Time For BGAs To Undergo A Paradigm Shift: NAILBA Panelist

Insurance and financial advisors are challenged to find the right partners and brokerage general agencies to work with, said Brian Haney, founder and vice president of The Haney Company in Silver Spring, Md.

Haney was a panelist in the session, “BGA Thought Leadership and Business Practices Initiative,” at today’s NAILBA virtual annual conference.

“Very few BGAs understand my business,” Haney said.

He said it’s time for BGAs to undergo a paradigm shift and outlined three critical elements to challenge BGAs as they work with advisors.

1. Know your audience. Understand their professional value proposition.
2. Act differently. Think of yourself as an equity partner with a stake in the advisor’s success.
3. Align yourself with their practice’s product delivery model. Find a way to enhance the advisor’s brand or marketing.

Haney gave BGAs a list of questions to ask themselves as they examine their practices. They include:

1. How can we better align and integrate with the advisor’s business model?
2. What represents a real win to the advisors you want to work with?

Eric Griffin, executive vice president for financial services with The Cason Group, said BGAs must take a deeper look inside their leadership culture. He listed the three keys to leadership as:

1. Matching talent to culture.
2. Developing new talent.
3. Leading varying personalities.

Griffin also noted that leaders must notice when their people are struggling and work with them to help them overcome their struggles.

Edward Easterly, an attorney with Hoffman Hlavac & Easterly in Allentown, Pa., discussed social media in the workplace, how businesses use it and what personnel issues it can create.

He said businesses use social media for promoting, recruiting and obtaining background information, as well as employee retention, monitoring and discipline. Meanwhile, he said, employees use social media to promote or defame their employers, or to kill time at work.

Employers, he said, must protect their businesses from defamatory comments or confidential information posted online. They also have an obligation to protect their employees from harassment or discrimination expressed online. Employers must adopt a written social media policy and apply it uniformly to their workers.

Susan Rupe is managing editor for InsuranceNewsNet. She formerly served as communications director for an insurance agents' association and was an award-winning newspaper reporter and editor. Contact her at Susan.Rupe@innfeedback.com. Follow her on Twitter @INNsusan.

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