SIAA CEO, Matt Masiello on What the Insurance Industry Should Expect Next

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It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a Happy Holiday! Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Ryan Hanley Show. And today we have a very dynamic episode, a very dynamic guest. Someone who sits in a very unique and interesting position in our industry.

And he is Matt Maciello, the CEO of SIAA, a market access provider, an organization representing more than $8 billion with a B in premium. And I wanted to have Matt on the show because I just think that where he sits, the agencies that he interacts with, the number of agencies that he interacts with and represents, and how he represents them to carriers and vendors and the way that SIAA positions themselves in the market, it just, it's all intriguing. And Matt's a great guy, and from every interaction I've ever had with him, I know him to be a true advocate for the independent insurance agent and agency. And it is just an absolute pleasure to have him on the show and ask him about his feelings on the future of our industry. Before we get to Matt, real quick, I want to remind you to head on over to ryanhanley.com forward slash insider to join a community, a community of agents, a community of insurance professionals who are working towards growth, who are, who are talking about topics, who are driving change in their organizations, who are looking for that, that competitive advantage.

And they're doing that through the construct of the launch of my agency, real grist. So I'm taking what I'm learning every single day, every interaction, I'm applying that to the more than 14 years of experience that I have in the industry, mashing it all up and delivering videos twice a week, explaining what's going on in my head, what strategies I'm using, what decisions I'm making, why I'm making them. And then also injecting different pieces of insight and conversation and rumors and ideas that I'm hearing as I mix and mingle throughout this industry, trying to grow my own business and just in general being the connector that I like to be in the space. And you only get access to that stuff if you're part of the inside, become part of the inside. There's absolutely no reason not to give the inside the 14 day free trial that you get.

Go to RyanHanley.com slash insider, check it out, sign up, do your 14 days. You don't, you don't like it. No problem. You're not gonna hurt my feelings, but if you love it, stick around and let's do something special. All right, let's get on to Matt Masiello, the CEO of SIA, the Sand Group and the Masiello Insurance Group.

My pleasure to have him on the show. Let's do this. Cool. So let's get right into it, man. Like I want to, I want to talk about some stuff.

I really appreciate you being on and we'll just kind of roll right into the show. And where I'd really like to begin with you is I just love to hear a little bit. I mean, SIA, the Sand Group, Masiello Insurance Group, like, like this has been your life for a long time. And I'd love to just get a little bit of that backstory. You know, I'm sure people who know you today are very familiar with the version of you today, but like, what has been your, it like kind of experiencing this thing and having it be such a large part of your life for so long?

Yeah, sure. So, and thanks for having me. So I've been with the organization actually for, I've been going into my 27th year this year. So it's sort of all I've known and all I've done. Sand Group, as you sort of just indicated as our, our operation here in the Northeast, it was started by Jim Masiello out of his own retail agency that he started.

That agency actually is now 55 years old. It's still in business. And so Sand Group operated here across the Northeast, started in 1983. I came on board in 93. I think we had probably 28 or 29 member agencies located here, just in, in New Hampshire, a little bit of Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont.

And around that same time was when we were approached by some industry executives to talk about what we were doing with the business model here in the Northeast. And they were sharing with us that it's a model that they thought would be great to have in other parts of the country to help independent agencies. And that was sort of our goal back then, like it is today is how do we help agencies? And that's where SIA was born from. A group of us got together led by Jim Masiello and Nick Papajohn, who are both still with us, came up with the idea of going out and building the SIA model around the country.

So we sit here today with about 13% of independent agencies have joined the organization. We have 48 master agencies around the country and we're just trying to help independent agencies grow and thrive. And our philosophy is if we help them and do the right things for them, then obviously we're going to get treated the right way as well. And one of those master agencies I'm going to be speaking at in March down in South Carolina, Assure Alliance. I'm very excited to go down there.

It's going to be a lot of fun of our Ben Taylor and his team, one of our top organizations. Yeah. Yeah. That's going to be tremendous. Just, just talking to them in the pre-calls.

I'm, I'm excited to go down there. So, um, plus it's South, South Carolina in March. It's not Albany. Um, so I want to talk, uh, so I, when I kind of told some, some of the people that I know that I was speaking to you is it was awesome because your name, you can't spend much time in our industry without SIA coming up. Are you going to join?

Are you not going to join? What's it all about? How does it work? I think a lot of people have a lot of questions and I want to get into, I want to spend the second half of this conversation talking about SIA and networks, alliances, cluster, you know, there's all these different names for different versions of things, but, but I want to talk about that, but you wrote this series of articles, um, that I found, uh, to be, it was just really an interesting, um, a lot of it aligned very much with my own views, but I want to get your perspective on these things. I think you sit in such a unique place.

