Why Insurance Brokers Need to Become Strategic Advisors with Abigail Senso

AI is leveling the playing field, and it's going to separate the consultants from the brokers. The consultants who know how to leverage AI from rates to setting up for meetings to preparing for finalist presentations so that they can use their consultative expertise are going to absolutely separate themselves from the pack in the future.

The one thing that I think will never go away is the relationship, the judgment call, the person on the other end of the phone that actually knows your business. The empathy, if you can pick up the phone and have a good consultant who knows your business at the other end, that's never going to go away.

Hey, hey, welcome back to the Accelerate Your Insurance Sales podcast. Andy Neary here, CEO and founder of Complete Game Consulting. This is one of our brokers' voice episodes, and the more I do these, the more I realize I need to come up with a better name. In the Broker's Voice episodes, we highlight an industry solution, and that's what we're going to do today. With me, I have Abby Senzo with BrokerPro. Abby, welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Now, you are the director at BrokerPro, and what we're going to talk about, I always enjoy talking about solutions that How do I say this? Built for brokers by brokers.

Now you're talking to me.

And that's what, uh, really what you, you guys have done at BrokerPro. Um, now you have an interesting past. I'm gonna read your bio a little bit. You're currently the Director of Growth at BrokerPro, but prior to, or in addition to your role, you serve on the Finance Advisory Board at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, which is where I believe you went.

Yes. Yep.

Helping shape industry-aligned curriculum and mentor future financial profession— finance professionals. If you're watching the video right now, I can't believe, like, you have accomplished a lot in your life already.

Thank you.

Like, if I were to read the, the, continue to read what you do outside of, of work here, how did you, let's start here. How did you find insurance? And then how did you land at the role of Director of Growth for BrokerPro. And for the folks that are tuning in, BrokerPro is a program built by M3, which is a very big benefit or insurance consulting firm here in the state of Wisconsin. But so how did you find insurance and then how did you land as the director of growth at BrokerPro?

So I obviously graduated from Eau Claire with a degree in finance, and then I started off at US Venture doing pricing. I, when I was in college, I did the CFA Global Research Challenge. Loved finance, as corny as that sounds. Loved M&A. I knew eventually I'd find my way back there. So I started—

Pretty good industry to be in with M&A, by the way.

Yeah. Which, I mean, yeah, we can really get into that. But I started working for a PE firm for a while. I was actually doing that in addition to my US venture job. And I kind of just had a moment of, if I'm doing all of this on the side and I really am passionate about it, why don't I make that my next role? So I was looking around, I was looking at, you know, investment banking firms and, you know, what have you. And I found the job at M3, which was senior manager of the M&A practice group for insurance. And I was like, oh, that's really interesting. I had interviewed, I really, really liked the people, obviously accepted that job. And that's how I ended up in insurance. I didn't really know much about insurance, but the more I got into it, the more that I really liked it. Just because of that consultative approach, being able to talk to people, help them find solutions, make them feel comfortable, and then bringing in you know my finance and PE background to really help them understand the risk a little bit better and maybe talk to them in their language a little bit.

Yep.

So then after I had done that for quite a while, the president of Broker Pro, Nezi Hasanoglu.

Oh, he's the president. Yes. Okay, I didn't know that.

Yeah. So he gave me a call and said, "I'm going to offer you a new job." And I said, okay, what is that? He said, director of growth at BrokerPro. So I just started that at the beginning of this year.

Awesome. Now, Nezi lives right here in Oconomowoc, uh, where we live. So let's just get right to the facts. What is BrokerPro? And then we'll get into the details.

BrokerPro is an insurtech platform that, like you said, is built by brokers for brokers. And we saw it as a gap in the market. People have all of this data, but they don't know how to harness it, leverage it, and monetize it. That's where BrokerPro came in. And because we are by brokers for brokers, and given our background, which you had talked about, we know the language, we understand what they're talking about. We're right in the industry. So we thought it was a perfect segue in.

