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PODCAST OPENER
Welcome to the Inside Insight podcast presented by CR Solutions. At Consolidated Risk Solutions, we are taking our expert knowledge of the insurance world and using it to innovate the industry using technology, groundbreaking thinking and a personal touch. Join us as we talk to masterminds both inside and outside of CR Solutions about how the world of insurance is changing, and how we can be sure to grow along with it. If you have to manage insurance in your work, then you can benefit from the interviews, conversations and insights we’ll be exploring to elevate your business’s success.
INTRO (00:42 – 02:40)
Trevor Casey: Beau, I am really excited about today’s interview because I feel like this podcast has really taken a life of its own and some of the people that are wanting to be a part of our podcast is really exciting. Today we’re joined by Chad Hall from RT Specialty out of the Tampa office. If you’re in the insurance construction insurance game, it’s a name you know, it’s a name you’ve heard. We joke around about the word power broker all the time and when we throw that around, just joking. But Chad truly is the definition of a power broker. Chad Hall is a specialist wholesale insurance broker with a dedicated focus on the construction industry. As the practice leader for RT Specialty construction practice and president of RT Specialty in Tampa, Chad has developed a team that concentrates exclusively on construction related placements. He’s successfully structured casualty insurance spanning residential, infrastructure and energy sectors. Chad’s expertise extends beyond mere placement of insurance. He is also adept to creating new products, program design and feasibility pro forma analysis during the sales process. His approach emphasizes partnership over mere market access, ensuring top retail brokers across the country benefit from his innovative solutions and strategic insights.
Beau Lunceford: This conversation I am really excited for people to hear because I really think that Chad brings something special to the table. Like you’re saying he is a power broker. And just the insights that he brings and I hate to say, I hate to keep using all these buzzwords like expertise and insights, but like the reality is, is that Chad brings something special to the table. And like we say all the time, we’re bringing people in who are very passionate about their work. It’s one of the unifying factors of the people that we’re interviewing during this season. And Chad is no exception to that.
Trevor Casey: Absolutely. So without further ado, let’s jump into this exciting conversation with Chad Hall from RT Specialty.
Interview (02:43 – 28:47)
Trevor Casey: All right everybody, we are back with another episode of the Inside Insight podcast and we are honored to be with the Chad Hall of RT Specialty, a name that we were just saying is just about a household name if you’re in the construction insurance space. So, Chad, thank you so much for being here today.
Chad Hall: Thanks, guys. That’s humbling. Not necessarily think of myself that way, kind of stay in the trench and just do my thing.
Trevor Casey: Hey, it’s worked out well for you. It’s funny how your name pops up, literally, it seems like in everything. And it’s really cool to see somebody who’s put themselves in such a high standing in the insurance space. So to kind of step it back a little bit, how did you get into RT Specialty and what brought you to where you’re at now? Have you always been in the insurance space? Have you always strived to be a power broker?
Chad Hall: Well, like most people, insurance, I don’t think you set out for insurance. Somehow you stumble your way into it. So I’ve got one of those similar stories and that I actually thought I was going to go into the construction industry. That’s what I was going to school for. I was essentially engineering and business was what I was focused on. I wanted to go in and be a project manager run a construction company that was the path that I thought I was on. Went to school for it. I worked in the trades growing up. Those were my summer jobs working for either friends or family. My family, cousins and aunts and uncles all had construction businesses. My grandfather was in the business, and so that’s what I did. I worked in all the trades growing up. I had roofing, I poured cement, I worked on the pipeline, I framed houses. Like, I kind of figured it all out then and really had an interest in passion and construction and that’s what I was going to pursue. So upon graduating college kind of took a 180 and had an opportunity. My neighbor, that my family had a house on a lake when we were growing up, and my neighbor owned an insurance agency, and he kept on testing me. He’s like, you should go into insurance. I think he saw the writing on the wall in the big gap of ages in the insurance industry. He’s like, you’d be great at it. You have the right personality, you work hard, and you’re our specialist and you already understand construction. He’s like, go to insurance. Go after your family’s network of contractors and start writing construction business. I thought that was interesting. So I checked it out and I got a job at 22 years old selling insurance policies as an agent with a phone, and they always tease, the phone book thing we didn’t have. We really weren’t big on phones and Internet when I first started in the business, so it was really like dial for dollars. And so I started right out the gate banging my head against the wall, trying to learn how to sell insurance.
