Epi 33: Insurance - the latest from AssuredPartner’s Judd Feldman and Noelle Perkins

Vince

Um, someone has this brilliant idea for all the guys to create this human pyramid and put the bride on top for a photo. Wouldn't that be cool? Right? Oh, no.

Judd

Oh, geez. Uh huh.

Vince

So, we do it. We take the photo. And as we're dismantling, well, let's just say the base layer crumbles. Oh, no. And the bride's going head first. LA face plants, and all of a sudden he just, the entire back of her wedding dress splits wide open.

Judd

Oh my God. Yeah. Oh, no. Um, needless to

Vince

say, they're, they're no longer married, and I'm not laughing. I'm not

Judd

laughing. Was that before the wedding or, or after? After the wedding. Before the reception. Oh, geez. Yeah. So probably not done with pictures

Vince

yet. Yeah, so gets up, of course, the entire backside showing dirt, grass stains, everything on the front. Not

Joe

happy. I mean, she chose to get on top of the pyramid. It's

Judd

true. It's a fair point.

Joe

We all make our own choices in life. She chose to marry him.

Vince

It was an omen. Life's better now, but, um, yeah. There are a few of us saying, that's not a good sign.

Judd

Oh well. They gave it a good run.

Vince

They didn't have you as the minister. That would balance it out.

Judd

That would make things right. I think so.

Joe

Pastoral Purdue Pete. I like it. Oh, there you go.

Judd

A little side gig. A little side hustle. Pastoral

Joe

Pete. I mean, insurance, weddings. You know, bar mitzvahs, bat

Judd

mitzvahs. There you go. This is my first and my last. I am never, ever going to do this again. Never

Vince

say never.

Joe

You have a certificate. Yeah. From what website did this certificate

Judd

come from? I just googled it. Sallystruther. com I just googled it and, and, I mean, it literally is, hey, you know, here's how you do it. What's your name? What's your email? You're ordained. I mean, there's no background check.

Vince

You don't have to like take a 10 question quiz and maybe get 50%? No. The only

Joe

questions were name on card, card number, expiration date. 100%.

Vince

Oh, and please pay 20 bucks or

Judd

whatever. Oh no, it's free. But, but some, um, some states require proof of,

Joe

uh, an ordained minister

Judd

of some sort. So you gotta spend 30 for a packet. Yeah. Okay. So I bought the packet. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe

Yeah. Are you ordained in any manner of a religious affiliation or is it literally just your name is on a piece of paper? It's

Judd

on a piece of paper. You and I both know I'm not ordained in any religious affiliation.

Vince

I'm thinking of Cindy

Joe

Ngo You're still on the list. Yeah.

Vince

I'm calling you if we're going to do, if we ever do that, that work. All right. I got us a minister. We're good.

Judd

I love

Joe

it. I think what he just said was, well, 25 years was a great run. Let's just end it now.

Vince

Do you have that insured? Nevermind. I didn't say that. We might have to edit that part out. All right. You're getting ready to tell a story though, real quick, I think, or not.

Judd

Oh, no. Um, We, well, we were talking insurance and, um, we were talking about, like, you were talking about divorce insurance. Yeah. But, but there, that was a thing. So, um, it, I believe it was called wedlock and, I mean, should

Joe

have been called wedlock.

Judd

I mean, I was gonna say who, who buys that? It's like, Hey honey, let's get married. Let's buy some, let's buy some what? Divorce insurance. I mean, that's awful. But anyway, what, what, it ended up failing because, you know, well, sort of, you know, The carriers lost money on it? Well, it ended up failing because, you know, insurance is all about selection, right? And you know, the, the couples that think they're going to get divorced are going to buy it. Yeah. So you've got a lot of unhappy couples buying divorce insurance. And then, you know, the payback wasn't. It wasn't, you know, real strong. So I think it was like, let's call it like 2000 bucks a year. And you know, if you pay into it over a 10 year period, you know, you're paying 20, 000 into it.

But the divorce benefit to pay for, you know, legal bills, et cetera, was like 25, 000. So you know, someone smart just said, you know what? Park the 2, 000 in a savings account, you know.