I mean, uh, what, almost 8 billion in premium written. You've, you know, you've had over 6,000, 6,000 plus agencies be part of the network. I mean, you have extensive and intensive experience. So to get your perspective on some of these topics that I think, you know, agents up and down the spectrum carrier people up and down the spectrum are all talking about these topics. So I'd like to start there and then we'll work into SIA.

Sounds great. Um, so, and, and for everyone listening, if you go to, um, if you go to the, to the brianhanley.com slash forward slash, and I'll just use the title, the SIA will be the title of this episode just to make it easy. I'm going to have links to this article series, which, which I highly recommend you check out is both informative, um, on what we're going to talk about and on what SIA is all about. So, uh, the very first point that you have in here is independent agents are not going away. And one, obviously I couldn't agree more.

I'm starting in it, or at least I hope that's true. Um, but the, the thing that I think is interesting is five years ago when the insure tech movement first hit the scene, this was not, you know, it was, oh my gosh, it's over. What do you think has maybe spurred that initial insure tech idea of we're going to come in and tear this whole thing down and it's broken. And why do you think it feels like every one of those companies has now come back to the independent agents? Yeah, great point.

So I, and thanks for referencing that series. I think that was the sky is falling. The sky is falling. Yes. Yep.

Um, uh, I wrote that back in 2018. And one of the reasons why I wrote it is if you were looking at the trade journals and hearing some people speak in the industry, it really sounded like the end was near for independent agencies and independent agent distribution. And as we started to dig deeper into some of the trends and what I would call some of the tea leaves that we were reading of what was going on in the industry, we actually saw a pretty positive story. Um, and you know, one of the big things that sort of had, had everybody's hair on fire was insure tech, right? The billions of dollars that are coming into the industry, starting with whatever it was, a billion and a half dollars in 2011.

I think it's going to end up being $6 billion for last year. Uh, everybody thought, wow, technology and innovation has discovered our industry and they're going to disrupt us. And, and these organizations would write articles saying that we're going to replace the agencies. And I even read an article at one point that talked about replacing the insurance companies. And what I believe happened with these technology organizations is they ran into three basic barriers of entry.

One is in our industry, we don't have one regulator. We have 50 regulators in each state. Uh, we don't have, in order for these folks to get into the insurance industry, they don't just have to invest in their technology product. They have to have surplus and capital. Uh, and then the final thing I think they ran into is the fact that we do have three pretty successful forms of distribution and insurance.

Uh, obviously we're all bullish on the independent agency channel, but the exclusive channel direct channel, uh, have their own market share. And so I think when they ran into these things, they discovered that they would be better off to come in and work with us than work against us. And I think that has created a huge, uh, opportunity. I'm actually speaking with a company in a couple of weeks as well, at a company sales meeting, uh, where it's, it's created a huge opportunity where I think these investments are ultimately going to benefit us, but we have to engage these investments and we have to figure out where, where they can help us. Uh, so I, so I, that's why I really looked at it.

And I'll, I'll preface that whole thing about insure tech and going back to 2018, when I wrote that series, this is without a doubt, the greatest time to be an independent agency. It's just a matter of what people do with it. There's ultimately how their success is going to be determined. You know, one of the things that I've realized, and I feel like I've known this forever and I've kind of fought it, but now building my own agency, I've really realized it firsthand is that every independent agency really is its own unique snowflake. And, and that's not a negative, like you, you essentially get to build exactly, you know, obviously there's some kind of standard pieces that everyone has to have, but so much of this, you get to craft to be exactly what you want it to be.

And, um, as much as I think sometimes from technology standpoint, that can be frustrating. It really does create a competitive advantage across the board. And it's great that you point out that every agency is its own, uh, its own snowflake. You know, there's a lot of discussions of what is a digital insurance agency, and it's going to be fascinating following your journey because that's how you're starting for the rest of us. We've had to sort of look at the retail insurance agency model and say, how do we digitize, digitize that, and, uh, we did a study here, uh, and it was a fascinating study as we started talking about it.

Uh, I sat in a room and when I think of a digital agency, I was thinking marketing, but the person next to me was thinking more about service. And then the other person that was more of an inside person was thinking more about operations. And what we realized is this, all of those things. And that's a big, you know, you can only eat the elephant one bite at a time. And so that's a lot for an independent agency to think about.

And so we developed a program where we identified four key areas, marketing, advisory sales, service and operations. And we think that those are the areas where agencies need to have a digital approach. Uh, we developed a worksheet where the agencies could go in and score themselves, maybe even use their staff to score them. So they have a more accurate view. Uh, but it's going to be all of those things.

It's going to be taken, uh, in small bites. And I think the biggest thing is we are not looking to replace the phenomenal accuracy. Attributes of an independent agency. The independent agency distribution channel is successful because of the agents and the people and how we do things. We are going to enhance those things with digital capabilities.