Where do you guys see gaps? I'd be curious, cuz you said, you know, people, data has kind of become table stakes. Yes. Everybody, I think, realizes you gotta have it, but I don't know if any, everybody uses it the right way. Where do you see the gap right now of, okay, we've got data versus You, I think you used the word harnessing data. What's the, where's the gap there?

I think everything is so siloed. Everything's in a CRM, everything is in their AMS, and they have all this data, but they don't know what to do with it, or they don't know how to get there. So with BrokerPro, you know, we want to sit in the middle of that. We want to help you harness, leverage, and monetize your data through the products, but then also give you insight and automation. So when you're at the face of the customer, you can have that pulled right up. It's not something you need to dig through emails for PDFs. You have it. You have that right in BrokerPro for you to use.

Now, I would assume BrokerPro was something you guys were using internally at M3.

Yes.

Before you said, hey, we have a solution that we could offer to other organizations. What led you guys? I'd be curious because that's a jump I think a lot, a lot of agencies try to make, especially when they build their own product. To say, hey, okay, we've retailed this ourselves for a long time. Can we wholesale it to other agencies? What led you guys to that decision? Because it's not an easy jump.

It's not. And that came from, you know, Nezi and our EVP, Eric Vander Maus. And, you know, they came up with the idea. I think that always was the goal.

Okay.

But of course, to get things started, I mean, BrokerPro started in 2023 and we've been, you know, selling it since 2024. So it was a really quick turnaround. I think they just realized that there is so much data out there, there's so much to be had. And when we started seeing really good success, why not bring this to the industry? So I don't think there was necessarily one thing. I think it was always the end in mind. But to your point, it is a pretty big jump. And I think we made it pretty quick. And, you know, we're really starting to hit our stride now.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting. There's a— when I built Complete Game Consulting or just started, One of them, one of my mentors made a comment that I thought was very appropriate, which is, you are best positioned to serve the person you once were. And what it— what he meant in saying that is, you know, if you're now serving people that were in the same position you were in and dealing with the same problems you were dealing with, but you figured out how to solve, that puts you in a really good position to, to Build a business. And that's really what you guys have done. I think in our industry, you see a lot of people build a solution, and oftentimes they come from other industries. They just see the opportunity to go, ooh, there can be money made here. Let's build a tech solution. Let's build a platform. But you guys actually said, no, we built this for ourselves. It worked. So now let's offer it to the market.

Absolutely.

So I'm going to ask— I think I warned you before the show, I may ask some ignorant questions, but it's more to help the audience than anything else. When you said data siloed and we're able to help people harness it and monetize it, let's dive into, talk to me, what kind of data are we talking about here?

We're talking about enormous amounts of data because if you think about an AMS, an agency management system, it's meant to just house that data. It's not meant to deliver insights or give you benchmarking or anything like that. So, you know, you can look at premiums in there, you can look at just documents, where some of the stuff that we have that comes in is like, okay, well, where are your loss runs? You know, what are your clients' contact information? As basic as that sounds, what are the trends? All of those things live in the AMS, but there's no way to actually surface those insights. And I think, again, that's kind of where we come in to help bridge that gap. So, I mean, the amount of data in there is just endless. It's just But it's just sitting there. So what do you really do with it?

Mm-hmm.

That's where you need something to come in.

So when you say data, then we could be talking about anything from client contact information to renewals.

Yeah.

To loss runs, to health insurance claims data.

Yes.

It's all of that housed in one place. Do you guys, I think this is, you, you made the comment siloed. If I have an agency that sells both commercial And benefits. I think one of the things I see as a challenge is that's where you see a lot of silos, even down to platform. I know agencies that use one AMS for commercial and one for benefits.

Yeah.

Your platform, BrokerPro, brings all of that in-house in one place. Is that right?