Joe

Can you imagine when the, the annual premium letter or invoice comes in the mail and you're sitting around the dinner table at home and you're like, damn it honey, I've been paying these premiums. We gotta either cancel this or get off the horse and let's get divorced. Like we're not getting our money's worth. Yep.

Vince

Was part of the question, like, who is your minister? Oh, you're sorry, you guys are uninsurable. Yep.

Judd

I guess. Alright, well.

Joe

I'm just trying to think of what your wife, like the day you got that certificate and showed, showed Lori, was this like her dreams come true?

Judd

Well, you know, and maybe, maybe the, the both, The couple isn't involved. Maybe it's just one person buys the insurance and doesn't tell the other. I think, I don't know. Ah ha. I think that's stupid. I think it's, I think it's, it's a, it's...

Joe

Well, if one spouse has to secretly buy an insurance policy without the other spouse knowing, maybe that marriage was destined to fail

Judd

anyway. Hence the adverse selection. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Vince

Hey guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Industrious Podcast. Thank you all for joining us from wherever you guys get your podcasts. If you happen to be joining us from the Assessive YouTube channel, thank you for doing so. First of all. Second, if you haven't hit the subscription button or that little notification bell, please do so. It won't cost you a dime. You don't have to buy divorce insurance, none of that stuff. So we appreciate it. Uh, today we are joined by some, our friends at Assured Partners, Mr. Judd Feldman and Noelle Perkins. Welcome to the

Judd

Industrious Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having us, Vince and Joe.

Joe

You're welcome. Thank you. That was a long cold open. It was. I thought we were being ready to wrap up and you know, we've talked employment, we've talked sales, we've talked Um, you know, banking and finance, we've talked to economics and inflation and supply chain. And we've talked divorce insurance. So I just, we have hit the full gamut of topics now.

Vince

Pretty much. Yeah. So you're welcome folks. Hey, why don't you guys give our listeners and viewers a little background info on yourselves and on your, your business.

Judd

Um, you want me to start this time or? Sure. All right. So, um, my name's Judd Feldman and, um, I was, um, Um, I'm the agency president at Assured Partners. Um, I was appointed agency president in 2016 after they bought my company, Colliance Risk Advisors, um, in 2015. Um, Indianapolis. You know, pretty much raised, uh, went to Purdue, um, met my wife there, Lori, um, who, who said, you're doing a podcast on insurance, who the heck's going to listen to that? How much you're, you're probably right, sweetie.

Noted. Yeah,

Joe

noted. I was going to talk about wedding ministry as well, though.

Judd

Yeah. Gosh, thank God we had that to

Noelle

fall back on. I know.

Judd

Um, three daughters, Lily, Reese, Gwen, two at Burbuff, one at St. Luke. Um, and, um, very, um, excited about talking insurance with you fine folks today, so thanks for having us. Can I just ask

Joe

one question? On your business card, does it now say Judd Feldman dual threat? Just

Judd

curious. I'll, I'll look into that. No it doesn't. Okay. But you said that. But dual threat meaning ordained? Insurance

Joe

guy.

Judd

Wedding guy. Wedding guy. Not

Vince

golf, baseball. Not golf, baseball. No

Judd

Bo Jackson here. No Bo Jackson. Oh, God. Insurance. You've got something there. I mean, I could, I could clean it up.

Joe

Think about all the wedding, the couples you could marry and then you could sell them all the insurance they need for their home. Oh, absolutely. All their life.

Judd

Oh, there

Noelle

you go. Clean it up. There

Judd

you go. At the reception, just crushing, crushing

Noelle

shirts, got apps, got apps, filling apps

Joe

out. So speaking of cleaning up Segwing, for your introduction, how much of, how much like just mess of his do you have to clean up? Just on

Vince

a regular basis. That face said that's a whole nother episode. Yep.

Noelle

She's a good one. I am a good one. He'd be lost without me. And I remind him of that. There's some truth to that. Okay. Um, Noel Perkins, uh, Vice President of Property and Casualty at Assured Partners. Uh, so I oversee operations. Um, been in insurance my entire career, so 20 plus years. Um, grew up in, uh, mostly in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Um, went to school at St. Bonaventure in western New York State and, uh, kind of made my way out west.