Trevor Casey: That’s so cool. And I think that the structure of starting in the construction space and actually being in the trades has probably really helped you in your career because you’re able to think a little bit differently about how you’re structuring things.
Chad Hall: Yeah, absolutely. I ended up going on and got my Masters in Construction Management. So I didn’t just do it in the field. I mean, I studied at the highest degree for it. So I’ve got a knowledge in that space that helped me. My path is interesting because I’ve been on all sides of the transaction. I was a contractor, I was an underwriter, I was a retail broker, and now I’m a wholesale broker. So I’ve literally been in all parts of the transaction other than reinsurance broker. But I don’t really intend to do that. So I’ve been in all aspects of it. And so part of my abilities and my career have shaped and developed because I know all sides of the transaction and I’ve done the role. So it gives you appreciation for everyone who does the role and the needs and the desires and wants of what it takes to be good at each of them. For me, that’s what’s really helped me see the full picture and really be able to think outside the box is because I’ve been able to sit in all those seats.
Beau Lunceford: So do you feel like there was one chapter that really keeps coming back up in terms of things that you learned and experiences that you had that are playing into the kind of things that you’re doing now?
Chad Hall: I mean, again, all of those experiences that I had put me in a position to better understand not just buyer, but the individuals that are involved in the transaction. So how to underwrite the deal, how to be polished enough to sell the deal in front of the client. And what that all takes to take it from cradle to grave, I can do all aspects of that. So for me that’s probably really what has helped shape that?
Trevor Casey: So one of the things that we really find super unique in the insurance space is all of the innovation that comes out of it, all the new products that people come out with and all the great programs that are filling gaps. And I feel like your knowledge base has really helped you structure some of these programs. Could you talk about some of the innovative programs that RT Specialty and yourself have, have created over the years?
Chad Hall: I mean, just kind of piggybacking off of what we were last talking about is like being able to sit in all those different states and gain knowledge of how to underwrite, how to work from the retail perspective, how to being in the field and being educated from the construction standpoint to understand what’s being built, the exposures, and what I should be concerned about and what I shouldn’t be concerned about, I think it helps you really think outside the box in a way to see the angles on every aspect of what you’re doing. Like what’s the needs of the marketplace and how do I design something to get us there? Because a lot of building product is, one, understanding the needs of the market and the consumer. But, two, how do you get an underwriter to buy into doing it? How do they understand the exposures? Or how can you change the way things are being done today? Because there’s this preconceived notion of, “Oh, this is high risk or no, we can’t do it that way.” I’m always constantly, why can’t we do it that way? This makes more sense to do it another way. That was really how labor guard was born ten years ago in New York. I mean, if you think back to what that marketplace looked like ten years ago, the Wrap-Ups were getting very challenging. The deductibles started to get really high where it was requiring significant collateral and larger projects to stand them up. And we were really looking for a way to use non wrap product in New York. But the marketplace had pulled out because of their loss of faith in the ability of contractors and developers to any owners to manage downstream risk transfer and to hold the subcontractors accountable. So it was really a common sense equation. It was like, okay, what’s the issue? The issue is that they don’t believe in risk transfer. Nobody’s policing the subs. Can we create something that polices the subs? That wasn’t, in concept, very difficult. In practice, it was very difficult. It was the same reason why nobody was policing them, because it was a lot of labor and tough negotiations with subs to get their policies in the right place. And that confrontation that was happening and the difficulty to get or really the time spent in educating their agents and their underwriters and trying to get the covers in the right place. Took a lot of time that project managers, the procurement teams that the contractors and then even the developers had no staff or means to do. Only the largest of the contractors out there have able to invest in larger management teams and attorneys and things like that to truly police that way effectively. So I just wanted to bring a solution to the table that allowed for that policing that gave you a sliver of investing in a huge backroom like that. And to be able to go in and say, “All right, I got a team of attorneys and administration and a process that I don’t have to pay 30 people salary and bonuses to do. I can just take a sliver of it on my project.” And then take that to the markets and say, would you come back out in the marketplace if we were able to give you a better risk transfer process and to really improve what that looks like and give you visibility of it? That was the biggest thing for your underwriters. They had no visibility of it. So it was not until the loss came in that they knew, “Oh, I’ve got a mountain to climb to get this claim tendered to a subcontractor.” And because of that, they just lost faith and they were spending tons of money on tenders that would never stick. And then they paid the loss and we started to lose all that capacity. So we had to bring something back in. And that essentially service that we created with SDV law was what brought the capacity back into New York? And ten years later, every carrier that’s writing non wrap business in New York has copied the formula. They realized that you had to do it. The early days of doing it were tough. People push back. They’re like, we don’t have to do this with our other carriers. I’m like, continue to preach. Look, if you do this, the results are going to be better. They just are like, you’re going to fix the low hanging fruit issues early and you’re going to have copies of policies and files and contracts that have executed properly to make these tenders. And long and short of it was it worked and people caught on to it. And like in anything in insurance, you can’t really copy it or appropriately with or patent it. So it gets copied.