Absolutely. And I think you made a really good point about, you know, even just like the commercial side and then the benefits side. Think about how many cross-sell opportunities are being missed because you just don't have that data in one spot, or maybe the people aren't talking because they just don't know. So I think that's a great point that you bring up of just the siloed, and I think it really— you can see it with retention, you can see it with cross-sell opportunities. If you don't have that insight in front of you, and if you don't have that at the face of the customer, you're asking for trust with no evidence. So to me, it's, that's table stakes. Like you said, you need to have that to back it all up. But there's also so many missed opportunities that come with that.

Is that what, you know, to avoid having you repeat yourself again there, is that what were some of the early wins M3 saw? Cross-sell? I mean, where were some of the early signs that, okay, I think we're onto something? I know you've only been a part of the program since the beginning of the year, so I'm sure it goes before that. prior to that, but what were some of those early wins?

It's really insight and automation. And I'll probably say that a lot. We talk about that a lot in BrokerPro. We have a generative AI tool called GenPro. And the things that people are doing on that now from where it started are just, it's groundbreaking. But really what it started with is, you know, it's a private, accountable, not public-facing, secure way to use AI. That's really where it starts and that's where we see a lot of our subscribers starts as like a foot in the door. So time saving, think about getting ready for renewal meetings, putting PowerPoints together, just trying to get all that data in one spot, maybe even reviewing policies. That's really where it started and that's what we call our flagship product. I think that's huge. And then just the insight that we can draw from our benchmarking tools have really helped You know, with retention and, you know, keeping clients stickier. So I think those are just like the easiest, almost layups, if you will, when it comes to early, early wins.

Yeah, I would, I mean, just hearing you talk about how it, the data crosses, bridges the gap between commercial and benefits, that's so important for agencies to hear. 'Cause again, how common, I, you know, it, it's so common that When you have a commercial team and a benefits team, the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. And you see so many cross-sell opportunities or opportunities to leverage that data for the good of the agency go ignored because both sides are not communicating.

Yep.

And I think it comes back to the fact they're not Accessing the same data from the same place.

Exactly. Or they're living in PDFs and emails and spreadsheets that no one knows where they are.

So you brought up your Agentic AI, GenPro.

Yep.

Is that right? If I started throwing data in there, again, anything from a proposal to a renewal to claims, loss runs to claims, whatever it might be, can those start to, because of the, onset of AI today, can those start to talk to each other? And what I mean by that is, you know, if we've got loss runs inside a client file in BrokerPro and I wanted to put a proposal together, yep, by having the loss runs in there, can that, that agentic AI actually help put together presentations that incorporate the files that are already in there?

Yeah, so GenPro really And like I said, the things that people are doing are crazy, but some of the newer things that we've built in is interactive dashboards. So we're trying to get people out of PowerPoints and out of, you know, that stack of papers walking into the client. But yeah, you can dump in pretty much anything. And I'll put my M&A hat back on for a second, but one of the things that I was helping a team work through is an M&A due diligence report. As I'm sure you can imagine, to review all of those things is just, it's never ending. Put it all in GenPro, ask the right questions, which we help with, and it's done. You have your whole presentation, you have your whole report. Boom. There you go.

Let's play out. So now, by the way, these are not on the questions that I intended to ask, but I really like where that comment went. So I think of some Pretty common use cases, and I'd love your thoughts on how Genpro could help RFPs. So think about an RFP, typical agency that doesn't have a good streamlined process or the people.

Yep.

Could be hours touching multiple hands. Where can a Genpro make the RFP response submission process much easier?

So we have a lot of, like I said, just different features in there and we have a lot of things that can be standardized. So we have something called knowledge base. So you can drop in any information and it will call back to a specific place. And everything with GenPro and being a BrokerPro subscriber has your branding and your colors. So think about not having to sit there and format everything. You can upload the template, you can put in what other documents you need. Boom, it's done. So it really is a time-saving piece of it. Of course, you can ask it questions, um, dive in. It's very strategic. The creativity is purposely turned down, so it's meant to be very, very insurance-tuned.

I love how we have to turn the creativity down.

