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The Digital Executive
Challenging the Status Quo: Andrea Luoni on Disrupting Insurance with Integrity and Transparency | Ep 1137
00:14:05
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Andrea Leoni. Andrea Leone is the founder and CEO of Ratecraft, a business advocate agency helping organizations greatly reduce their insurance costs. Andrea has over 1200 optimized projects over 25 years as an industry watchdog, saving her clients on average 35% annually and some as much as 74% annually. Well, good afternoon, Andrea. Welcome to the show.
- [00:51]
B
Thank you, Brian. How are you? Great.
- [00:54]
A
I appreciate you making the time again, Andrea. It's been a few years, but you were on the podcast, I think in 2021, 2022. But again, just love to have repeat guests. I think that's amazing. I want to see what you're up to today. So, Andrea, out of Colorado, I'm in Kansas City. Let's jump into your first question. You spent decades working inside insurance brokerage firms and then launched Ratecraft to challenge the system. What was the key moment when you decided you had to shift from being part of the system to disrupting it? What did you discover inside the industry that most business leaders don't see?
- [01:30]
B
Well, primarily just the fact that consumers are unaware of how the system works. And when you dive into it, you start uncovering things and you become an educator to consumers, which I think is key. There was an interesting conversation going on LinkedIn about how it's madness for companies to go out there and get multiple agents involved in a quoting system. And one thing that rang true in this conversation was that consumers don't know if they have a good agent or a bad agent until they test the waters. And that people that, quote, sometimes are the bad agents, so they don't know if they're even getting good advice. So instead of just doing it in a shotgun approach, it's better to have a professional that is managing the process of looking at other markets, looking at other agents, and being able to compare quotes that the coverage is equivalent or better than what they have and then going through that process in a more comprehensive way. So we uncover things that clients had no idea was happening to them. And we've had some really great clients in the last couple of years where that's demonstrated and even the large level, but it certainly happens in the smaller market as well. So I think it's just something that's very well needed across the U.S. thank you.
- [03:03]
A
And I love that because there's people like you that start companies that disrupt things. I've had several founders on the podcast, even in the life insurance space and how things are getting disrupted because it was really tight lipped in this industry and consumers were just paying what they were told whether it was a good rate or not. And I just really appreciate that, really do. And Andrew, the next question I have for you. You've been described as a disruptor in a traditionally conservative industry. From your own leadership journey, what personal values or experiences prepared you for this role and what advice do you have for other leaders or entrepreneurs seeking to lead dramatic change in their industries?
- [03:45]
B
Well, I think keeping true to yourself is always an important thing when you decide you're going to start a business. And I was the kid that was the defender of the week. I happened to be fairly tall and I remember even in high school there were some girls that used to play volleyball and they would cut in line of the other girls who just simply wouldn't have a voice. And I, I just didn't simply allow that. I didn't like it. And so I, I do think that I, I've reflected on that, that I am the defender. I've always been the defender. And so I've seen such abuse in our industry, in the insurance industry that I just don't like it. I was very upset yesterday with a huge abuse and it's like, wow, I literally almost want to go after this agency's business because it's so detrimental to their clients. Their clients are asking for help and they literally are blatantly refusing and, or they want to charge them. They're their own agent and they want to charge them money to go out and market their insurance. So it's like who does that? So there's, and, and the consumers just again, we go back to, they have no idea that it shouldn't work that way, that an agent should be looking at all options for a consumer on their behalf and presenting the options in a transparent way. And some of them do not. I'm not saying that all agents are bad, but there are many that are not to the degree that they should be. As far as a professional.
- [05:27]
A
Thank you. And I really love your message. Started out when you started this business, you felt it was important to keeping true to yourself, your values. And I like that you are the defender of underdogs. You mentioned an example back in school, people cutting in line. But you see this in everyday business, which is sad. And I'm just glad that you're bringing more transparency to this industry for sure. And Andrea, you, if you were advising a business just starting to manage their commercial insurance, whether it's liability, workers, comp, group health, et cetera, more strategically, what would be the top three actions they should take now and what are common mistakes you see leaders repeat?
