The Broker's Voice: Jack Holder - Co-Founder, EBIS

All right, welcome back to the Broker's Voice. I'm excited this week to sit down with Jack Holder. But before we get there, I want to make a quick plug for my guys over at Agency Annex. If you are an insurance agency right now and you know that your website could use a little tweaking, that you could be building a website with more flow, and you want your website to stand out amongst your competition. Heck, you want your website to become that second sales. All right, now let's get into today's episode. With that being said, I am bringing on the one, the only, Jack Holder. Jack, how you doing?

Good, my friend. How are you doing?

I am doing well. Jack is co founder of Enhanced Benefits Insurance Solutions. So let's just. I always like to start the episode, Jack, this way. For the folks in the industry, and I know this is very few and far between nowadays that have no clue who Jack Holder is. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? How did you get into the insurance industry?

Yeah. From the beautiful state of Oregon. And I decided one day I was done with the rain. And after I graduated from Portland State University, great place to go, by the way. I decided to pick up and drive down to San Diego. Left everything behind. If it didn't fit in my car, it didn't come. And it's about as far south as I could get. I figured there was a lot of sunshine down here and no job lined up. Didn't know what I was gonna do.

So, okay, you made the drive down the. Down the coast, which is not an ugly drive by any means, by the way, to tell you what kind of college sports nerd I am, I do know Portland State's nickname is the Pilots. No, wait, that's the University of Portland, isn't it?

Yeah, it's the Vikings.

I got this wrong. Dang it. Okay, okay. So you're down in sunny Southern California now. How did you get. How did you get into the health insurance industry? Most of us did not get in here by design. How did you find yourself in the industry?

Yeah, I mean, we didn't dream of being in insurance. No. So after I got my degree, I decided I wanted to put it to use. I realized that I didn't have any real sales experience. I'd run a business.

I built houses, tore down houses, worked on a cruise ship, did a lot of fun things, but I never really was in sales. So I said, heck, why not? I need that.

I need to get better at it. And I met somebody at A career fair, believe it or not. And they introduced me to a small company that some have never heard of, Aflac. And I worked with them for many, many years down here in San Diego.

So you got your. You got your start with Aflac. I heard you say something a couple minutes ago. I've known you for a little while now, and something I didn't know about you. Cruise ship.

Yeah.

What was your job on a cruise ship?

That's a interesting story. So I was supposed to leave September 11, 2001 to work on a cruise ship. So I was doing everything, Andy I could to get out of my small town in the middle of nowhere. And. But September 11, 2001, obviously I didn't go anywhere. And they said, okay, sorry, plane shut down. Can you come back the next week? I said, okay, one week, whatever. They said, can you do us a favor? I said, okay, what's that favor? I was supposed to be a bellman. They said, can you be a gu? What's a gu? Yeah, I had no idea. It's essentially general maintenance. And then when I get there, I had to wash pots and pans. Long story short, it was the best character building experience in my life. I had many sleepless nights. I wish I could leave. And a lot of people even barely spoke English on this ship. People from all over the world. I was way out of my comfort zone on a ship washing pots and pans.

But, you know, that's the definition of get your hands dirty. It.

I learned a lot and. And I stuck through it and. And different day, different story. But I ended up running the bar, a hot bar, so food bar for all the officers before it went bankrupt while I was on it. So one of. One of the best and worst times is when I was done on the cruise ship.

Well, it sounded like you were done by without choice.

So let's go back. Okay, you're back on land, you're in the insurance industry, you have a pretty successful run with aflac. But there came a point where you realized.

I want to be doing something different. This is kind of the precipice of our premise of how EBIS was built. If you could take us to that moment, what led to you finally making that decision that it's time for me to go out on my own. It's time for me to start ebis.

So it was compounded over the years, but going back several years ago is I saw that technology was changing the way business was, was being done. Not only technology, brokers were doing business different, and they were Looking for more competitive options. And most of my business, almost all of it, was through our broker partners. And I thought what they were doing was the right things. Technology, again, was changing everything. And so after losing more than one client that it kept me up at night, I lost my largest client because we didn't really have the capabilities to provide the products that they needed at the time. At least in my opinion, we didn't because it just didn't work on their systems. Nonetheless, as I wasn't in the position to offer them those positions, I mean, to offer them those options. And I'll tell you, Andy, that was rough. Saying I was going to leave Aflac after 14 years.

