Sports Taught Me So Much There are probably thousands of books out there about life lessons learned from sports, but somehow when it’s your own life, it’s different. I was never a professional athlete, but I did play several sports in high school and college, and those experiences helped make me the person I am…
An analogy between stealing second base and insurance underwriting. This article was featured on SportsEpreneur.com. You can find it here: “Stealing Second Base Is Worth the Risk, Sometimes“. In baseball, a sport I have both played and coached, getting a runner from first to second is critical. Once they get to second, their chance of scoring goes way…
I am sure underwriters ask you for cover letters…and cover letters, and more cover letters. I was once at an underwriting conference with 20 or so carriers, and the individual carrier underwriters kept talking about cover letters. But all that talk doesn’t necessarily tell you how to write a good cover letter. When I was…
Is there a difference when underwriting permanent insurance vs term insurance? I often get asked if there is a difference between permanent insurance underwriting and term insurance underwriting. The answer to that is No, and Yes. If you are asking if there are two different underwriting manuals, one for permanent and one for term, the…
Insurance underwriters are fair—or at least they aim to be, and they usually succeed. I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but it’s true. In life, things pull in two directions: Up vs. Down Hot vs. Cold Ketchup vs. No Ketchup Okay, maybe that last one is a stretch, but you get the point.…
If you are like me, nice people are more pleasant to talk to. But maybe, again like me, you sometimes get frustrated by obstacles and feel like saying some not-so-nice things. As a life insurance underwriter with many years’ experience in the carrier world, the reinsurance space, and now at my own company, I can…
Many life insurance underwriters have large case-loads and are under multiple time constraints. As a brokerage underwriter of life insurance, I always try to remind myself, and my staff, to take it “one case at a time”. We all want to get as much done as possible. It would seem that the more things we do…
Brokers help clients decide what insurance to buy. Underwriters help insurance carriers decide which people to insure at what rates. While the two roles may sound like opposites, a brokerage underwriter—an experienced underwriter who works for a brokerage—is a major asset. An experienced underwriter will likely have worked for, and been trained by, multiple carriers.…
Pat Johnston and I were both attending the same insurance underwriting conference, but we’d never met before—or so we thought. Because our flights got in at about the same time, the conference organizers assigned us the same car and we chit-chatted on our way to the hotel. A pretty normal story, so far. Then I…