Well, it has to understand acronyms and all of these things. You want it to be super analytical and be able to do math so you can do trending, you can do anything. So you don't have to sit in Excel and put graphs together. You don't have to do anything.

What about, here's another scenario I'd love your thoughts on. Okay. Whether I'm a benefit or a commercial advisor, I'm about to do a mid-year review with a client, and we use the mid-year review to really go in depth on claims.

Yeah.

'Cause it's going to help set up the next renewal conversation. Can Genpro help take that data, whatever we put in, put in it, and help it create some kind of executive summary or report based on where their claims are today?

Yep. That's the bread and butter of it. That is, it's so easy. And also, I mean, this kind of leads into something else, and everything that we have pretty much has a Pro tag on it.

We're about to talk about another one here soon.

Yeah, yeah. And so that really goes into what we call Engage Pro. We see them work in tandem a lot because Engage Pro is meant to be a digital experience. You know, you build 60% of it with your team. Maybe it's both sides of the house, maybe it's commercial, maybe it's employee benefits, maybe it's retirement. There's one spot, you get ready for whatever meeting you're going to have in this one area. There's chapters, there's benchmarking, there's an executive summary, there's the team, everything's already in there. So I've seen people use GenPro as that prep work to, like you said, get the summaries, get the wording right. How do we want to talk about this? What are some things that we should advise them on? I see that work done in GenPro. Put right into Engage Pro. They pull it up on the 90-inch in front of the client and off they go.

So the Engage Pro is really about real-time being in the room with the client saying, hey, here's what we're seeing. And instead of like use, instead of the PDF or the PowerPoint you referenced, we're real-time going through stuff with the client.

It's meant to be more interactive and like, you know, that consultative selling approach, you want someone to feel like they have stake in what they're saying. So if you can have them build that with you and you come Ready. And like I said before, you, you're asking for trust without evidence. But what if all of that's already in there? Whether it's benchmarking, whether it's all of your claims data, what if it's all of your documents about just who you are? That's already in there. You have the evidence to back up.

You know what's so interesting about this, Abby, is one of the conversations I've been having a lot lately with our clients, um, especially the agency executives, because they're all asking about AI. Right? And believe it or not, I still know of agencies that hopefully isn't the case right now, but at least a few months ago, we're still evaluating AI. And I'm like, I really don't know what you're evaluating 'cause it's here and it's not going away and it's gonna run you over if you don't do anything about it.

Absolutely.

But the conversations are, when asked how best should we be using AI, here's my response. Everything that you do behind the scenes that you think is valuable for the client, If it's something you do more than once, it should be somehow automated with AI so you can spend the majority of your time in front of clients, that human-to-human interaction. And that's really what you're getting at is—

Absolutely.

I look like, I look at BrokerPro almost like an employee sitting inside your agency that does all of those behind The scenes activities that we have to do that are time-consuming, but that's their job 24/7 to make us look good when we're in the meeting.

Absolutely. I think you said it best. That's exactly how we talk about it at BrokerPro. Let's give you the insight and the automation at, at your fingertips. Now you can sit in front of the client and be a strategic partner to them, a strategic advisor. You're not just a vendor anymore. You're actively taking, you know, a stance in their business and helping them with their strategic goals. And I really think that's, you know, where the broker of the future is going to go. But I mean, yeah, you said it great. That's exactly what I would say. I mean, some of the time we say, you know, talk to GenPro like it's an intern or an executive assistant. How would you talk to them? You need to give them a lot of data.

Yep.

For what you want out, but it'll be done and it'll be done quick.

Yeah, I That's really interesting. 'Cause I, I have to admit, even going into today's conversation, I, I don't know if I had the full grasp of, of BrokerPro, but I think that, that's it right there. It's like, as an agency, how many hours, and, and I, I hate to say how many employees are required to do a lot of that work behind the scenes that could be done right now with an employee. By the way, I hate to, people don't want to hear this, but an employee that shows up every day.

Mm-hmm.