So lived in Seattle and insurance there as well. Um, worked for a company that got acquired by Assured Partners in 2016 and, um, had two little ones at the time. So decided to relocate, um, back to Indiana and, and got in touch with Judd and, um, decided to, to make the, the transfer and. Took on a bigger role. So it was it was a good Opportunity for me as well and my family. So how did

Judd

you guys

Vince

meet? Was it part of there were individual companies being acquired by the same parent company,

Noelle

right? Yeah So when I started thinking about relocating I I talked to someone in my current office about Do you know who runs the indie branch and I think Judd had been appointed probably three months before that. So he actually flew me out and we met and kind of hit it off and Uh, just decided to move here and he famously, we've told this story a bunch of times. When I, when I decided to move at the time, I was, I was what we call in our industry account executive. So it's, it's kind of a high, high, higher technical level client management.

Um, and then I ran a, a small team and, um, he said, well, we have this, this director of operations role that I think you'd be good for. And I said, no, I don't want to, I don't want to be in charge of a whole department. I have, you know, a 10 month old and a two year old. We're moving across the country. I mean, we're doing all the high stress life events that you can do, right? So he's like, okay, no problem. You know, we'll do the AE team lead. And so got back, kind of talked over with my husband. We decided to pull the trigger. So he sent me my, uh, offer letter and job description. There's three job descriptions on it. One of which was director of operations. And so I called him and said, I think there's a mistake.

I'm pretty sure I said, no, thank you very nicely. And he said, Oh, it'll be fine. If you don't like it, you can always change. And then. Seven years later, the role

Vince

keeps getting more and more. It said, I was like, and then I got my business card and it said, Director of Operations.

Noelle

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh, that's interesting. But, no, Judd's good at, at seeing potential and the potential people have and, and developing them. So, it was a good move. He is a

Vince

minister though. That's

Joe

true. So you grew up in northeastern Indiana, but you went to St. Bonnie's. Yep. What drew, it's not a, it's not a, they don't pull a lot from Indiana in general, I wouldn't think.

Noelle

No. So, um, I went to Homestead High School, um, which is on like the southwest side of Fort Wayne. Yeah. Home of the Lohman family. I swam with Libby Lohman. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. We know her brother. Yeah. Jim? Yeah. Which one? Jim? Okay. Yeah. He was also a

Vince

freak athlete. Yes. They all are very athletic. Shout out to the Lohmans. Yes. Yes.

Noelle

Yeah. Yeah. No, I swam with Libby. Um, pretty much. Yeah. The whole time I lived in Fort Wayne. So. Um, but yeah, I just a lot of people went to IU or Purdue, and I just wanted to kind of do my own thing and not go to a college where I would not that you would see a bunch of people from high school. Obviously, those are two big campuses. But, um, my brother went to Xavier and swam his freshman and sophomore year. I think he's three years ahead of me, and he told me You should check out St. Bonaventure because they were both in Atlantic 10 at the time and St. Bonaventure women's team won the conference every year.

So he said it looks like, you know, they're having fun. And so I went out there for a recruiting trip and just loved it and decided to go there. So that's how I ended up there.

Vince

You're actually the second person in Indy that I know that went to St. Bonaventure. Oh really? Yeah. Isn't that

Noelle

crazy? You'll have to put us in touch because there's not a lot of us in Indiana. I can do that.

Judd

You know Pat Sedlak? Pat Sedlak. There you go. What? That was the second one. All right.

Joe

We're just going to have everybody on our podcast today.

Judd

Sedlak's another insurance guy. He should be here.

Joe

All right. For those listening to the audio version of this podcast, Judd is drinking from a water bottle that is... Um, I've never seen such a big,

Noelle

it's got to be 64 ounces, at least.

Judd

This isn't on video?

Joe

Well, it is. Oh, it is. Now people are going to want to go to the YouTube channel just to see that. Well, we're,

Noelle

we're, we're getting followers in there for you. I mean, good

Joe

Lord. Do you spend, how many hours a day do you spend in the bathroom recycling the water? He's trying to

Judd

one up Ricky Fowler. I mean, it's, I go through one or two of these a day. You're so

Joe

healthy. Really? You look healthy. I don't know what the insides look like, but

Judd

they look better than they did. All you see is the outside though,

Vince

baby.