So they're more modern when the consumers are looking to do business with us. Yeah. You brought up, um, the captive market and we've seen a lot of captive carriers starting to release their captive force. And I don't want to say throw them out to the wolves, but certainly, certainly force them to make decisions they've never had to make before. So being that this is an area of expertise that obviously you guys fall into, um, and there's a lot of captives that have started listening to shows like mine, like Jason Cass is like some of these other insurance podcasts, cause they're just trying to find out where to get information.

What are some things that maybe you could toss to them, um, just in these early days of moving from the captive world where a lot of decisions are made for them to making their own, what should they be thinking about as they move into the independent space? Yeah. You know, I think for those of us on the independent side, we think this is a huge opportunity for these folks. Um, you know, we use the word empathy a lot in, in how we do things. And I sort of made my own mistake a couple of years ago talking to a former captive or a captive that was being, uh, sent down the path to becoming independent.

Uh, and it wasn't his goal to become independent. He liked being a captive. And, and I said to him at one point, I said, you just don't understand how exciting this is. And he looked at me and he said, son, I feel like my mother just put me up for adoption. I've been with this company for my whole career.

So I think as independent agencies and as SIAA, we have to understand that there's some known unknowns. And so these insurance companies in some instances have given them a path to independence, but they've really only given them a path from the door to the door. And what we want to do is sort of embrace them and help them to come over. Um, this is a great opportunity for the independent agency channel. We shouldn't be embracing these folks coming over.

They're well-trained. They have great staff, staff. Uh, it's more market share from the exclusive channel over to the independent, uh, independent agency channel. I think these folks really have to take some time and align themselves with an organization that knows and operates within the independent agency channel. And that's not just us.

There's other organizations out there, but I think the biggest thing for these folks when they're starting an independent agency, um, is there is no reason to learn from their mistakes or make their own mistakes when most of us have already made them. Uh, I'm a firm believer that experience doesn't only come from your own experiences. It comes from those around you, uh, that you can learn from. And so I hope these folks are picking affiliations carefully. Um, uh, you know, there's a lot of agencies that are part of organizations, market access providers are sort of here to stay, uh, in the industry right now.

But these folks need to realize that the, the needs that they have in the immediate transition of becoming an independent agency and the needs that they're going to have through the life cycle of their independent agency are different. And so I'm hoping that they're asking the right questions relative to, uh, what can you do for me today? But are you going to be there for me tomorrow? And the big, I actually put a great questionnaire out, uh, for folks to use, uh, when exploring market access providers. And it's a document that we've embraced and provided the answers to, and we make it part of our materials, but they got to ask the questions and they got to make sure they're entering into the right longterm relationship.

Um, yeah, I, I actually was just talking to, uh, before this call with you, uh, a member of the inside my, my, my community who was a former all state agent who became an independent three years ago. And we were discussing like what that transition looked like for him. And what's funny about, I shouldn't say funny. What's interesting about most captives is because they only had one product to sell. They had to be real.

I mean, they had to be salespeople like they had to sell. They couldn't just rip, you know, rip off the cheapest price and, and move on. Like oftentimes they weren't the cheapest and they had to sell in a different way. And I think transferring that to an independent model, well, now you're not, now you can sell that same way, but with multiple carriers, it's these, I think a lot of times captive agents come over, they tend to be set up for success where they fall apart is in making these kinds of decisions and I would just have to absolutely echo your, your, uh, your advice to them in that join an association, become part of a group, surround yourself with other agents, whatever that looks like for you. That's the best fit because you absolutely, the thing that I've learned across the board starting rogue is you do not have to do this alone.

There are so many people in so many different ways, shapes, and forms that are willing to help do not try to do it alone. That's really the only way to fail is if you try to just like go out and make these decisions on an Island. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think the big part of it too, is making sure you're asking the right people to help you, right?

Not the people that don't know sort of how to navigate in the space and not the people that have never made the mistakes that we've all made. There is absolutely positively in this business, something, something to experience. And I guess that's, that is what everything, but I think it goes doubly. This, the, the, the, the, the way trends operate in our space have longer cycles. So you want people who've survived, who've lived through, who've experienced some of these longer cycles to help get you there.

If someone just pops up and jumps in, it doesn't mean they're wrong. You're just taking a much bigger swing. And sometimes I think it's nice to have a nice mix, mix with some people that have been around for a long time, mix with some people that have some new crazy ideas, find out what works. So, um, the next, the next thing I want to touch on from your perspective is like you guys write as a collective, an incredible amount of premium of carriers. So I'm positive that you've had the opportunity to sit in some spaces and have conversations with carriers about their future, about where they're going, what their vision is.