Trevor Casey: I mean, that speaks volumes to the program that people are like, I want to take this and run with it because it’s been so successful. One thing that you said that I find very interesting and a lot of value in because a lot of people that I don’t think speak on is the underwriter. So the underwriter usually is going to give you a lot of pushback. And a lot of people, I feel like a lot of brokers we speak to are like, well, I know this is going to work and they just leave it at that. And the underwriters were like, “Give me some proof. Show me proof of concept or something.” How did you go about that barrier and how did you create and foster these relationships with the underwriters where they like, “You know what, Chad, I really see value in what you’re doing. Let’s explore this further and create these incredible programs.”
Chad Hall: I mean, listen, the biggest lesson learned in this is having been the underwriter. And what I did and didn’t like in the way I was approached. And that speaks volumes because most insurance agents and brokers, they negotiate with a hammer. And negotiating with a hammer never builds you a lot of friends. It just gets negotiating with a hammer, somebody’s getting hurt. And that’s not the way to go about it. The way to go about it is to how do you make an underwriter’s life easier? How do you give them what they need to do their job and more information, being very thoughtful and looking at the information in a way to understand what it is you’re trying to sell them, maybe a better way put that you’re trying to have them help you do, you’re not trying to sell them on anything. You’re trying to get them to understand the risk and appropriately underwrite it. And a lot of times reservations of underwriters are because they don’t have the information to react on. And most underwriters are going to be cautious in nature and they’re processes and underwriting authorities are set up through referrals, and we’re not to kind of police that. And as the market’s gotten harder, there’s more policing and limited underwriting authority within various levels of referral that has more checks and balances. So you want to make that process easier for them. You want to do your due diligence, you want to put together good submissions. You want to think through the risk and you want to come up with creative ideas and solutions to propose. I’ve never been a believer that I would go to the underwriter, give them the problem and say, figure it out. It’s just you’re just not gonna get something meaningful back that way. You need to think through what the path to the solution is. Offer some of those options to underwriters and see what they’re able to do. And that goes for individual deals that goes for building products and programs. You’ve got to have the vision of where you’re trying to be at the end of it and how you’re going to get there. Don’t give them one of them silly mazes where you can’t figure out how to draw a line all the way to the end. That just doesn’t work. So give them a clear path and do the homework to weed out the paths that aren’t going to be successful for them or you, so that you’re just not creating noise and you’re more focused in on what you’re trying to achieve. That’s one of the things that I’ve built into my team, it’s not just to help the underwriter, it helps the underwriter but to help our agents as well as see the forest, what do we say it right, but see the tree that’s in the forest versus the forest? I don’t know what tree I’m trying to go to, but I want to be able to make that picture clear. So we started instituting pro forma models, which I learned how to do not as an underwriter, but as a retail broker, as we were selling Wrap-Ups and all the different types of insurance, all that factors into a deal and that the path we’re going down is one that’s potentially successful or has a high probability of success based on the information we know about the deal. I can’t tell you how many times that when deals are brought to me, the product that’s being asked for is nowhere near probable to sell. It doesn’t even make sense, but you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t pro forma it. So we’re trying to pro forma deals really early on, like before the contractors are even selected for the owner. Or if we’re working for the contractor, we’re helping them with that in the bid process and to understand what products would make the most sense based on certain variables and then picking that path, because if I’m trying to take the shotgun effect with an underwriter and I’m saying, “Hey, quote a Wrap-Up, quote a project specific, quote an owner’s interest, quote all these different things”, like, I just not really focusing, creating too much work for the underwriters, and if I’m going to a pool, 30, 40, 50 underwriters, I’m asking them all to do that. They’re just going to shut down. And I got 400 other deals on my desk, and this doesn’t make any sense. And you don’t know what you want. You want to go into the marketplace, knowing exactly what you want, exactly what the path is and how you envision getting there, and your outcome will be way more successful.