Joe

The inside looks better than the outside.

Vince

All right, let's get this train back on the track, sort of. Um, talk to us about the state of insurance. I mean, what, what's new? How are things going? What's your guys forecast for how things are looking?

Noelle

Well, I mean, I've, like I said, I've been in this industry. I mean, you've been in this industry your whole career too. And in the last three or four years, at least on the property casualty side, we're, we're finally seeing a hard market. So things are going to find that, um, so capacity is, um, being limited, meaning the, the amount of insurance that's available, like in the reinsurance market. And then, uh, rates are going up for the first time in my whole career, really. I'm

Joe

sorry. Rates are going up for the first time in your career. Can you expand on that as a consumer of insurance who I feel like we're getting annual increases? Yeah. I'm feeling, I'm sensing

Vince

a disconnect.

Noelle

Well, are you talking health insurance or property and casualty insurance? Because health insurance has been steadily going up, but PNC historically, depending on, you know, your losses and things like that, it's been relatively flat or just going up slightly. 2020, uh, like excess insurance immediately went up, property's been going up because of all the hurricanes and wildfires and, and all the, the, you it's just.

Up, up, up and no one in sight, really. So, it's not a great market right now for, for insured. So, it's up to us to kind of come up with solutions outside of insurance, whether it's, you know, captives or taking on higher retentions or things like that. So,

Joe

we talked offline, uh, whether you did call it personal, residential, uh, consumer insurance or commercial insurance, and you kind of said all of it, both. Where do you got, where's like, what's your most familiar sandbox? Is it, is it truly all of it? Or do you really feel like you specialize or put a lot of your emphasis on one, one side or the other consumer versus business for the lack of a better term?

Judd

Yeah. I mean, I think it's, um, every market's a little different. So, um, assured partners were a couple billion dollar company. We have offices all over the United States and. In, uh, in, in over, uh, in Europe as well. Um, you know, I would say combined, we are more property casualty focused. Um, well, maybe not focused. So, um, I would say 60 plus percent is property casualty. Um, 30 percent is healthcare, employee benefits, HR advisory services.

Um, Um, but that's probably our fastest growing space. So um, and then, you know, we have, you know, personal lines. So homeowners auto, um, and then an entire non retail sector, um, branded accretive that focuses more on, um, you know, the, the wholesale marketplace.

Joe

Gotcha. So on, on the 30%, you said healthcare benefited, uh, advisory services. Are you a In that space, are you a broker of medical and beyond insurance or the carrier or? Yep, we are. Okay. Yep. So what is that? I mean, that's the really, probably the biggest hot button of all the insurances out there. The biggest hot button right now is going to be, at least as a, as business owners and then also as consumers, uh, and hearing it back from our employee base, it's all about medical insurance, uh, for the most part.

True. Um, for those whose ears perked up listening to this, for the three listeners we have, Doug.

Judd

I don't even know if you have that. Well. For this one. I

Joe

mean, we lost them. But I figured the two of you were going to listen, so that took it to three. Yeah. All right. I'll listen. On, on, on the medical piece, what are you seeing trending for what will be renewals coming up here, you know, four or five months from now?

Noelle

I don't really work in this space, to be honest. I mean, Judd and I are both property and casualty, but you're obviously more exposed to it as agency president than I am. Um, so.

Joe

Yeah. I'll retract my question.

Noelle

Let's talk property. Yeah.

Judd

I mean, um, look, I think, again, every market's a little different. Um, I think, More employers are going to, you know, be forced to take on more risk, right? So, in the past where you've just transferred everything to, you know, the insurance company, um, smaller employers will, you know, take on more risk to contain cost. And then, you know, just look at their employee population and, um, address, you know, Um, health trends, you know, adverse health trends and, um, support programs that, you know, improve, um, you know, the overall health and well being of their employee pool.

But, um, but like, as Noel said, I mean, we're not, you know, on the employee benefit side, but it is a, it is a, to your point, it's a hot topic for. for all of our clients.

Joe

So they're shifting back to the property casualty side. You, you brought up catastrophic, catastrophic events, acts of God, hurricanes. You were hearing and reading stories about carriers, both both kind of small regional carriers to household names that are pulling out of state markets, pulling out of California, pulling out of Florida places that the states that have The probably, uh, absorbed the biggest impact of these natural events.

