Opinion: We must clear the insurance industry’s name

I still believe in the insurance industry.

That is a strange thing to say in 2026, two years after one of the nation’s largest brokers set out to tarnish my reputation and end my 35-year career. Over those decades, I have seen the good that insurance can do — for the sick, for families wiped out by hurricanes and for people like my father, who earned an honest living and a good name in this business and handed both down to me. But my recent experience has also taught me something else: that leaders in our industry can and will exploit systems intended to serve policyholders for their own benefit. That worries me, and we must stop it.

If you work in Florida, you’ve probably heard my story in some form — maybe as office gossip.

My former employer, CBIZ, reported me to the Florida Department of Insurance, accusing me of falsifying documents tied to billing for a large construction client. The charge was untrue, and CBIZ knew it was untrue. That hardly mattered. Its manipulative purpose was served: to weaponize a taxpayer-funded agency, with a mission to protect policyholders, against me.

The smear worked, at least for a time. The morning that I was fired, I was escorted out of my own office by a uniformed police officer, after colleagues were told to clear the floor for a “safety risk.” Within 15 minutes, I was receiving frenzied messages from people in my network. Many of them attached screenshots of an internal message announcing my supposed misconduct, and they were as confused as I was. My son, the third generation of my family in this industry, called within a half-hour. Although he worked elsewhere, the news had reached him almost instantly.

I had spent more than 30 years building an unassailable reputation. It included time as president of my local agents’ association, a seat on the board of the Florida Association of Insurance Agents, and not a single question about my integrity from any client, carrier or regulator. Yet none of that mattered because CBIZ was out to destroy my good name and reputation. And I was left having to look my 90-year-old father in the eye and assure him I had done nothing wrong. The fact that CBIZ was allowed to so easily manufacture a question around me through a bogus complaint is a great injustice.

That is all the more true given that the reason I was targeted is so unexceptional. In fact, it stems from industry-wide trends. Everyone in it knows that competition for productive talent is fierce, just as they know that agency valuations have climbed to multiples that seemed absurd just a decade ago. Given these realities, our regional division and its president, Greg Cryan, had pushed CBIZ leadership for years to use equity grants to entice producers to come to and stay at CBIZ. The best firms offer this, but CBIZ didn’t.

Unwilling to part with equity, and fearful that its stance would lead to the loss of talent and associated revenue in Florida, CBIZ decided to act first. CBIZ tarnished my reputation, and that of anyone in my division associated with me, including Greg Cryan, to try to make me unappealing to a competitor. And it used an arm of the Florida government to do so.

The investigation ran a year and a half. In the end, the state gave me a full exoneration, backed by an independent expert who found my work to exemplify industry best practices. But the damage had been done. CBIZ’s accusation traveled at the speed of a group text; the vindication arrived 18 months later, in silence.

I’m writing to correct that injustice, in part because my case is not a one-off. CBIZ has an unfortunate history of manufacturing bogus claims of regulatory violations against its employees.

Other insurance businesses have been fined

Other insurance businesses, including in Florida, have shown a similar willingness to abuse well-established systems. Last September, Florida regulators fined eight insurers more than $2 million for mishandling hurricane claims. In April, a South Florida brokerage and its parent agreed to pay $135 million after the government alleged they enrolled vulnerable people in Affordable Care Act plans for which they did not qualify. In February, the president and marketing executive of a Florida insurance agency were convicted and sentenced to 20 years each for a $233 million version of a similar fraud. These are all variations on the same theme: the corrupting pull of money and a willingness to bend public and private systems to amass more of it.

We cannot change the human weakness that led to these actions. But we can build guardrails strong enough so that even the most morally compromised leaders will not be tempted to misuse our systems. One area to start is obvious: The business license of any insurance company or brokerage that files a knowingly false claim with the Florida Department of Insurance should be revoked. And Florida would just be the beginning.

After all, if any industry should understand the damage done by false claims, it is the insurance industry. Unfortunately, I understand the threat of false claims on a new and personal level — and I know that achieving reform will not be simple. Despite everything, I think it’s worth pursuing. Because I still believe in the insurance industry and its ability to regain its good name.

Editor’s note: CBIZ’s corporate spokesperson said that CBIZ does not have any formal comment on Mr. Bowman’s allegations beyond what is in the public court documents in the case of CBIZ and others v. Gregory J. Cryan, heard in U.S. District Court in Ohio. Read those public court documents here:

CBIZ Volume 1 ECF

CBIZ Volume 2 ECF

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Keith Bowman, who has spent more than 35 years in the insurance industry, is a principal at EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants and is based in Boca Raton, Fla. Contact him at keith.bowman@innfeedback.com.