process.
The conference was made up of the next generation of venture capital and private equity finance professionals who may often be involved in the insurance and benefits purchasing decisions for their firm but aren’t necessarily or typically the ultimate decision makers. Many were assistant controllers and a few shared candidly that they want to be a CFO one day.
So many of the folks I chatted with admitted that they actually knew very little about the purchasing process – they didn’t even know what they didn’t know. While I promised one woman I spoke with complete anonymity and can’t share her name or employer, I can share that she told me she almost spat her iced Americano all over the gentleman who innocently sat (and listened) in front of her. She was floored at how the insurance renewal process should work because the recent renewal at her firm was a crash course during the last two weeks of the process. She couldn’t believe what goes into it, on both sides, and just how proactive the process should be, regardless of the size or maturity of a firm.
While chatting with her one thing became clear – she didn’t understand insurance and benefits well enough to be confident in choosing a broker. She, along with many of the others I spoke with, had no idea how to go about choosing an insurance broker. This stuck with me…How to choose a broker?, I asked myself. Honestly, it’s simple – find a broker who knows what they’re doing and let them do the work. But the real, million-dollar question – how do you know if your broker knows what they’re doing?
Next week, I’ll walk through my thoughts on answering that million-dollar question!
Meet Josh
Josh Warren
Senior Vice President
ABD M&A Advisory Practice Leader
ABD Insurance and Financial Services
josh.warren@theabdteam.com
LinkedIn