What is, what is that going to do for everyone else? What are we, are you feeling a trend that's going to occur? Is there going to be consolidation? Uh, what, what is the impact going to be both on us as consumers, but also business owners who have. physical property, who have liability insurance, who carry inventory, things like that.

Noelle

Yeah, I mean, I think you're going to see retentions or deductibles go up considerably. So you are going to take on more risk to keep your rates manageable. Um, carriers, you know, they want a good spread of risk. So they're going to want accounts that are outside of those states. But those accounts are still going to see increases, which they always say, well, you know, I'm not in Florida. Um, and we have, you know, clients that joke as soon as they see a hurricane start, you know, going on the news, they're like, Oh, great, my rates are going up. Um, but, you know, the carriers need that spread of risk. Um, but reinsurance rates are going up. I mean, those this year, um, the first half of the year, I mean, we saw a lot of increases, but I'll be interested to see what happens the second half.

Capacity is, you know, drying up essentially so and we're, you know, going to go into another hurricane season. It's just each year they're just getting worse and worse and the events are getting bigger and bigger. And I mean billion, billions of dollars losses each year, whether it's the wildfires or the hurricanes. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think consumers are going to be taking on more retention. Um, so just, you know, improving risk control as much as you can. Um, but again, if you're in those states, there's not a whole lot. You can do to prevent a hurricane coming, but just mitigating your risk as much as you can if you are in those states.

Joe

So, rent. Don't know.

Judd

Yes, yeah. You

Vince

guys, um, your customers, your partners, um, Span a wide range of industries, correct? Um, what are you hearing from them in terms of what the market looks like the rest of this year? I mean, no one's crystal ball is perfect, but you're exposed to a lot of different industry insights. What are they saying? What are you hearing?

Judd

Well, um, you know, I think on the manufacturing side, um, you know, with the cost of capital, um, I think there are some delays there in terms of, you know, uh, you know, their CapEx budgets. Um, you know, anything that was, um, um, you know, any, any project that was, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, um, in the works, I guess, any project that was in the works maybe 12 months ago. Um, you know, let's just say they, they wanted a machine, uh, they're gonna wait three years to get that machine. So, you know, the supply chain and, um, and, and other things are gonna, are gonna play into that. But, um, I mean, imagine paying, you know, multi million dollars for a machine and not getting it for three years.

Right. So, um, we're seeing a lot of delays there. Um, I mean, the construction industry, where we do a lot in that, in the construction space as well. Um, you know, good, finding good people, the labor market's tough. Um, you know, I mean, fortunately, uh, we do a lot of, we do a lot of street and road, uh, work. And, um, our clients are very active in that space. So, um, you know, the, the infrastructure bill, um, is, is. Uh, creating a lot of work for, for those industries. So,

um.

Vince

Right. And that's not a short term thing. Yeah. That's going to go on

Judd

for years. That'll go on for the next five years. Yeah. For

Vince

sure. When you said on the equipment side, they're, they're going to have to wait three years. They're placing the orders. Yep. But there's just not enough supply. Okay. Because we're seeing a, a big increase in equipment purchases just in the markets that we kind of deal with because if nothing else, it's replacing humans that they can't find. Right. To hire. Um, and it's trickling down even to smaller shops that normally wouldn't be automating.

The price point of the machines have come down and it's like, well, if this thing is going to run 15 to 20 hours a day, every day, it's going to take the, or do the work of two or three people. The math kind of works out now. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's crazy. Um, what advice are you guys giving your customers right

Noelle

now? Again, I think making sure they understand how to be a best in class risk because everyone's going to get rate increases, but the poor risk, the ones that don't have good loss control, don't have good measures in place are going to get a bigger rate increase. So if you can show the carriers that you've invested in safety and, and loss control and other things, um, it's just going to make you a better risk.