Doesn't show up irritable, doesn't ask for vacations, works 24/7. But imagine if all you had to do was feed that employee, or you called it that intern, with the right information and the right training, AKA prompting, and you have everything you need to look good in front of the client or the prospect.

Yeah. I know.

Sounds like a panacea in my— 5 years ago, I think most brokers would be like, where do I sign up?

Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting because I think, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but just the amount of data. So getting people started, I think, is where some hesitancy comes in. But to your point, why wouldn't you? I mean, there's so many things that you can do. And if you can spend more time out selling or being a strategic partner, attending events, whatever it is, instead of building PowerPoints and these slide decks and all of these things, I mean, yeah.

Okay, so BrokerPro is the product, GenPro is the employee inside of it, EngagePro is one of the features.

Yes.

The real-time ability to have a real-time conversation with the client with the data in front of them. Let's talk about StewardshipPro, which I believe you said is going to change, the name's going to change soon. But what is StewardshipPro?

That's EngagePro.

Oh, okay.

So that is the—

Okay.

Yes, and it is another product. I would say it's like kind of also a feature, like you said, it is another product and it has chapters and records. And the way that I talk about it is what if you don't have to do a mad dash scramble? Maybe, you know, someone at your client is retiring or maybe at your agency someone is handing over a book of business. You're going to sit there and go through all the emails and the PDFs and your AMS and your CRM. What if it's already there? It's already there. There's chapters. You can pull up claims. You can ask them what they're going to do this year from a strategic perspective. You can pull up benchmarking and you can give those recommendations. You don't have to, you know, sit there and spend all this time trying to come up with that now because it's already automated. So you can just show up with the insight.

Yeah, I see a lot of the AI tools that are being built right now for agencies. Some of them, we have a client who's built one. But a lot of it is a, it, it, I think, I feel like a lot of the AI is being built around some of the, I hate to call 'em mundane tasks. So certificates of insurance.

Mm-hmm.

Those very repetitive things you have to do every week for clients. A lot of that AI is being built for that.

Yeah.

How do we do cert— certs in seconds? How do we, how do we review policies in seconds? Where, where I feel like BrokerPro is different is it really is, I, so it's funny because when AI really started to come in the industry, what I was telling people to do is take the mundane and automate that. Any repetitive task that creates the same outcome, again, requesting a certificate of insurance, automate that. So you have more time to do the things like preparing for a meeting.

Yep.

Putting together a presentation for a finalist. What you're saying now is now we've already gone to the next level, which is, wait, no, no, no, we've already got somebody, we've already got something inside BrokerPro that's going to take that off your plate too.

Absolutely. And I would say, you know, those mundane tasks, BrokerPro could still do those. But like you said, this is meant to be more strategic, more of a digital consulting approach. But also you want to be more strategic. You want to be a strategic advisor, not just someone that shows up at mid-year or for renewal or whenever that is. And that's the only time that you see the client. I think, you know, invisibility is a huge killer. If they only see you that one time a year and you just show up and hand them a binder.

Yep.

You're not really being a good steward of your, of your client. But what if you can offer an insight? And what if they say, oh, you know, we're going to do an acquisition this year. So a big growth opportunity comes with a lot of risk. What if you could just ask GenPro, hey, what do I need to know about this? What are some things I should, should research? Boom, done. You can show up to the meeting, offer that solution, and off you go.

Do you think GenPro does help an advisor who, in a given situation, like a client going through M&A, who might be outside of their zone of genius? I still remember those days of being the benefit advisor on an account who was either getting bought or sell or buying. Does GenPro help them if they're out over their skis a little bit because maybe they're doing something they're not used to?

Oh yeah. And that's where I talk about the insurance context is so high and the creativity's turned down. That's absolutely it. And we see, you know, smaller agencies, they want to compete with the big brokers. This is how they get there. Tools like this, you might not know a lot about it, but if you can help, you know, if GenPro can help you get started, even if it's just thinking the right way or asking the right questions before you tap on that next expert, you're already light years ahead.

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second.

Okay.

