Executives of retail and wholesale property/casualty brokers, who have heard predictions about disintermediation for years, are not worried about the latest wrinkle in the stories of their demise—the rise of insurtech disrupters with digital platforms.
Steven DeCarlo, chief executive officer of AmWINS, summed up their thoughts in three words: “Bring it on.”
Speaking during a CEO broker panel at the S&P Global Ratings Insurance 2017 conference last month, DeCarlo responded to a question posed by S&P Director Julie Herman whether insurtech startups or existing carriers, such as Berkshire Hathaway, Travelers and Allstate, launching direct-to-customer initiatives in the small business commercial insurance space creates a long-term threat to brokers.
“At the very beginning, when we wanted to raise capital, everyone said, ‘You will be disintermediated,'” DeCarlo said, thinking back to the launch of AmWINS over a decade ago. “My response was, ‘Maybe.’ Here we are [today] with a billion dollars in revenue, up from when we started when we had $10 million in revenue.”
To avoid disintermediation, a broker has to bring value, he said.
“I sure as hell am not worried about insurtech disintermediating what I do for a living. They’d better be good at their jobs because I’m damn good at sales,” he continued.
“They can be damn good at technology, but they’d better find the retail client. I’m a believer in retail clients. I’m a believer in local relationships. I’m a believer in people, and I’m a believer that technology can change the way we do business. I am not worried about a guy buying a policy at 10:00 at night to disintermediate me. Bring it on.”
As for insurers selling direct, “I’m not worried about insurance companies thinking they can do sales,” he added. “They can’t. Trust me, they can’t.”
“You come to me, and I get 700,000 submissions today, and I can reduce frictional costs and I can deal with quality retailers who trust me to take care of their clients in a way I’ll never get noticed. I think I can win that game,” he said, noting that he has his own on-staff tech experts working on technology plays for AmWINS.