What life is like for a “producer”

Producers are the tip of the spear in the insurance industry. They are the professionals who actually engage with the end customer. In an agency they are the “front office” staff; in a specialty lines carrier they are the underwriters; at a large broker they are the account executives whose phone rings when the customer needs to talk.

We believe these people create 80% of the value in the customers’ eyes. Not the capital markets gurus, not the actuaries, not the executive staff, not the IT department. The producers.

Let’s try to appreciate what they do for a second. These are not coin-operated salesmen. Every day requires them to negotiate treacherous situations in real-time.

You may mock them for spending so much time in restaurants and on the golf course — what a great life they have, you say. Well don’t: even in the off hours, these people are churning. They are performing left-brained analysis on twisting legal contracts. They are performing right-brained analysis on the behavior of their customers, where human perception of the risk matters as much as the numbers. They aren’t mechanically punching data into a system and calling it a day. They are under significant pressure, not just from internal management to perform and conform to mandated specs, but also from their peers and clients to do the right thing.

This is a non-linear, lateral sort of work. It is more creative in nature than deterministic. And it requires its own sort of flow state. It is very human and very much an art. It takes hours of concentration at a stretch to do a good job.

Do the processes and technology at your company lift these people up and make them better at what they do? Or do they break the workday into a thousand pieces, and impede progress with petty requirements?

We have designed Risk/R to enhance the artistry of insurance relationships. We think it lines up with the way work really gets done. We want to keep your best producers in their flow state.