Trevor Casey: It’s so incredible to see. Through this podcast, we’ve talked to so many brokers and lawyers and different people, and everybody’s thought process and how they go about a deal is so different. And I think one of the things that I truly see as made you so successful is the thoughtful process with the underwriter. I mean, your hit ratio is going to be higher, your income is going to be better, the industry is going to like you more because you’re actually coming at them with accurate data versus just throwing a dart into a wall and hoping it hits the dartboard. It’s really unique to see the different aspects of everybody’s thought process and what’s made you so successful?
Chad Hall: A part of its process, a lot of it’s being in a niche. It’s learning a lot about a little, not a little about a lot. You’re not when you know a little about a lot, you could be a good quarterback if you know a little about a lot. So all the different aspects about things function and bringing people together. But if you want to add value, you need to know a lot about a little. And so staying very focused on a segment of the business is what I’ve done. And I’ve not tried to be all things to all people and certainly have not tried to go into areas that are outside my box. I want to stay focused in construction, casualty insurance and that’s what I do and built the team around. As you stay focused, you can build that process, you can build the mousetrap, and then you replicate. It’s about repetition. It’s funny, I just posted an article on LinkedIn yesterday, and that’s something that I like to do, is read, educate and continue to be knowledgeable on things that are happening and changing but it was about repetition. And it’s funny in all facets of things anybody does, repetition builds strength. And so repetition builds muscle memory, not just in body, but in mind. So the more that you can replicate something, like we do hundreds of Wrap-Ups a year, you’re going to get good at them. You’re really good at them. If I do two year, I’m not going to get real good at them. I’m not going to be on top of the market as much. I’m not going to have the relationships with the underwriters that do theme. I’m not going to know all the coverage nuances. I’m not going to have a relationship with the clients that buy them, retailers that sell them. Like, you’re just not going to. So by being in a niche, you can be good in all aspects of that from everything that I just mentioned. So to me the repetition is a big deal, but so this article, which was in construction had mentioned how the builder mentality to cut costs and to improve the process was to taking something custom and figuring out a way to replicate it so that it’s like non custom. So if I’ve designed something that’s custom, say I design a custom wrap up that’s got all the bells and whistles and everything that makes it great, and then I replicate it and replicate it and replicate it and replicate it. And it allows your team to just laser in and be very good at it. And that’s just what we’ve tried to do within our team. And you see this in companies that are great at a lot of things, you see this pattern over and over and over, and that’s what it is. And so our company as a whole is made up a bunch of specialists, focus on a product line and in most cases an industry or an industry or two. So that allows them to be very good at what they do. And the biggest reason that I went off to be a wholesaler versus from a retail side was, I saw a huge opportunity there. Like I felt when I was a retailer, that the value and what the wholesaler was bringing me wasn’t strong enough. I felt I could do a way better job than what I was seeing there. And so I looked at it as an opportunity that I can go out and provide a tremendous value to the retail community that was once my competitor, that now I could help and become their partner and doing deals. And that was a huge thing for me. And it was like that aha moment. I was like, what am I doing? I’m working on a dozen or so major deals a year as a retailer. That’s all I could handle as an individual. But now as a wholesaler, I can go work on a dozen a week, maybe more than a dozen a week. And that repetition is what continues to allow you to build that knowledge. And so I’ve always been a big proponent that you have to be a student of the game. You have to constantly be reinventing yourself daily, because whatever I come up with yesterday that I used in a deal or I came out with a program, somebody’s going to copy it, they’re going to copy it. And then once you beat them, they’re going to have