I'm sure they lean on you for advice and feedback on, on the temper, uh, or the temp, sorry, the temperature of, of the channel independent channel. Like, where do you see, there's so much about carriers kind of jumping the agent. And I think there's some fear there as technology becomes more a part of how carriers operate, you know, what do you see as the future for carriers? Do you see them having, um, uh, uh, a longer arm into the, into the marketplace as a bad thing? Um, I'm just interested in your take on that.

Yeah. I mean, so the, you know, I think the question is, is, are we really worried about carriers going direct to the consumer? Um, and as I say to my kids every once in a while, no is a complete, uh, complete sentence. I mean, you know, the answer is no. And let me sort of explain why, because people look at me and they're like, well, but, but you're doing business with the devil.

Aren't they competing with you? Um, and this is all about worrying about, uh, the insurance distribution channel and sort of the conversion and the perceived conflict, uh, of the different channels. And so, uh, you know, obviously the traditional three main channels, direct, exclusive, and independent agency. We think the exclusive channel is on a downward slide. We believe the direct channel is picking up some of that premium volume, uh, but the independent agency channels picking up a lot of it in homeowners and small commercial.

And I'll come back to auto in just a second. I, we look at it a little bit differently that when carriers have multiple forms of distribution, um, they now are investing into platforms. They're investing in the products. Um, you did a session on data, uh, last week. They're investing into, into using their own data.

I mean, think about it. If we represent an independent agency company that all of a sudden has data of a huge multi billion dollar direct channel, and we can have that data for a product and for dealing with our customers that benefits us. And so I, I sort of, and we sort of feel like, um, as these carriers, uh, uh, go direct and go independent and level the playing field with product and with systems, uh, we now have a level playing field where I personally think for the business that we as independent agencies target and want to write, we're going to win every time. Um, I mentioned auto for a second, cause I, I want to come back to auto for a little bit. Um, there's a place for all insurance and not all independent agencies want to write every person that, uh, comes through the door and that we work with.

And we see the, the, uh, direct channel taking automobile premiums from the exclusive channel at a rate of about five to one. So five, uh, from exclusive agencies and about one from us as independent agencies and all, uh, talk agencies about sometimes maybe we should consider letting the direct channel take some of that business. And what I mean by that is there are some risk characteristics or classes of automobile insurance that are, uh, low limit, uh, high service. The carriers pay, uh, reduced commissions on these products. They have bad retention and they have poor loss ratio.

Maybe we should give them that business, uh, to the direct channel and we should focus on clients that are worth more, uh, to our agency. And so if we've got access to carriers and systems and platforms with a level playing field, field and we as independent agencies know what our target market is, you know, you and I were talking the other day about rogue and what you're going to go after. And if we know what that market is and we have the right carriers, that's a win. Uh, the direct channel isn't doing that, right? They're sort of throwing it all against the wall and bringing in certain risk characteristics.

And so we can, as independent agencies, I think we can benefit from carriers. And I think there's just great examples of carriers now that have multiple forms of distribution. And while it may be really far behind the scenes, we're getting benefits from that. I, I, I agree with you. I have been for about two years now, I've been on a platform and maybe even longer.

Who knows? I've been on this platform of, I feel like these, especially, especially the, the, the super regional mutuals and stuff that the companies that, that really form the bedrock oftentimes of, of the, of an agency's book of business. I would love it if they reached out into the marketplace more, even if it was just from a branding perspective, just to feel what advertising is like and what, what, uh, conversion optimization is like and what feedback you get. Like just, just to have those conversations. I mean, again, going back to my friend who, who was the former Allstate agent, he was talking about marketing reps coming into the office and he's like, it's hard because I'm not an expert and I can't even speak the same language.

Like they don't even understand the basics of what I'm talking about when it comes to driving business in. And, and I think it's because for so long that the eighth carrier has stood behind the agent and, and, and not that that's a bad thing. I just feel like today we all need to be speaking the same language and it's okay for some of the carrier stuff to leak around the agent, um, into, into the marketplace and, and help build that brand. Yeah. I'll just make one more comment on that too.

Cause that's a really good point. The other thing is, is none of us are strong enough in this industry and the industry itself isn't strong enough to direct the consumer for how they're going to buy something. Uh, we can't tell somebody how they're going to buy a product online, uh, or whether they're going to go to the store and insurance is approaching that area now where the consumer is picking the direction. And so at a certain level in the insurance companies, we need them to be financially stable and capturing those customers, whether it's through us or whether it's through, uh, uh, the direct channel. But again, I'm just going to say that as independent agencies, we need to sort of carve our own, uh, best in class out, uh, when consumers are looking for how they're going to buy insurance and show them that for their type of needs, we're the best, uh, best outlet for them.

Um, the, the last question that I have released for this particular segment that I have for you around the industry in general is, uh, everyone is talking about, I shouldn't say everyone. There is a lot of talk around a small commercial being like the next blue ocean, right? Like auto people kind of have figured out auto to a certain extent. Home is right behind it. Um, small commercial and maybe not micro commercial, like $500 bops, but that like 2,500 to 10,000, 15,000 per range.

