A Focus on Providing Value Serves Minnesota Agent Well

New Minnesota Independent Agents Group President Believes in a Consultative Approach

Learn the business. Put your customers’ interests first. Take care yourself.

Those are three messages Mark Z. Moores thinks young people entering the insurance business should take to heart.

He should know. Some 30 years after taking his first insurance licensing exam at age 16, Moores, owner of Moores Insurance Management in St. Paul, Minn., and incoming president of the Minnesota Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers Association, is still as passionate about the business as he was as a teenager.

Moores describes his firm as a “boutique agency with a consultative style,” that focuses on personal and commercial insurance, and risk management programs. His consultative approach to helping his customers’ with their insurance needs has served the agency well.

“We more or less act as our clients’ outsourced risk manager,” Moores said.

Moores Insurance Management, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, is licensed in more than 30 states and has personal lines clients throughout the United States. Its commercial clients have operations across the globe, including Mexico, Europe and the Far East. “As far as revenue size, we’re hoping to break the $1 million revenue mark soon,” Moores said.

An Early Start

Moores knew early on that he wanted to go into either real estate or insurance. His father owned a life and health insurance agency, and at his father’s suggestion, he began taking insurance licensing exams at 16. At the University of Minnesota, he took every insurance class offered. After graduating with an economics degree, he went to work for his father’s agency.

Customer interest led Moores to build a property/casualty division in his father’s agency from scratch.

“I built the business basically on relationships that he had. … One of our customers had started a high-tech company out of his garage. After about three or four years he had over a thousand employees,” Moores said.

Moores quickly realized that with those kinds of clients, he needed to learn more about the P/C side of the business, so he pursued and earned his CPCU, ARM and risk management designations.

“I also utilized the resources of our insurance company underwriters. The underwriters at the time … were like walking encyclopedias,” he said. “Some of them, they really knew the business, knew the forms and they were a great resource for me. That’s where I really learned the business, through the course work and working with underwriters.”

Centers of Influence

At age 30, the young entrepreneur decided to launch Moores Insurance Management, which derives 100 percent of its business from referrals. The agency identifies what Moores calls “centers of influence” as sources for those referrals. The centers of influence include current customers, certified public accountants (CPAs), financial planners, attorneys and other professionals.

“We work hard to earn their trust and confidence,” Moores said. “In fact, our goal is to make them raving fans of me and our agency. We want them to be our cheerleaders.”

He explained that the agency receives “between one and six referrals a week. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with them all, but that’s a good problem to have.”

The referral system and the consultative approach to managing the agency keeps it “out of the price game,” Moores said.

We’ve “really tried to become a value provider. Where I believe most of the agents, or a large percent of the agents and brokers, they’re focusing on the premium,” he said. “We certainly understand that we need to be cost-competitive. But we strive to be a low net cost provider.”

As a low net cost provider, he explained, the agency provides customers with a comprehensive assessment of their risks, along with prompt professional service, so that clients can make informed business decisions and better manage their risks.

“You’ve got to identify – what are all the costs associated with your insurance and risk management program. It’s not just the premium. It’s all these other, indirect costs. You bring that to the table and that is being a low net cost provider … you really get off just the premium,” Moores said.

People who have worked hard to accumulate wealth or build a business are interested in preserving what they’ve accomplished, he said.

“They certainly don’t want to pay anymore than they have to. However, they are more interested in not losing what they’ve worked so hard to earn. Cost is not always No. 1 with them. If that’s the only reason a customer is calling me, we’re not their partner,” he added.

Moores explained that as president of Minnesota’s agents and brokers association he’d like to encourage members to both get more out of their association and get more involved in it.

There are numerous opportunities and resources available within the organization, he said. “For example, the best practices library. This is a tremendous resource that agencies can benchmark their agencies against. Some of the best of the best nationally; it’s just a tremendous tool to help agencies try to hit that high bar.”

The association works hard for its members on the political front, as well, he said.

The certificate of insurance issue is a big problem for some agents, he said, and Minnesota has taken the lead in helping to resolve some issues related to certificates that have been very problematic for independent agents.

“That’s been a huge issue for some agencies especially in the construction marketplace where they might be issuing, if not hundreds, but thousands of certificates. It’s just been a tremendous exposure,” Moores said.

He said other issues affecting agents that the state and national associations are working on include health care, crop insurance and flood insurance.

Health care is “a big topic,” he said. The Big “I” is working to make sure the legislation helps protect consumer access to agents and brokers by excluding agency compensation from the medical loss ratio formula. “Agent compensation is not part of the insurance company premium,” Moores said.

Crop insurance is also important to agents in the Midwest, especially because of the cuts in crop insurance that have been taken in the past four years, he said. “We’re asking Congress to halt further cuts,” Moores said. The association also wants lawmakers to address “the unreasonable compensation for the agents, which has been cut significantly.”

The Big “I” also is pressing Congress to extend the flood insurance program for five years. “They’ve put these more or less Band Aids into effect last year, and we’d like more of a long-term solution,” Moores said.

Bringing in Young People

Moores has long enjoyed mentoring young people new to the business of insurance. With the aging of the insurance industry – 50 percent of the industry’s workforce is expected to retire during the coming decade – it’s critical to make younger generations aware of the myriad opportunities that insurance offers. After all, he said, “insurance isn’t going away.”

For those who have chosen to enter the industry, Moores said he has three messages.

“First of all, and I think this is very important, they need to learn the business,” he said. “They need to earn multiple insurance designations, whether it’s CIC, a CPCU, an ARM, and there are many other ones. These designations will bring them confidence and expertise that will allow them to bring value to the business relationship.

“That’s very important. You have to know what you’re talking about.”

The second message is, to always put your client’s interest first. “In the long run, it creates a win-win relationship, which almost always pays off.”

The third piece of advice: “Take care of yourself. Work hard but stay balanced. … Exercise, do what it takes to be healthier, stay healthy. Also, be open to new opportunities. Be open-minded,” he said.

“So, learn the business, always put your clients’ interests first and take care of yourself. I guess that’s what I’m preaching right now,” Moores said.

On The Web
Listen to the complete podcast interview with Mark Moores online.

Topics Agencies Risk Management Minnesota