Because this is a product owned by M3, an insurance advising firm. What do you say to a broker who says, okay, I like the product, but wait, you're also an agent. Can I trust you? Because we, you see that all the time. What's, what's your response to that?

We operate completely separate of M3. We treat them 100% like a regular subscriber. And I think that, you know, obviously we get a lot of insight from them because they are so close. But I would turn that back around and say, if you're a smaller agency, if you're a bigger agency, whatever it is, you're getting insights from everybody on the platform. We have subscriber councils where our subscribers all meet. They talk about, hey, what do you want to see on the roadmap? They talk about, this is what we're having problems with, whether it's adoption or what have you. So I would say M3 is like any other subscriber. We treat them just like that. And all of the subscribers really have a say in where BrokerPro goes.

Do you think that the, the tool itself is really built for, in the previous statement you said those agencies who are trying to compete with the bigger firms. You guys are a bigger firm in the Midwest. Do you think that BrokerPro is really built for that type of agency who, who may be a little more lean when it comes to overhead and the people, but wants to operate at a high level going after those bigger accounts where there is more day-to-day activity being done?

I would say it's really for anyone. I think it is probably bread and butter, middle market, smaller middle market who do want to compete. But some of the things that we're solving for at BrokerPro and some of the problems we see in the industry, they're all over the industry. They're not just at like an M3 level. They are You know, everyone's trying to figure it out. So I would say it really is for anyone and everyone. It's just, you know, how do you, how do you use it? What are you going to do with it? So.

Now I'm going to ask you to put your thought leadership cap on. I know you've been at BrokerPro for 6 months now. So you've really got to fast forward this. You ready? Now, where do you, where do you feel like agency leaders are still underestimating AI? You have any thoughts on that?

That's a good question. I think that they're underestimating the amount of information that they could be using in their own data because it is siloed like we've been talking about. But I think using the right tools, using AI, using it in a more strategic approach, it doesn't have to be just the mundane task. Genpro advises, you know, this sales team on the Challenger Sales Method and multiple other areas.

Say that again.

So in GenPro, the Challenger Sales Method is built in.

From the book, The Challenger Sales?

Yes.

Okay.

And that is on purpose.

Yep.

So, you know, when people think of like a generative AI tool, they think, like you said, the mundane task, maybe a sales or a service team, excuse me. It really is meant for everybody in the agency. We see HR in it. We see marketing in it. It really is meant for everybody. And I think people kind of undervalue the amount of information that is living in their own data that maybe they just don't have the time, the resources, or the insight and automation to, to see what's in it.

And for those that are unfamiliar, the book The Challenger Sale talks about, I think it's 5 different kinds of salespeople. And the challenger is the one who has the, the willingness to go into a client and share things they may not want to hear.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but share the things that they know that client needs if they are going to be successful. So that's really interesting. Interesting. You guys have built GenPro off that challenger mindset. That's good. I wanted to ask, you brought up HR and I think you were referencing HR within the agency.

Correct.

Are there any client-facing tools for BrokerPro where the client accesses it at all?

So not yet.

Okay.

Everything is meant to sit in front of the client. Okay. Like it has that agency's branding and stuff, but not yet. Um, that is on our roadmap, of course, in the ever-evolving industry, but right now is meant to be more so, you know, pulled up on the screen with the client, co-created with them, but not necessarily something that they would go into quite yet. Okay.

Yeah, I, you know, you, you, we were just talking about where are leaders missing an opportunity with AI. One of the challenges I see 'em running into right now, and we've had this conversation with a couple of our own clients, is they want to adopt AI and they want to start building some workflows. What they're running into is employee resistance, because even though that task, whatever it might be, is a little on the mundane and repetitive side, that employee has a fear of, if we automate that, I'm less valuable. And so they're getting a lot of pushback from the employees saying, well, but we can't automate that. We need to be doing that. And really what it is, is it's a defensive mechanism to protect their job.

Mm-hmm.

