Six questions with Markel Specialty President Bryan Sanders
Sanders is also president of the WSIA board of directors. Here, he talks about career-building and the pandemic’s silver linings.
It’s late summer 2020, not long after Bryan Sanders turned 61, and he’s gushing about Cameo.
But this story has nothing to do that funky R&B group that had everybody saying “Word Up!” in the Eighties.
Sanders heads up Markel Specialty and also serves as the 2020-2021 president of the Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association (WSIA) Board of Directors. He’s referring to a website and app called Cameo that allows users to hire celebrities to deliver personalized video messages. In this case, his family hired former Cleveland Browns offensive tackle and ten-time Pro Bowler Joe Thomas to email Sanders a surprise happy birthday video, which he opened while the whole brood looked on.
“Talk about being shocked,” says Sanders, an Ohio native and die-hard Cleveland Browns fan. “Boy was that fun!”
Sanders is a career insurance man and industry booster who can weave fun into even the most serious subjects. Here, he talks about career-building and the many “silver linings” associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on insurance.
PC360: I read that you went straight from college into the insurance business. Did you know that you wanted to go into insurance, or was that an opportunity that turned out to be a good one/?
Sanders: It was an opportunity that just presented itself. I graduated from Kent State, which had a really terrific career planning and placement center. So I had the opportunity to interview (for jobs) on campus. I took advantage of all those interviews, and I actually had a couple of non-insurance job offers. But the woman who ran the career placement program had a sister who worked at Aetna in Cleveland. She said, ‘I think this would be a really good fit for you.’ So I went up there, and when I found out what a commercial underwriter was, I was really pleased with that. I did that for a couple of years and then moved into a marketing role.
PC360: You worked in various industry roles before joining Markel in 2013. In your opinion, how much has the pandemic impacted the insurance business?
Sanders: We talk a lot about silver linings during COVID, and there are many of them. Don’t get me wrong: There’s still plenty of uncertainly around us. But this new future of work that we’re all looking at in the insurance industry? I think it’s going to help our recruiting efforts tremendously. Because when we compete for people, we’re not competing with each other. It’s the other industries. We were competing against industries in which people automatically work from home and automatically dress however they prefer to dress for work; industries where people are called to the office versus expected to be in the office. Now, I think the future of insurance work is going to provide us with better opportunities to attract some of those folks.
PC360: What are the other silver linings you see in the pandemic?
Sanders: I would include our ability to establish the connectivity that we didn’t necessarily know that we had before. I think we have the (digital) capabilities, but we didn’t utilize them. Another silver lining would be, as our underwriters look to engage our trading partners, business can happen anytime and anywhere. Anytime we want to connect with a trading partner now, we’re able to do that.
PC360: Are there other dominant insurance-industry trends that you think will define 2020? Or is it all about the pandemic?
Well, the headline will be all about the pandemic, of course. But, but I think what has been happening in the marketplace was already happening before the pandemic. The issues around social inflation were real before the pandemic. The impact of natural disasters — hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes globally — that was having an impact on the market before the pandemic. The low interest rate environment? All of these things have had an impact.
As we move towards the end of 2020 and into 2021, I think we’ll be talking about the hardening market and how to survive (fallout from) the pandemic. I mean, we don’t know where we are in the pandemic yet. We don’t know if we’re at the beginning. We don’t know if we’re at the end. But where we are in terms of the market is it still hasn’t permeated all areas of insurance.
PC360: As someone who is so enthusiastic about the industry, and who also worked previously with WSIA’s a career development committee: If a young person came to you now and said, ‘Bryan, should I get into insurance?’ How would you reply?
Sanders: Well, absolutely, because there are so many opportunities within the industry. When we talk to young people, what we really encourage them to do is to find the company with the culture that fits them best… Once people are exposed to the opportunities in the industry, they grab on!
PC360: Besides keeping up with the Cleveland Browns, how do you spend time away from insurance?
Sanders: Right now, any spare time my wife and I get, we really try to spend with our daughter and our granddaughter [in] Chicago, or with our son in Dallas.
I also play a lot of golf, because it helps me keep in touch with my friends. I was told a long time ago that if you want to have long-term relationships, you have to invest in them. I think that’s actually true in your personal life as well as in business. I was fortunate to find a business that really believes in relationships.
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