Like that small, a true small commercial market feels very blue ocean. It's, it's, it's not automated. A lot of people don't go after it yet. It's just as clunky to service it as it is a hundred thousand dollar account. So people don't spend a lot of time on it.

Um, where do you agree with that trend and how do you see people attacking that area? Yeah, I completely do look small commercials and underserved market. We all know that the larger agencies and the brokers don't even pay their producers to go after it. Uh, we heard of an agency recently that won't pay, uh, for anything that doesn't generate, uh, $10,000 of revenue. Um, our average premium, uh, on our small business is under five across, uh, SIAA.

So we write a lot of small business with it. So I think small business is a huge opportunity. It's an underserved market, um, for the carriers. It's a very profitable line of business, which certainly helps us as agencies relative to contingencies and additional incentives. Uh, commissions haven't been touched, uh, in, uh, in small commercial.

Um, uh, there's a lot of great opportunity. You do have to do it efficiently. Uh, but I think the challenge that the larger agencies and the brokers have is they don't necessarily always have local offices as independent agencies. We're local. We're in the community.

Um, we can write that stuff at the same cadence at which we can write personal lines business, uh, more, more efficiently. Uh, we have to be careful with the touches. We have to consider service centers and self-service capabilities and things like that. But it's a huge opportunity. You know, we sort of started off talking about the future of the industry and how exciting it is.

Uh, we believe that, you know, the independent agency of the future, uh, is going to be a community-based organization. Uh, there's this flight to do business locally. Local businesses want you to do business with them, which means they should do business with you. Uh, those local business owners have personal lines needs that all of a sudden becomes a big account when you take a look at the personal lines and the, and the business needs. So, you know, agencies building a community brand with both traditional and digital relationships and marketing and targeting the small business, uh, in and around their community and even targeting, uh, classes and becoming the, uh, professional in those classes is there, or the expert in those classes, uh, is a great way to go.

We're very bullish on small commercial. We have our own small commercial training program where we can either help agencies get more efficient at writing small commercial, or we can help them transition from personal lines into small commercial. And it's been a big investment on our behalf because we are so bullish of where we think it fits in. Yeah. Uh, one, one more question on this, and it's very self-serving for Rogue because it's a big part of our business model is, you know, you're feeling on customer care centers.

So, you know, I, I've shared with you a couple of the carriers that I'm looking at for direct appointments and, and, and a big part of my process in those appointments is, do they have a customer care center? Being a one man shop, knowing that my first hire is most likely going to be a VA for just making sure things get connected to the proper place. I'm going to leverage whether it's during office hours or not. I'm definitely going to be leveraging the customer care centers. So I know a lot of agents struggle with it.

I talked to a very good agent in upstate New York, Mike Crowley, who said, look, we're 30 years in, we've never used one. Our model is to not use one. That's what we are. And he wasn't anti, but he just said, I will never go that way. I've talked to other agents who are slowly making the transition.

So, um, where, where do you see them falling? You know, from your vantage point, um, how are they important? Is it something we should leverage more? Just where, where, where do you fall? I mean, this is, this is something I could actually, I'll try not to, but this is something I could actually go on for quite a while about because we've seen again, those tea leaves that are going on in the industry.

What I'll say is, well, we, as the agency of the industry don't have the strength or the power to tell the consumer how to buy insurance, we're rapidly approaching the time where we probably don't have the power to tell the consumer how they're going to service their insurance. It's no longer our decision. And so we'll have agencies say to us, well, you know, I've, I've, uh, I'm never going to use a service center because my value proposition is my service. And we sort of chuckle and say, well, everybody thinks the value proposition is their service. And they'll say, my phone rings off the hook.

So clearly my customer wants me to service them. And what we'll say to them is, well, what, what about, what about the calls you're not getting? And, you know, 25 to 30% of all the calls that go into, uh, customer service centers, uh, at the carriers are in off hours from when the agencies are open. Um, and, and can an agency be more efficient and more effective if they're reallocating their time to business development and service and proactive call to business development, um, uh, and upselling and cross selling versus service, uh, with their customers. And can they be more revenue positive with that?

Um, I think the final piece to it with us is we've actually done some pretty in depth studies, uh, meaningful studies. And so one, one of our insurance companies, uh, took a sampling of our member agencies, uh, with about 15,000 small commercial policies. Of those 15,000 small commercial policies, our members had made the conscious decision to put about 18% of those policies in the service center. Uh, with this carrier specifically about 48% of those policy holders that actually registered themselves to perform some limited service online. Yeah.

