Executive Insights: Nationwide's Mark Berven on today's opportunities
The president and COO of Nationwide Property & Casualty shares how insurance carriers and agents can capture growth in 2021.
Like so many in the industry, Mark Berven did not think he’d have a career in insurance, but life had other plans for him.
It was in 1994 when Berven got his start in the insurance industry as a claims associate in Nationwide’s (then Allied Insurance) Denver office. Now, nearly three decades later, he serves as president and chief operating officer of Nationwide Property & Casualty, which includes agency-based and direct-to-consumer distribution, excess & surplus/specialty insurance, agribusiness insurance, claims, strategic partnerships, member solutions, and the commercial and personal lines organizations.
During a recent call with PropertyCasualty360.com from his office in Columbus, Ohio, Berven shared his insights on the industry’s key issues and how agents can gain a competitive edge this year.
PC360: What are the biggest opportunities for the P&C insurance industry in 2021?
Berven: I like to think about this in three ways. Number one is making life easy for customers and our distribution partners. The whole dynamic of time as a currency is really critical today, so we’re really focused on ease of use and removing friction points in processes. We have this mindset of looking at everything we do and determining what we can eliminate or automate. That also allows us to focus on creating value where personal relationships matter. We like to talk about the industry as being people-connected but tech-enabled. Technology is changing everything, but there is still the need for that human connection. So, as we make life easier through technology, we also want to create value where human interaction is of most benefit.
Number two is about innovation. Everybody talks about innovation, but I think we’re at a really unique time coming out of COVID-19. We’ve seen customers’ expectations continue to evolve, and new and emerging business models are happening all over. When you think about what’s needed to enable that innovation, insurance is able to take away some of the risk associated with new innovative efforts. That will play a really important part in the industry as we accelerate out of the pandemic.
Lastly, it’s always about the customer focus. The first two things I referenced were clearly around customer focus, but it’s about delivering customer focus through an inclusive workforce. The voice of the customer is more important than ever. It’s critical that you have an inclusive workforce within an organization that represents the different customer perspectives out there. So it’s important for the industry to lean into that and make sure that customers’ voices are at the table at all levels so that you are designing around what our customers really want and need.
PC360: Some independent agents feel that their insurance carriers are not serving as true partners and are increasing competition. What are your thoughts on that?
Berven: It’s key to identify where you have shared objectives in a carrier-agent relationship. The most common interest that we all share is we want to establish long-term relationships with our shared clients. If we start with that, then you can begin to break down the components of what helps or hurts that.
The reality is we’re all looking for growth. But sometimes, that growth, depending on the economic environment, means different things to the carrier than it does to the agency partner. There needs to be transparency on the carrier’s part about where there are opportunities and challenges. Then it’s really important that carriers stop and listen to agents — listen to understand and to act.
But at the end of the day, the one thing that carriers and agents always know we have in common is that we want to make sure that we have long-term relationships with our shared clients because that leads to favorable outcomes.
PC360: What is one thing Nationwide is doing to be a better partner to agents?
Berven: We have a National Agent Council with partners from across the country who serve as representatives of the collective group. We get together several times throughout the year formally, but we also have a lot of informal, at the moment, communications. What we do is we walk through what we’re currently working on at Nationwide and our priorities, and we provide opportunities to hear from the agency group in the same way — what are they experiencing, what are the things going really well with Nationwide, and what are our gaps? It really keeps that communication flow going.
We’re a people-connected business, so nothing is going to take away that two-way conversation where you’re spending time with someone to understand their agency business and try to connect it to the priorities we have today or changing our priorities to be a better carrier partner.
PC360: What is your advice to independent agents who want to gain a competitive edge in 2021?
Berven: If I were to think back on some of the most successful agents that I’ve had the opportunity to work with, they always view change as an opportunity; they find the positive in anything. They adapt and are willing to kind of go with the flow as things are moving around them. Regardless of whether you’re an agency, a carrier or in all aspects of life, just looking at change as an opportunity and embracing it is really a differentiator.
The other thing that I would highlight is what we have found in our Agent Authority Survey that gets perspective from large groups of agents on what really matters in the marketplace today. We have seen this evolution about how much it matters to have expertise in a segment of the business that you, as an agent, stand out in. Business owners believe it’s difficult to find an agent who really understands their business, and they are looking for agents who understand their business, maybe even better than they do.
So you can’t really be the generalist, one-stop-shop for everything. There are still components of the market that probably work that way still, but there is a definite movement toward becoming an expert in a few things that can really deliver value from a business owner’s perspective.
That’s been something that we’ve seen a lot of, so Nationwide has developed unique certification processes for agents, so they can become “certified” in different segments of the market. Through that, agents get an in-depth curriculum and ongoing education focused on creating that subject-matter expertise so they can walk into an organization and really ‘wow’ with their knowledge of the business — that makes a difference today.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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