- [06:11]
B
I think that some people listen to the professional and there, there's a gut reaction that it may not be correct information. So I definitely think people should reach out and get more than one opinion. We do this in we have a medical diagnosis, you should get another opinion. But oftentimes you should look at other venues. I will say that many people that have the friend that's their insurance agent, we do find the most abuse there. So it is, it is important to manage insurance specifically as a vendor, as a component and not necessarily just the friend aspect. I do say that as a small businesses right now on health insurance and it wasn't, we've moved away from the small business of 30 employees. We most of our business is between 100 and 6,000 employees. But the reality is, is that we've kind of come back a little bit to the small business because we found companies that had 30 or 60 employees. The agents were basically telling them there were no options for health insurance. And these poor companies are getting rate increases of 5 to 10% plus every year. And the agent says, well, there's only five carriers. And it's like, no, there's not. There are many more. And you can go and get an agent to review your insurance and you'll get two of them. They'll tell us, tell you the exact same thing. And it's just that they're not on the cutting edge of what's available. And it really is more difficult to find a person like me. There's about five of us that you can find in the US which is a very small number. But you have to get some other viewpoints if you want to challenge the status quo of it's just the premiums going up. So I would always tell people never to forget that insurance agents typically are making money by commission. So the premium goes up, the agent makes more, so they deliver a rate increase. Most of them aren't that sad because they're getting a raise and then the next year when it goes up, they're getting a raise. So they have to challenge the status quo. And I do think that whether it's a small or a large business, and by the way, I mean, we just had a publicly traded company that saved $7.2 million because they weren't challenging the status Quo. And that's a huge amount of money. It was a $12 million spend. So whether you're a small company or a large company, if it doesn't quite sound right, you've got to look elsewhere and try and find either the agent or a service like ours that will look at it from more of a organic standpoint and say, yeah, I think there's opportunity here and find those levers or those avenues in which it can help you relieve the pressure of this very costly product.
- [09:12]
A
Thank you. Really helping us out here. And people do typically say, oh, they're a professional. I'll just listen to them. Things are good. But you know, if you do get that gut feel, intuition, you know, obviously, especially in this industry, definitely get a second opinion, get some help out there, folks from people like you that are helping people in this business get more information so they can understand better. And we do know most agents in this business are on commission. So it's, that's, that's how they eat. So I, I, I understand how that works, but really, the message I took away, Andrea, is to explore and challenge the status quo. So I appreciate that. And Andrea, the last question of the day. How is the insurance brokerage and risk management industry changing or resisting change right now? What new tools, analytics or market structures do you think will reshape how businesses buy insurance over the next five to 10 years?
- [10:06]
B
Well, it's always an interesting one. I, I originally thought insurance would be on the cutting edge. I mean, I walked into it and hey, there were computers. That's good. But they're a little behind the times. And even now I love using a little bit of AI and, and trying to see how much it knows. Right. So I know the answers to things and I'll ask it questions to see if it knows and if it can find it because it should be able to scrape, scrape d to figure out things. But what's really interesting on it is I find that it doesn't still. So I, I really think the insurance industry is behind the times. I, I'm always looking for what's new. I'm always looking for my competition even. And I've had this company for almost 30 years and there just isn't, it still doesn't really exist. There's nothing, there's nothing sexy insurance that I'm seeing. And I do look because I think it's interesting and I'd love other tools that maybe I tap into that people just aren't aware of that. I can tell that is unique, but it really is A slow moving dinosaur. The only thing we are seeing is there's a gobbling up of the large agencies or gobbling up the smaller ones in. And so you, you couldn't take one large agency and, and sometimes you're going to have to find their competition to go to and the super large agencies don't want the small businesses and the small agencies are going away more and more and if they're a regional agency, a lot of times they will not even quote your insurance unless they make X amount of dollars. They have rules so they are actually loading in additional costs there in a fee otherwise they won't look at it. So I think it's really detrimental to small businesses that might be paying $5,000 for an insurance policy because that agent is only going to make 500, $600 on that and it's not enough for the agency's core belief system and metrics. And so I hate to see some of the agencies being gobbled up because I think that it's actually going to be detrimental to the small business owner that, that needs more help and you're getting less service as well because you're usually in a small business unit. So that's a bad side where we're seeing some mergers. On the insurance side, the, the upside is it's going to have a squeeze and they've got to adapt and change. I mean we've, we've had a tech company we wanted to get launched for some time trying to help with that. But it's one of those things of it takes a lot of money to rebuild a tech company so that it works in the same way for small businesses. And it's, it's, we've never pulled the plug on it even though we've had the idea for 20 years and now's the time. I mean it would be a good time to do it. So I don't know, maybe I'll get adventuresome and get it launched because I, I do think small businesses are going to be squeezed in the current marketplace.
- [13:15]
A
Thank you. Appreciate your insights on that. Just to highlight a couple things, insurance industry in your opinion is still a bit behind the times as far as tech. You're leveraging AI today in your business and your personal life. But you do definitely see that lag there in your industry. The big trend you're seeing is the small agencies are being bought up by the larger agencies which at some point something's, something's going to give here and hopefully some better competitive pricing and rates will come out to the consumers because of this. I don't know if that'll be the case or not, but really appreciate your insights. And Andrea, it was such a pleasure having you on today, and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [13:54]
B
Great. I appreciate you having me on, Brian.
- [13:56]
A
Bye for now.