Uh, bigger sampling on the personal line side is we have a company where our members collectively around the country, right? About 550,000 policies. Uh, and the numbers are almost the same agent put about 20% of those policy holders in the service center. Uh, consumers registered for service, my policy or manage my policy, uh, with that carrier over 50% of the time. And so I think as agencies, we need to make sure that we're giving our, our clients what they want, which may be self-service at home at night or calling the service center or calling the agency.

Uh, and I think agencies moving forward need to be prepared to be an advocate when self-service or service centers or claims falls through the crack and agency advocacy is needed. But I, I believe personally, we have to provide these service, uh, capabilities to our clientele because they want it. You know, none of us want to go to the bank during the day. None of us, you know, do we really want to call our insurance agent at 9:30 on a Tuesday, right? Uh, so, so I think we have to be prepared for those things.

And like what you're doing, we have to figure out where they fit into our model. You know, we had our own retail agency that didn't use service centers, even though I'm pro service center. So it's got to fit your business model. I, what, how do you feel like I've always believed and, and, and my thought process and kind of how I'm building rogue is I want my value proposition to be frontline underwriter and advocate. Like, like I would love to take back being the frontline underwriter for the carriers.

Like I'm going out, I'm looking at what the risk is. I'm making determinations on where, on what carrier it should be, what the coverage should be. Like that's where I'm adding the most value. And then advocacy, because obviously I did that frontline underwriting. If there's a claim, if there's a problem, advocacy processing transactional policy issues to me just does not feel like a true value add.

And I get that some agencies have established that with their customer base. And that would be incredibly difficult to change today. I don't discount that. But for me, starting today, I, I struggle with, to me, it just feels like we, that's really what we're, we should be out frontline underwriting. We should be not just plopping the information into a, into a rater, but like really thinking about that risk and building a program out.

And that's the value. If that's where our value is, then our value doesn't have to be as heavy on processing a certificate, which, you know, uh, two button clicks can do. And you know what I mean? So I don't know. I, did you see flaws in that?

I mean, where, where do you know? I think you're dead on. And I think by the way, that clientele that's calling the agency is getting older, uh, and, and is getting more technologically savvy for how they do things. And when they do things, I think your model is dead on. And what I like to say is that, you know, we, as independent agencies, we're not going anywhere and we're not going to be removed from the insurance transaction and that whole cycle of, uh, sales and advising and risk selection and service and advocacy.

We're still going to be in that cycle. It's just where we fit in that cycle is evolving. And that's what you're doing is saying, I'm going to carve out where I fit in the cycle. And so, you know, there's no, as you said earlier, right, every independent agency is its own snowflake, there's no right or wrong way. It's what works for us, but that becomes a more, a valuable value proposition when you're finding out where you fit in that versus saying, I answered the phone on the first ring, right?

That's a real tangible value proposition that you're creating that makes you as an independent agency and some of the listeners unique at where they fit the process. So, um, we could talk about like the future of the industry all day. I, I do want to, because a big part of this is, like I said, at the very beginning, SIA is brought up over and over and over again. And, and it has for my entire career, you're such a staple in terms of your place. Um, and I, and I, you know, I, I tweeted out to my, on Twitter, I just said like, I'm interviewing, uh, Matt Masiello and what questions you have.

And we got a tremendous number of, of questions. Just people are interested in it. I think anyone who has been in a growth phase in their business has at some point said, is this a good option for me? So what I, you know, I'll just start with the very first question that I got. And you know, this is a chance for you to talk through for people who've just said, geez, I've heard their name.

I, maybe I know an agent down the road who's member, but I'm not really sure. Like, you know, very first question that this is the very first response that I got when I tweeted this out, it was just like, and it's super simple. Like, like how do you guys partner with agents? Like, what is that frontline value proposition when someone sits down? Like what's one of your master agents saying, you know, and I know it may be a little different for each master agent, but like, what is that value thing that, that, that, that they can start to think about?

Yeah, I think it actually starts with the business model. And, and what I mean by that is, you know, we are in a transactional industry where, when a policy is written, a revenue is shared. Um, our model is actually not transactional. Um, so while it's very important, it's incredibly important for us to help our agencies write business. Um, our model is actually based on them growing their overall agency from the day they joined, whether they're a startup agency or an existing agency, uh, looking to access our benefits.

So our focus is, uh, it's broad. It's on placing business, but it's on giving them the tools to grow their overall business as an entity, simply writing business. Does it make you successful? What are all the other things in running and operating and growing an agency that will make you successful? And that's sort of that life cycle of an independent agency.

So, um, our model, uh, focused on the overall agency, not simply placing business. And I think that's allowed us to invest in, in a lot of services and benefits that maybe folks aren't thinking about day one, then they joined, but then they're thinking about them down the road a little bit. Yeah. Um, the next question I got was, and this is making my job really easy that everyone had these questions, but, uh, what are some of the rewards for and, and how do you become say a top performer inside, uh, the SAA ecosystem? Yeah.

