Uncovering The Need For Executive Benefits with Ed Walker

Hey.

Hey. Welcome back to the Broker's Voice. I am excited to have this gentleman on today. He and I met probably four or five years ago, and he represents a product in the industry, I think that is often overlooked, and I think you'll agree with me when we talk about this. But I'm excited to have Ed Walker, CEO of Armadicare, join us on the Broker's Voice. So, Ed, welcome.

Andy, great to see you again.

Yeah.

Me on.

Absolutely. So I. I start every episode off with the question of who is Ed Walker and how the heck did you find yourself in this industry?

That's right. My. Well, yeah, I don't think there was a major for insurance where I went to school, so. But yeah, I've been, you know, fortunate to be in the. In the space business for. I mean, going back to 1988, I started my career with company called Monumental General, which is in. Here in. In Baltimore. And later. Later was acquired by Agon. And then people know Aegon more from us. The US Presence as Transamerica. So I worked through.

Transamerica group for almost 30 years, and my background was in sales and marketing. I was originally in the affinity markets group, so I got to work with a lot of the national and state and local professional associations and the brokers in that market. So it was really a great place to learn very creative people. Learned a lot about business, learned a lot about life, and it was just a great job for me as a young person. Got to travel around a lot, see a lot of things. I went to school, I went back. I wanted to. I realized I was a salesperson, account management.

Sorry, my background. And I started to. I started to get into some larger opportunities, you know, as I made relationships. And I always wanted to know, like, I'd get a quote for a piece of business. And my. It was almost like being at a car dealer, right? Hey, let me go talk to the manager. And I'd get a price. Here it is. And I always wanted to know, like, what do you guys do in that little room? Right? You got some sort of giant cray computer back there.

So I wound up.

Our CFO at the time was a mentor. And I said, you know, I'd like to learn more. And he's like, okay, there's two ways to do it. One is you can get. I can put you in every. Every area in this company, and that'll take probably six years. Or how about going back to school to get your executive mba? So I was fortunate. The company. This was around the late 90s I got my degree. You know, I wasn't much of a student in, at undergrad, but I really, really was great because I got to apply. I was a regional VP of sales at that time and I, and I was, I got to apply a lot of the things that I was learning in the field. I was, got to apply my, you know, I was learning in the classroom. So.

Kind of from there I, I started a business within the company that was focused on the PEO channel.

I, I thought it was brilliant like that they supported this plan, but later I found out that they were like, let's just let him do it. You know, he's passionate about it. And it failed. So I got to exercise. I put a plan together, but also I got to exercise the exit. And then from there I just, I kind of went on, I had this attitude like I was having a great time in my job.

I'm like, why would anybody ever want to be like a business unit leader or have one of those jobs? It just looks like a pain. And I wound up becoming that.

And now I'm a CEO of a smaller company. But this company, Armada, I got to meet the founding partners, Brian Rogers and Keith Sullivan. I met them in 2004 when I was heading up one of the Transamerica groups, the accident health business. So, you know, that just I learned a lot of interesting things or a lot of good things when I was younger from really good people. And they always said, you know, it's a relationship business. Always have strong relationships with your partners and your brokers and you never know what, what might happen. And that's how I got into this chair. 2015.

We. We eventually sold Armadicare to Sirius in 2017. I stayed on as, as a CEO as, as I am, am today. So it's been a really good ride. I've enjoyed every day of my career. I've had the great opportunity to meet people like you, Andy, and meet people all over the country. And it's, you know, it's been a, it's been a great, a great ride. And, and I, I have several, I have several years left. I have two kids. My daughter is in New York. She's been out for two years. My son is a sophomore and he's interning this summer in New York. So we're pretty much empty nester. So my wife thinks it's great that I get out of the house for a couple hours a day.

That's what keeps the relationship healthy. Right?

Y was. That was a long, long.

But it's also Kind of the, a good moral of your story. Be careful what you ask for. Right? You're like, who would ever want to be a leader of a business unit here you are CEO of Armadicare. I live in a bubble, so it's easy to, to go. Okay, I know who Armadicare is, but there's probably still a lot of advisors out there who may not know. So let's, let's dive into who is, what is Amara Care? Who is Armadicare?

Yeah, Armadicare. We're, we're an mgu. So when you look at kind of what we do from a functional standpoint, I'll get into our market, but we are a. We're, we're handle sales, marketing, administration, and from administrative standpoint, that's all front end. We pay claims.

We handle a lot of compliance work for our carriers. You know, we, we do focus on, we are an underwriter, so we want to make sure that, you know, we are producing business, but also producing business that's favorable for our, our underwriting partners. Serious point. And serious point is our owner in Transamerica. Transamerica has been a very long term partner of Armadicare. Armadicare is focused.