the product the next time around. And so you have to constantly be on your toes, thinking about different ways to do things, staying creative, and constantly thinking about how you can do something different than what the marketplace is offering. Sometimes that turns into long lasting product. But a lot of times it’s just you creating very unique one off solutions. And then we replicate that. Like we came up with a product twelve years ago called “The Flex Program”, which was a solution for multifamily developers. And we wrote most of the large ones in the country on it. I called it “The Flex Program” because the flexibility that it provided them, that was really the issue they were having was, I got a lot of projects and a lot of project teams and a lot of different product needs, and they’re constantly evolving all the time. I need something easy to use that can plug and play in every situation. So we created these master programs for these developers that we call “The Flex Program”. And we’ve got people today that are still buying it twelve years later. And a lot of the market is, is modeled off of these pay as you go wraps that have multi phased approaches to them that tie in a lot of different products. And you do it now, but it’s something that didn’t exist when we first came up with it. So continue to just build little solutions like that and then scaling them and replicating it, use it on one deal, use it on the next one. And if it’s one developer has the problem, I’m sure there’s ten other ones that have the same problem. The way business is conducted is not that much different between the different insured’s that we engage with. You start hearing common problems, you want to create a solution. That’s what ultimately has led the continuous to keep us on the forefront of the market. You can’t build a career on one product.
Trevor Casey: Very quickly moving industry that is for sure. So you’ve been giving drop in all kinds of nuggets of information, some really great points, and I’m sure some of the listeners are going to be hearing this and say, oh my gosh, I need to speak with Chad. Like, how can I get him to assist if somebody’s going to reach out and say, “Chad, I have ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’, I need some assistance with”. What are the kind of the target markets that you’re kind of looking for or are there?
Chad Hall: Well, I mean, anything in construction on the casualty side, my team is capable of handling. We’re doing practice policies for general contractors and artisan trade contractors, and then we’re doing anything project related. So whether that’s railroad protective and OCP’s to owners interests, to wraps to many wraps, we’re doing all of it. And our capabilities are pretty wide ranging because of the technical abilities. We have a lot of time we’re client facing. Our retailers bring us to the meetings or they bring us in on the calls early on and we’re part of the team. And so for me, my ideal client, my ideal retail broker is one that will engage me as part of the overall solution and that can be visible with their client. They trust me to engage a partner in the deal versus just somebody behind the scenes that markets. I’m not a marketer. I’m a forward thinking broker that has a lot of insight over solutions and things like that and paths that we could go down. And if I’m just sitting back taking marketing direction, the true value that I provide is not being utilized. I want to be engaged in the conversation early on, and that’s an ideal customer for me really all aspects of construction that we’re touching and we’re building product and unique solutions around.
Trevor Casey: Well, this has been an incredible conversation, Chad, and we really appreciate the time that you’ve taken out. You’ve dropped so many nuggets of information. One, just the whole underwriter thing to me is huge. It makes me want to talk to some underwriters and say, I’m so sorry for all of the headaches we’ve given you. Let me be a bottle of Tylenol. Like, how can I help you? But you’ve just dropped a lot. And I really hope that the listeners take that to heart and say, let’s look at how we approach an underwriter a little differently. And on the other side, I really hope that people take the time to reach out to you and create some new, innovative products, because you’ve proven over your career that you are a forward thinker and you think outside of the box, and you’ve created some really awesome products, and we really appreciate what you’ve done for the industry and the time that you’ve taken to speak with us today. So, thank you.