So, um, you know, you have a lot. They, they underwrite you and you probably have a lot less chance of losses and things like that. So you're, you're a more profitable risk for them. So just, you know, spending the money on that as much as you can. Obviously, dollars are tight and inflation's up and interest rates are up and borrowing's more and all that. But the more you can do to kind of set yourself apart from your peers, the better. Do you have

Vince

any good examples of

Noelle

that? Well, so like on workers compensation, Um, you're, you're measured by what's called an experience mod. So, uh, if, if you have a lot of losses, your mod's going to be over one. If, if you have very low losses, your mod's going to be under one, which means you get like a credit. Um, so, you know, having someone who's dedicated to safety, not just an HR person that does safety, does insurance, you know, so having someone that focuses on that to keep employees safe, um, can, can drive your, your premium. I mean, that's, that's something that you can, you can track and you can see that. So, um, that's, that's one example I can think of.

Judd

Cyber. Um, I think another really good example, I mean, as, I mean, these attacks become more sophisticated. Um, you know, coverage and capacity becomes restricted, um, and there are tools out there that help employers, and there are several local independent insurance brokers who have invested in these kind of tools to help insurers, or insureds, I should say, um, you know, prevent tax or identify a tax before it becomes, um, an event, um, through those scanning tools.

Yeah. Thank You know, the best in class risk, uh, discussion. That's more on the, you know, client retention side of things. But you know, just as far as like in terms of client acquisition side of things is it's, um, we get excited and sadly our industry is, has become very commoditized. Um, now we're very lucky. I guess from a, the business community's perspective that there are many very good, um, local independent insurance brokers who, who I believe, um, who, who I believe approach the, the business in this way, but, um, you know, it's, it's just empowering buyers to make good decisions and, you know, because we're so commoditized, you know, um, Joe, you could get a call every day asking an agent to quote your business and tell you that there's something, you know, cheaper, but, um, you know, helping you understand, you know, the time that it's going to go into securing that quote, um, you know, are you going to, is it going to be apples to apples?

Um, is the underwriter really going to see your risk? Um, you know, have you ever met the underwriter? Um, there's a, uh, a best in class way to approach the market, and there's a way not to. And, sadly, I believe a lot of employers are, go into the marketplace uninformed and sometimes create more harm than good. Is that fair, Noelle? Yeah, I

Noelle

think that's fair. Yeah.

Joe

Yeah, we live that world in our business model. I mean, price versus value. Price versus cost, not the cost of material, but the actual cost of the decision you made when price was your leading, uh, decision criteria. We, we are not a price club on our end. We try to provide additional value to our client base. Uh, because. You know, anyone can sell coatings and chemicals in a bucket. I mean, speaking of something being a commodity, um, it's just, what are you getting out of it? The old adage, you know, you get what you pay for, kind of a thing. Mm hmm. Yeah. Wonderful.

Judd

Well... Any, any other way we can really jazz up this insurance discussion? I wanted to shift,

Joe

I've just been dying, like, here, because I want to go back to something that I don't know if it was caught on the cold open or not.

Judd

Was your Halloween costume last year? Which was unbelievable, by the way. It was unbelievable. I mean, those tattoos on your face. They look so real.

Joe

Um, alright. So let's stick with you though. So I wanted to make sure we talked enough about insurance because I wanted you guys to obviously have your time to give insight as to what you do. But in the back of my mind I kept thinking, 77. Yeah. I wonder how many holes that really was for.

Judd

18. 18.

Joe

I'm not messing with you. Full length holes? More like a part three course.

Vince

Dude, full length holes. Oh, yeah, it was an executive course. Okay, that makes

Judd

sense now. Guys, played. It was, I, I couldn't miss. Throwing darts. Dude, couldn't miss. Nice. Peterson, Schaefer, your personalized insurance agent, he was with me. He'll vouch for me. I'll ask him. You should. You should. And, if he hasn't told you already, Your rates are going up.

Joe

because of that round because he lost some money. Oh, great. That's

Judd

awesome.

Vince

Oh boy. Anyway. All right. Well, thank you guys for coming in and sharing your insight. We appreciate it. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it. And thank all you guys for checking out this episode of the industrious podcast. Thank you for tuning in and don't forget if you're on that assessor YouTube channel, hit the subscription button, hit the little notification bell so you can be alert when new episodes like this one drop.

We would greatly appreciate it and it doesn't cost you a dime. Your rate will not change. I promise. Thanks a lot. Don't forget, be industrious.