So, uh, uh, you know, rewards are, um, look, when you own, when you, so we're not an insurance company, right? So we are, we're not doing, we don't do trips and we don't do the things like that. Um, but rewards for independent agencies are their own success. Uh, it's their own success for their families, uh, for their communities, for their staff members. Uh, what we've done in our business model is make sure that we're negotiating the best incentives, uh, with the carriers, but unlike other organizations, we're passing a majority of those incentives back down to the agencies.

We recognize agencies throughout the master agencies and throughout the countries for, uh, uh, entrepreneur being top entrepreneurs, community service, most profitable, uh, fastest growth, you know, uh, startup agency of the year. So we have these, these rewards, uh, in, in all of the master agencies, but to me, the biggest reward of the independent agency is looking at what they've accomplished and then putting pen the paper on what they can accomplish down the road because everything they're doing is for themselves and their families and their employees. Uh, it's not for somebody else. Yeah. What is something about SIA that, um, that like a benefit that not enough of your agents are taking care of that, like something that you have out there that you think is really valuable that maybe people just don't know you offer or maybe, you know, like, like what's that hidden benefit that you'd love to see more agencies taking advantage of?

Yeah. I mean, I, I, there, there's actually a fairly long list, but a lot of these things get plugged in and different, uh, stages of an agency's life cycle and when they're ready to do things. So I'm actually going to do the easiest one, which is compensation. Um, and you know, money is important, but we have to write the business first, but what there's a lot of, uh, aggregators out there. There's a lot of, um, uh, market access providers that are talking about compensation.

I think what's unique about our business model, uh, is because of the size and, and, and the, uh, size of the books of business and the relationships that we have, uh, in the carriers, we've got a unique compensation model for our agencies that really gives our agencies five different ways to make money on a book of business. And so a traditional independent agency, um, uh, can make money through commission and profit sharing, profit sharing or contingencies can be an all or nothing thing based on loss experience. Um, you know, we provide a tool for our agencies to generate revenue up to five different ways on that same book of business. And the fact is, you know, in 2019, 2020, you can't run an independent agency on just the commission anymore. And so how can we get more dollars with partner carriers, uh, which are good carriers for the agencies, good carriers for the clients, and then in exchange for that, get more dollars into the agency's hands so they can invest into their business and their families.

And the quid pro quo is do business with those carriers too. So it's, it's cliche, uh, but it is the money piece, uh, is a big deal. You know, we've got local, uh, local and regional incentives, but because of our national size, we have a layer of national incentives that don't really exist anywhere else that we push back down. Yeah. So, um, the next question I have is the relation or that, that came up here, the relationship between, uh, SIA, uh, and, and the master agencies, like, uh, um, I've done some work for Henry powers before at VIAA.

Uh, and, and, and I think his sister still works for him and they run a good, a good master agency in St. Louis. Um, like how does that relationship work? Like just, I guess I think some people don't understand like, okay, I'm a member of say VIA or I would become one. How does that relate to the large organization and where you're sitting?

Yeah. So the, the SIA master agencies are independently owned and operated businesses. We've had long-term relationships with these folks. Most of the master agencies are well over 15 years now, uh, several of them approaching 25 years, uh, as SIA approaches its 25th anniversary, there are 48 SIA master agencies. We get together twice a year and then periodically in between those times for various meetings.

What's interesting is when we're with the SIA is with the SIA master agencies, uh, it's a friendship as well because there's only 48 of them. So they're independent business owners operating the SIA model in that territory. But you know, we sort of started this discussion with collaboration and learning from other people's experiences. The master agencies learn from our experiences. The master agencies actually share their experiences amongst each other as well.

We all operate in exclusive territory, so we don't compete. We collaborate. So a ton of collaboration. A lot of the, uh, uh, benefits and services, sort of the more institutional things, we've started at SIA and pushed down to the master agencies, but then they've made them better and executed with them on the feet in the field. Uh, the biggest benefit to us is it's great that we're this big national organization, but an agent in St.

Louis doesn't care about Matt Masiello in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Um, he cares about Henry and his family supporting that agency in St. Louis. So the execution of the master agencies and the fact that these master agencies are local, they live and work in those states and those territories. Uh, and they've got real, um, they've got all their, their cards on the table on how, and them trying to invest and help these agencies too.

Yeah. Nothing, nothing against my Midwestern friends, but, uh, Portsmouth, New Hampshire blows St. Louis. It's one of my favorite towns. My, my family always stops there on it.

We go to a gunk with Maine every year and, uh, on our way through, I always make my wife stop there. And I just, I just love that town. I look forward to seeing you there this summer. Yeah. Uh, well now I got, now I can, I can say hello when we roll through.