Chad Hall: I appreciate that. I just wanted to leave one last thing here because we didn’t get to talk on it. Last year, I created “BOR the Tour”, which is a construction specific continuing education program. That was the one thing really lacking. I mean, you’ve got organizations like Ermy that put on some good education at their events. But I wanted to do something that was more meaningful in person that was more boutique that we could customize. And over the past year, I’ve created a 24 hours continuing education curriculum on the things that we’re dealing with in the transactions of construction risk every day. And we’ve done so on more of a summit format. So I’m setting these up with key clients where we’re getting together on a destination type event and sitting down with their. With their team, we’re bringing underwriters in. We’re bringing the attorneys in and we’re going through the issues. And it’s been a tremendous way for it to stay in touch with all the different needs and wants and for everybody to understand each other, because you’ve got all points of view at the table. And so we started that last year. We went into full continuing education curriculum this year. And so that’s been a big thing in continuing to, I guess to give back to the market is to educate. And I learned from it, too. As a continuing education instructor, it’s the questions and the comments and the things that people are sharing with you from experience that help you learn as well. So that’s been a tremendous new initiative and something that I think is going to be pretty powerful moving forward.
Beau Lunceford: So if people wanted to find out more about that, where would they go?
Chad Hall: They can reach out to me on LinkedIn or just contact me directly.
Beau Lunceford: Great.
Trevor Casey: We’ll link all of your information in the bottom of the show notes. We’ll also put your LinkedIn contacts so that’ll allow people to kind of be directed to you into the broker of record tour.
Chad Hall: Cool.
Trevor Casey: Well, thank you so much, Chad, again, for the time. We really appreciate it. Our listeners are going to really appreciate hearing from you. Hopefully some of them reach out and it creates some new, innovative products here in the future.
Chad Hall: Thanks, guys. Appreciate you having me.
Trevor Casey: Awesome. Thanks, Chad.
OUTRO (28:53 – 31:00)
Trevor Casey: It is one of the things I’ve really found about this podcast is that there are so many ways to be successful, not just in the insurance industry, in every single aspect of life, but one of the big things that I think every single person we’ve spoke to highlights in a different facet in some way, but always comes back to relationships.
Beau Lunceford: Oh, absolutely. And how important those relationships are, the impact they can have over the short term and the long term. And we’re just seeing people come out of the woodwork emphasizing this idea of relationships.
Trevor Casey: And like I said, I mean, some of them are structuring, as Chad likes to highlight, building relationships with underwriters and retail brokers and really building your book of business up that way. Or Steve in another episode talked about internally how he likes to build relationships with different departments in his office and how it has helped them grow because it creates collaboration. So it is really interesting to see how different people build relationships in different facets of their life with different people and how they leverage those relationships to be so successful, and Chad hall is truly a working, walking, and successful example of that.
Beau Lunceford: And thank you again, Chad, for stepping in and for sharing these insights with us and just guiding us through your process. We appreciate the time that you took. If anyone’s interested in reaching out to Chad and finding out more about what RT Specialty has to offer, what Chad himself has to offer? All of that content information will be in the show notes for you to reach out. But we are also still looking for different ways that you guys, as our listeners, are interested in learning more about the insurance world, the construction world, and the way that risk management has an impact on day to day work. So please send us those questions if you have them. Any topics that you want us to cover. Again, all that information is going to in the show notes for easy access for you.
Trevor Casey: Absolutely. And Beau, as always, until next time, stay covered.
PODCAST CLOSER
Thanks for tuning in to Inside Insight presented by CR Solutions. If you like anything that you heard today, subscribe, follow and rate the show so that other industry pioneers like yourself can find it. Maybe even share it with someone you think might benefit from this episode. Do you have a question that you want answered or a concept that you need explain, you can email us at info@c-r-solutions.com with the subject line “Podcast Question”, and maybe your question, we’ll make it onto one of our episodes. You can also submit a question via our website at c-r-solutions.com/podcast. There are no dumb questions, only opportunities to learn something new. Now that’s a wrap on this episode. Join us next time on Inside Insight presented by CR Solutions. Stay covered.
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