When what we need to be telling employees is, listen, the reason we're doing this is not to eliminate you. We're, we're trying to make sure you focus on what makes us best, and that's sitting in front of a client and consulting.

Yep. I would always say, you know, it's, it's human-led, but AI-powered.

Yep.

If you can be quicker, if you can be, you know, deliver insights at, at the press of a button, To your point, you're spending more time with the client, you're being more strategic, you're having better conversations, you're looking for cross-sell opportunities. You're just spending your time elsewhere instead of, you know, sitting and plugging in numbers or what have you.

Let's define, and I know you just mentioned mid-market agencies. Let's, let's define the ideal agency a little more. Mid-market. Tell me a little bit when you think about the agencies, I assume you have a few you're working with today. What makes an ideal agency for BrokerPro?

That's, that's a really good question. I think, and it doesn't have to be like they have employee benefits or they only have, you know, commercial. I think it's really just someone that wants to compete because I think, and this is, you know, my opinion and things that I've heard, but brokers aren't just competing with brokers anymore. They're competing with what a client can look up in 30 seconds at that meeting. So for me, the ideal agency is someone that recognizes that, that sees that and says, oh man, we gotta keep up with them and we're invested in this. This is, you know, a strategic priority for us as an agency and it's something that we wanna invest in to make our people, you know, faster, smarter, and better at the face of the client.

You know, I'll share an outside industry analogy and then bring it back into the industry. Interesting. So there's a real estate broker I follow that was on Million Dollar Listing New York, Ryan Serhant.

Hmm.

And he had posted a video online a couple months back where he was selling, I want to say it was like a $20 million property. And what happened was both the buyer and the seller went to AI to get AI's perspective on the property. Obviously, what does the seller want to know? Are we selling it for enough? Are we selling too low? And the buyer wants to know, am I Am I paying too much? And what people forget is AI's often there to validate you. So what happened is both seller and buyer came back and said, we're out. Buyer said, it's telling me I'm overpaying. Seller, and he had to, the Serhant had to literally teach these people what's happening with AI.

Mm-hmm.

That it's there to validate more than it is to challenge. But where I'm going with that is to your point, when you leave the office now as an advisor and you just, recommended something, that client can literally go to AI the second you leave and say, tell me what the typical insurance rates look like in my market.

Mm-hmm.

And now they can instantly compare what they're paying to what the market looks like. Even though that might be not totally accurate, they can do it. You implement or you recommend a solution, a captive, reference-based pricing, whatever it might be, they can instantly go to AI and say, Tell me the pros and cons.

I actually have a story about this.

Feel free.

So someone that I work with pretty closely is a good friend of mine. They were in a finalist meeting and, you know, they're going over their presentation and, you know, they had used GenPro, of course, to prep for it. And they're sitting in the meeting with the CFO and the CFO looks down at their phone and, you know, they're kind of waiting and they're like, oh, You know, what's going on? He goes, oh, I was just checking Claude. No, you're right. Continue. In the meeting.

Yep.

So if you're not thinking that's going to be happening, I mean, you might be way behind.

Think about that because of the features all AI tools have now, even that, even down to like recording.

Uh-huh.

A prospect or client across the table could literally be fact-checking you in real time.

And if you don't think that's going to happen, like I said, I think you're far behind. And yeah, you know, we talk about how I come from M&A, the amount of businesses that need to sell, the amount of younger buyers that are going to be across the table from, you know, insurance brokers, they're used to that. That is how they've— they trust it more. They are going to pull it up in meetings. They're going to ask you questions. They might even put all of their policies into it. I would not recommend that for security reasons.

Yeah.

But they're probably going to do that. So if you're not using it, you're going to be caught. And then what? You're behind.

Not only that, going back in with your M&A past, I had James Graham on a little while ago. He's from Marshberry and they're definitely in the M&A area of this industry. And I love what he said. One of the quotes he said in the podcast, which was so true, he said, whether you decide to sell your agency or not, every decision you should Every decision you make, you should make as if you're going to sell it tomorrow. With what you guys have built with BrokerPro, centralizing everything in one platform and having an agentic AI act as an employee that does all this behind-the-scenes work for you, I've gotta believe makes you a bit more valuable to the market.

