Opinion | A Look at the Next Wave of Commercial Insurance Brokers

By: | May 17, 2019

Dan Reynolds is editor-in-chief of Risk & Insurance. He can be reached at [email protected].

Take a superficial look at the next wave of commercial insurance brokers who are making their mark in this industry and you might say to yourself: Ambitious, tech savvy … good enough.

When I look though at this year’s batch of Risk & Insurance® Rising Stars, (Power Broker® winners and finalists under the age of 40), I am picking up a more nuanced takeaway.

Because there is something about this group that is new. But there is also something about it that reminds me of previous generations, like my grandfather’s.

No offense Baby Boomers, and I’m one, but maybe we aren’t the greatest generation. There is something about this new generation that seems less self-impressed, more purely service oriented, less egotistical perhaps.

When interviewing professionals from this group, you hear a lot less “I” and a lot more “We.”

Maybe it’s because they weren’t influenced by Life Magazine photos of Woodstock and the freedom from morality that event pushed in its empty way.

Maybe it’s because economic prospects, prospects for prosperity, are not the given these days that some previous generations, say, those of us born in the 1950s and 1960s, assumed them to be.
It’s a cleaner, no-nonsense vision of the world and the business world that these younger brokers are expressing.

Whatever the reason, and I could be wrong about all of them, it’s refreshing to see how these insurance professionals talk, how they carry themselves and the solutions they drive to for clients.

It makes me think that the prospects for our economy and the world are not as gloomy as some think them to be. &

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