To go to the unknown was one of the toughest points of my life.

Kind of like getting on that cruise ship.

It's like, oh, my gosh, it's a lot like getting on that cruise ship. But somebody once told me, when you make up your mind, when you really made up your mind, everything else becomes easier after that. But there was a lot of tears lost. Aflac was a great company, and I think the people in Aflac were even better. I developed a lot of great relationships, but it was just time to move on and do something different, something that was ours. And so we took that leap of faith and haven't looked back.

That's awesome. And, you know, sitting here at ebis, which again, stands for Enhanced Benefit Insurance Solutions, which Enhanced Benefits has become, you know, it's a more recently used phrase for what we know as the world of voluntary benefits. Right. And let's face it, the industry likes to commoditize what you guys do. So let's just talk quickly about if you don't mind sharing. You and I have talked about this offline. What are some, like, three myths that brokers have when it comes to voluntary benefits? Selling them or the lack of selling them?

Yeah, it. Okay, so put me on the spot here, Andy. Now, some of the benefits are this is that all voluntary benefits are the same. And I'm going to disagree with that. They're not all the same. I could go into that more detail on a different day. But the other is that employees just don't want them. And that's not the case. Employees are looking for solutions. And today, even more than ever, they just want options. And the reason why they go to their employer for these options is because they trust their employer. Otherwise, they go to some random website online and hope and pray they get good benefits. Or they can go to their trusted employer and hopefully that employer is vetting their options. And the broker, of course, the health broker that's bringing them.

That'S one of them. The other is that they're just too complicated. And I think this is a big hindrance to our broker partners and even employers offering voluntary or enhanced benefits.

They just think that's too much work when it is, if it's not done correctly. And you'll see I've done a few videos about this. But if we simplify everything and we build the product around the client and the business objectives, it's amazing how much easier everything becomes. So 5 second version is if we look at what their platform is? Well, we don't start with the carrier and try to fit that carrier onto the platform. We start with the platform and then find the carrier that works with the platform. Voluntary. Let's be honest, it's not, it's not the meat and potatoes as we call it. It's not the major thing. It's enhancing what they have. It's not replacing. So we need to start with that.

That's a great point. You know, I, I think about, when I hear, for whatever reason, when I think about voluntary benefits, I go back about a decade when I was working with an insurance agency in Wisconsin. I can remember how many times at renewal the medical carriers would come to you and say, hey, the increase is 12%, but if your client buys an additional line of critical illness or accident, we will reduce their medical renewal from 12 to 7. And I think brokers just got so burned out with that. Quit using the voluntary benefits to manipulate what you're doing with the medical that I know by that point our agency in Wisconsin was, we didn't even want to talk voluntary benefits. And so, you know, but the point is, the reality is it's a deal. Big, big asset to brokers and agencies if they utilize it correctly. So that's the question I want to ask you, Jack, if we look forward, you know, if I'm an agency sitting there trying to grow, you know, where a lot of agencies are in protection mode, right. They're, they're tightly wrapping their arms around their existing clients. How do you see enhanced benefits fitting into an agency's strategic plan over the next three to five years? Where can they leverage it?

Yeah, great question. So we can go to the traditional ways that they leverage it, which is filling the gaps. And medical is changing and it's been changing forever, but it's changed more in the past 10 years than it probably changed in the past 100 years before that. Right.

So I think that Using it to fill the gaps is going to be still standard, but I think that we're looking for more and more simple ways in the future to provide it. I'll give you some examples. It's instead of these complicated products where you have to go enroll in another platform, I think it's all going to be tied into the enrollment platform. Instead of having 20 different options and 20 different writers, they're probably going to have a couple of options or they might even go, in my opinion, in the future, might even have these products that have everything under one product. And we're starting to see that more and more.

If I'm a mid level independent agency, a mid sized independent agency, you know, you and I have talked about this too at great length.

Do you believe that having a good strategy around something like voluntary can actually go help me win bigger business from.

Bigger competition all day long? It can help you get your foot in the door. I was talking to this broker a couple weeks ago and they kept putting off voluntary, kept putting it off and actually they left a direct carrier in there independent of them. Well, what happened was the competition came to the table with a full strategy with enhanced benefits. Working with their medical and, and actually.