Absolutely. Especially if everyone else in the industry is doing it too.

Yeah. Well, what excites you as we wrap this up, when you look ahead and, you know, again, you're still fairly new in your venture overseeing BrokerPro, what excites you most about where the insurance industry is going based on what you guys are doing with BrokerPro?

I think for me, it's just the amount of feedback that we have from our subscribers of them just emailing us and saying, hey, this just saved me 2 weeks. And I can list countless stories. And that really is a credit to, you know, Lily Nguyen, who's on my team. She leads our success special, or our success team, the amount of work that she does with clients, the amount of coaching, the amount of time that she just spends understanding the business and helping people grow. And then retention gets better. You know, pricing, you know, is always going to fluctuate, but if you can keep your retention and you can keep clients and gain new business, seeing the agencies grow, seeing them find new ways of working. And just being overall, you know, I hate to use the term better, but overall better just out in the industry. I think that's really exciting. I'm excited for, you know, the younger sales people to come up and really see what they end up doing, how they use the tools. Again, I have countless examples of just things that people have found that I'm like, oh wow. And even BrokerPro, I mean, our, our dev team is outstanding. The things that they're coming up with, I'm like, oh my gosh, you're like 5 years ahead of people. So I think just really the growth, seeing where it's going to go and seeing how, you know, maybe insurance brokers become more of a strategic advisor instead of someone that just shows up once a year. I think that's, that's really exciting.

You know what's interesting about all this, and this is where we'll kind of wrap, is I remember in 2010 when ACA came around, Affordable Care Act, and everybody had this fear that we were headed down the path of national healthcare. And the fear that brokers will no longer be necessary. The argument at the time was, no, the brokers who move to consultants, even if national healthcare exists, there's still going to be a need for consultants. Hence why you need to move away from relying on rates to relying on your knowledge. I think this is the same thing. AI is leveling the playing field.

Yeah.

The days, first of all, if you're just a broker who's selling transactional rates today, you're gone in, I'll say 5, 3 years because AI's going to do that for you.

Mm-hmm.

AI is leveling the playing field and it's going to separate the consultants from the brokers. The consultants who know how to leverage AI from rates to setting up for meetings to preparing for finalist presentations so they can use their consultative expertise are going to absolutely separate themselves from the pack in the future.

Well, I think the relationship becomes the most important thing.

Yeah.

I mean, the one thing that I think will never go away is the relationship, the judgment call, the person on the other end of the phone that actually knows your business, the empathy that, you know, if you need to file a claim and you don't know what to do, the last thing you're probably going to want to do is sit there and talk to an AI tool. If you can pick up the phone and have a good consultant who knows your business at the other end, That's never gonna go away. I think that becomes the most important thing as we continue, you know, to move into the future.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I, I think this episode was good for any mid-level agency out there who probably finds itself capping out at some point. When you do get, as the book grows, as your clientele grows, you hit a point because of the man hours required to do all that back office behind the scenes work, you end up hitting this growth plateau.

Mm-hmm.

And I think what you're doing with BrokerPro allows that mid-sized agency to keep scaling because now they can do in minutes what used to take them hours, heck, maybe even weeks.

Okay.

So if somebody, if they're, if that agency executive's watching this right now or listening, where should they go to find out more about BrokerPro?

BrokerProAI.com. We have all of our products on there. We have a LinkedIn, but yeah, probably the website and there is somewhere right on there where you can hit learn more and it will send me a direct email and I'll be in touch.

Awesome. Abby Senzo, Director of Growth for BrokerPro. Thanks for coming on today.

Thank you so much for having me.

Guys, go give BrokerPro a shout. brokerproai.com. Uh, if you're a mid-sized agency looking to scale right now, you have gotta find a way to automate all those things behind the scenes so you can keep growing. So give it a, give it a shout.