With two decades in the insurance industry, Aaron Thielman, Cogitate’s National Accounts Sales Leader, has seen the business from nearly every angle, partnering with claims teams, loss control, underwriting, audit, and billing across some of the country’s largest national carriers. His career in sales and distribution gave him a front-row seat to what makes these carriers so dominant. In this interview, Aaron shares what he witnessed firsthand inside national carriers, their greatest strengths, and why the next chapter of their growth will depend on making the right technology decisions.
Enjoy the full video interview above, or read the full transcript below.
Scale and Multi-Line Advantage
Aaron: “In the insurance world, scale matters. A lot of these companies were able to build scale by having a broad suite of products and being multi-line, meaning they’ve got personal lines, small commercial, middle market, professional services, cyber, and the list goes on. By having that broad suite and being multi-line, they can figure out how to achieve profitable growth over the years, whether it’s a hard market or a soft market.
If you’re a regional or smaller carrier, geography can be a limiting factor, and so can line of business. It can get much more difficult. But these national carriers have so much scale that, regardless of whether it’s a hard or soft market, they can achieve profitable growth.”
Talent and Distribution Evolution
Interviewer: “Is there anything to be said about the talent within these national carriers?”
Aaron: “Absolutely. If you look back over the 100 years these companies have been in business, it’s been an arms race for talent. Whether in sales and distribution, claims, or underwriting. I myself worked for three different national carriers, so there’s always been a constant recruitment effort, with organizations mining each other for the best people. But beyond talent, these larger carriers have also been evolving their distribution. Historically, independent agents have been the backbone of their customer base. Over time, they’ve expanded into MGAs and programs, and in the last 20 years, they’ve been reaching new digital distribution channels. You’ve also seen, over the last 15 years or so, a push into direct plays, whether in personal lines or the micro end of small commercial. So alongside product and line-of-business evolution, their distribution has evolved as well, with a greater focus on meeting customers where they are.”
The Legacy Platform Challenge
Aaron: “All the national carrier brands I’ve worked with have legacy platforms. Going back to being multi-line; that’s a core part of their value. But a lot of those lines of business live in legacy applications that are not cloud-native. So you could have personal lines, small commercial, middle market, and professional liability underwriters all working in different systems. And because they’re not cloud-native, if one application goes down and they’re all interconnected, it impacts everything else. I’ve personally lived through an internal application disruption that cascaded into a customer-facing small commercial online rating portal. That can be a real challenge.
The first issue is that they’re not cloud-native. The second is that because these are legacy platforms, they’re simply not equipped to bolt on an AI product. So national carriers are at a crossroads. They have to make some decisions just to be able to evolve with today’s technology.”
The Technology Opportunity
Aaron: “I can’t tell you how many meetings I sat in, hundreds of them with independent agents, alongside middle market counterparts, where an agent would ask, ‘What kind of lead time do you need if I bring you a new piece of business?’ And inevitably the answer was at least two to three weeks.
The reason is that a middle market account with a large property schedule, multiple states, or a larger auto fleet requires manual data input on the carrier side before an underwriter can even look at it. The majority of that time is spent just getting data into a system. Imagine the competitive advantage for a carrier that can say, ‘I can get this back to you within a couple of days.’ What excites me about Cogitate is exactly that capability and that technology is that we have it. And looking ahead, whether it’s the next two to five years or the next 100, technology is going to have a bigger impact on national carriers’ growth than it ever has historically.”
If you’d like to get in touch with Aaron, reach out at athielman@cogitate.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
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