Driving the way that employees are using their benefits instead of just as an extra add on. It was part of the entire solution. So this new broker is up at the table when the last broker never in a million years thought that they would have to defend their position. But now they do. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Oh, no, no, keep going, keep going.

Yep. So now they're in a defensive mode. And then it's a lot harder to come back and say, well, we could have done this before now. I think this, this broker is very intelligent, so they'll probably get through it. But the reality is is we want to be offensive, not defensive when it comes to benefits. That's my opinion. And I think that if not, we might be out of business in the future.

Well, and to your point, you know, I think it's so easy to again take something like voluntary enhanced benefits and use it as a throw a bunch of crap at the wall and see what sticks. No strategy. Let's put a bu plans in place, whoever signs up. Great. But what you're saying in this case is that broker actually said, no, no, no, no. Enhanced benefits is actually a part of the overall strategy and it's tied into what we're doing with the medical. So let's go in with that complete strategy. And now here you have a broker who probably is going to win a much larger piece of business than they normally do because of applying the entire strategy. Not a bunch of one offs.

That's right. Proactively.

Proactively. So, Jack, final question. Man, you can pull out your crystal ball down there in San Diego. And we were to fast forward our industry next five or 10 years, any big changes, any thoughts you have on where you see our industry really trending in the next five to 10 years.

So I talk a lot about this to my broker, partners and people I work with that technology is king and everything is moving towards technology. But we can't forget there's that human element. And in the insurance world we need both. And I think from an advisor standpoint or really anybody in the industry, that we have to be really good at one or the other and at least mediocre at the one we're not great at. And I say this because if you're not using technology, your competition is. And if you're not able to connect with people, your competition is. You see, we really need everything, but it's hard to get everything. So that's one part. Number two is I think it's the age of specialization. Everybody wants One Stop Shop, but the problem is with a One Stop Shop or one person doing every single thing.

It'S almost, it's challenging to learn everything and know everything. The way we, we become true One Stop Shops is we partner with others in the industry.

Yeah, you just hit it on the head. I think if, if you're an agency out there right now who thinks you're going to be the jack of all trades, you're gonna be the jack of none, and you cannot be all things to all people, know what you're good at, outsource the rest and find the right partners. It is that simple. And that includes your technology.

Absolutely.

And so I think people, too many agencies look at just, oh, just put something in place so we have something and they don't think about how it applies to the overall strategy. And now they're left with doing a lot of things at a very average level.

There's one other thing I think is going to happen that's going to be a big game changer. Andy, this is to come later. Matt, might I share it? Is that. All right, go ahead.

We'll finish up here.

I don't know how we are on time, but I think that one of the big shifts in the voluntary space that we're going to see is these heaped commissions. And the reason why I want to bring that up because he's commissions, I believe, are going to be a thing of the past. It's just carriers are trying to figure out how to get away from these on the voluntary.

I think for our broker partners, if we can figure out how to offer more and more level benefits, meaning that we don't get these big pops of commissions that show 70, 80% commission on these products, we can not only lower the cost of some of these voluntary benefits, we can create a sustainable model where we don't have to go in and flip business every two or three years. And carriers, I don't think they're going to be able to continue to fund these heaped commissions if they're being flipped every two or three years. So I know you don't really ask me that one, but that's a big reason.

Well, it's a big topic though. I think brokers who are still primarily just focused on commission, that's going to be something that's going to go away. That strategy is going to go away very fast here in the near future. So. Hey, Jack, there's a broker listening in who wants to get in touch with you. What are the easiest ways to do that?

So connect with me on LinkedIn, shoot me a message. I'm pretty responsive on there, or send me an email or even give me a call. I'm pretty easy to get a hold of.

I think that's awesome. Well, Jack, thank you for your time today, guys, listening in, I wanted to have Jack on enhanced voluntary benefits is something that could be easily overlooked. But if you apply it the right way, using an overall proactive strategy, as Jack talks about it, is going to give you that opportunity to win bigger business from bigger competition. So don't overlook it, don't set it aside. It is here. It can help you win. So, Jack, one more time, thank you.

Thanks, Andy. Love you guys.

Hey, for those listening in, you know what happens when you have clarity, you have confidence, you bring them together. Massive action happens. Go make it happen today.