So, um, I want to, I want to be respectful of your time and everything. I think the number one question that, you know, when, in, since I've started rogue and started talking about it about two months ago, I've had a lot of other agents who are in a similar place. They started a year, two years ago, or they're very close to launching, or they're in the early stages of launching. They're in this kind of bucket. And I think every single one of them, almost to a T has said, um, should I join a cluster, an aggregator, someone like an SIA, or even a Keystone, you know, whatever.

These are all these groups are, are, are talking to them. And, and, and, you know, you can go into SIA directly, but just in general, I would love, like, what is the thing that they, the, the decision tree they should have in their head for, I'm going to try to do this on my own. I'm going to try to, or I'm going to consider one of these groups and then in groups is a general, just a general placeholder term. Um, and, or, and then maybe the next level of that would be, and then why SIA of the group option? Um, you know, you know, I'm saying, yeah, you know, I said it before, you know, market access providers are here to stay.

Um, yeah, I think what, what gets missed in some of this discussion is, is believe it or not, the carriers are now relying on market access providers. Uh, you know, we now work with the carriers much more in a distribution standpoint than a market access provider. So they're real, they're here to stay. Um, I'll get this close. The big eye agency universe study from, from 2018 had some great slides on market access providers and it listed the top reasons why somebody joins a market access provider.

And it was access to standard markets. It was a lower premium volume thresholds. It was the ability to compete. Um, I'll actually tell you that lower volume thresholds, uh, gives you the greater ability to compete because you can represent more carriers. Um, compensation was on there.

It was a little further down. And what I'll tell you is compensation is only important if you have access to competitive carriers. If you can't write the business with those companies, it doesn't matter. Uh, within that study, it also talked about, uh, uh, around 50% of personal lines and small commercial lines, uh, with smaller type independent agencies is with market access providers. So it's, it's real.

Um, it's out there as far as who to join. We just tell everybody, uh, uh, take your time. Uh, we, we, we like it when folks are looking at other organizations because other organizations are really different. Again, I'll go back to that big eye questionnaire that they put out. I think it's a great document.

When our folks go in, we actually have already written, answered the questions and writing and we'll put it in front of the agent and say, here's how we would answer these questions. Um, agencies also don't, don't need to, can't just be thinking about today. Um, they've got to be looking down the path that they're going to be following and, and understand that they've got to align themselves with somebody that doesn't just help them write business, but helps them obviously, or continue down that pathway, uh, to be successful. Um, you know, the, the struggle is real. Uh, there's a lot of choices out there, you know, uh, in 1983, there was maybe two organizations doing this in 1993, when I came on board, there was probably less than a half a dozen.

Now there's hundreds around the country that are doing this. And so they've got to have the right fit. Um, I think relationships important. So they've got to feel good about the people you've mentioned a couple around the country just now, but they've got to have a good feel for these folks, um, and enter into these things slowly. Um, at the SIA level, I think for us, uh, and for our master agencies, you know, we're looking for the right folks.

We're looking for the folks that want to jump in with both feet and build an independent agency. Writing business is the most significant part of that, but doing business with the right carriers, running the business the right way, targeting the right business, uh, building a business that's got a good foundation and is sustainable for the longterm, which is why we have longterm, uh, relationships with our master agencies and our members. I'll sort of end with where I began on this topic. When you brought up SIAA, we are a different model. We're based on the growth of the independent agency, not just writing business.

And so there's a whole bunch of, uh, cogs and spokes that fit into that thing, uh, for growing an independent agency over five, 10, 15 years. Yeah. I, I can, I'm only going to kind of parrot your, I think it is important that people take time and talk. Don't just jump at the first thing that's thrown in front of you. It's take time, sit down, interview, get a feel because these are people that you're going to be doing business with for a long time and you want it to feel good.

I mean, um, that was a big part of the conversation when I was talking to, uh, um, Holly, uh, Heron from a sure Alliance, you know, she just kept saying these, these people are like family to us. And, and I think that, you know, you have to make sure you fit in there, but if you do, um, it seems like a, it seems like a wonderful solution. Matt, I appreciate, uh, the very first time I met you, I could tell just, you know, I had never met you before and I immediately could tell that you were, um, you know, of the strongest advocates for this channel. I appreciate everything you do and the role that, that your organization plays. And I just appreciate you giving us, you know, 40 plus minutes of your time, um, to just share your thoughts on, on the industry and, and to let people learn more about SIA.

Yeah, that's great. I appreciate the opportunity. Obviously always love catching up with you and, and I'm really excited to actually follow your journey as you do this. I think it's one of the more, the fact that you're putting it all out there, it's one of the more fascinating agencies that's being started right now. Uh, I think you've got a great venue and a great voice in this.

And I think in the future, a lot of people will be learning from your experiences. So the fact that you take the time to share all this is great. I'm just happy to be a small part of it. Thank you so much, man. I wish you all the best.

Have a good one. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you. Thank you.

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