SPEAKER_01 0:00

Like all of the other organizations that we talk to, the National Association of Health Underwriters has gone through a bunch of changes and is in the process of making some significant changes, including one that's, well, Mary, maybe very basic, and we'll talk a little bit about that. The question is, what are they doing and why are they doing it? And what does it matter to you? We'll find out on this episode of Shift Shapers.

Announcer 0:24

Change either paralyzes or energizes. The choice is yours. You're listening to the Shift Shapers podcast. You're about to learn firsthand from businesses and entrepreneurs who have successfully shaped the shifts in their industries. Get ready to become the change you want to see. This episode is brought to you by Shift Shaper Strategies. In sales, if you confuse, you lose. Clarify your message so you win more clients, crush your sales goals, and build your practice. Learn more at ShiftShaper Strategies.com. And now, here's your host, Story Brand Certified Guide and Chief Transformation Strategist at Shift Shaper Strategies, David Saltzman.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

And to help answer today's question, we're pleased to welcome NAHU's brand new president, Kelly Fristo, who's joining us today. Welcome, Kelly. Thanks for being here. Well, thank you for having me. It's our pleasure. I know you're really busy. Tell us a little bit about your background, you know, what you do, and why you decided many years ago to uh to get on the board and go through the chairs.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Well, I live in a rural place in Texas called Wichita Falls. And the agency that I have is a small boutique agency. We are not large by any means, but we're strong, we're powerful, we have a pretty good presence in our local geography. And I consider myself a specialist in the health insurance world. Now, yes, we do individual plans, we do small group, we do large group plans, Medicare, but we specialize in health insurance. I grew up in West Texas. When we moved out to Wichita Falls, I was already in the insurance business for a couple of years, and my wife was a nurse. I was a really slow starter in this business. If it wasn't for her good nursing job, we would have starved to death. I'm not kidding. As I gravitated into the health insurance realm of the business, I found health underwriters. I happened to run into a person here locally, and a lot of people know her. Her name is Jackie Spraggins, and she is so contagious about this association, and she told me I needed to be involved. And I thought, you know, if I'm gonna do health insurance, I might as well get involved. So I did. And I was on the board the next year as being the president of the local chapter, and that began my board service to this organization, and it hasn't stopped since then. And what's funny, people ask me, and this is kind of my testimony, why I've stayed involved in this organization. Every year that I've gotten more and more involved in this organization and a legal leadership position, my business has grown as a result. So it's kind of a self-serving area that I've stayed involved, but I also love the business of the association and what it's doing to try to craft and change and improve our health care environment and our industry. But I went on from being the local chapter president to serving on the board of the state chapter and going through those chairs. I was the Texas chapter chapter president. When that came to an end, I decided to run for the regional vice president position, which was a board position on the Nahu board. Did that for two terms, and then I decided to run for secretary. I did that in Kansas City at the convention there in Kansas City unopposed. And I have some reservations about an unopposed election. I think healthy organizations don't have unopposed elections. I think it's uh important for when people we have leadership that rises up that we have contested races. That really helps with the leadership as aspect of the organization. But I did that as secretary, and then next thing you know, I'm here we are today. I'm president.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

And you're president of NAHU, but you're not going to be president of NAHU forever. The association just voted on a name change. So you're you're actually going to be president of two different organizations in the same year. Well, the same organization, but with two completely different names. Tell me a little bit about the new name and why.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

So this is historic, really, when you think about it. When you look at the association from its very beginning in Chicago, Illinois, and how it started out as more of a had a different name back then. And then it changed to Nahu. And when it changed, what we were doing at that time, we were doing underwriting to some degree. We would go out and do applications, we were asking health questions. We were field underwriters, is what we were. And through the years, obviously that has changed. The Affordable Care Act has changed a lot of this thing about underwriters. We're not doing any underwriting. We're not even ask asking any health questions. We are just basically consulting with people, helping them pick the right plan that they need to be in from a benefit perspective. We're turning more into advisors or consultants. So when we think about this word underwriter and what it's done to us over the last several years, it has added to, I believe, us becoming more and more irrelevant to that person that really should be a member of this organization. But they're not because the name just doesn't reflect what they do. So it was time. You know, we've had this address before where we've had a town hall meet meeting and someone stood up and said, Hey, have we ever thought about changing our name to become more relevant and to really align with what we're trying to do when we go to Washington, DC and talk to legislators? And the word that has always come back is no, they know who we are by our current name. And if we change our name, we may lose some of that credibility with them. So we decided, you know, let's challenge the status quo on this deal. We did. We got a consulting firm involved that confirmed for us that a name change would actually probably enhance what we do with people who are in our industry to attract them as being members. It may also help us with our efforts with legislators. So the new name is The National Association of Benefits and Insurance Professionals with a tagline that says shaping healthcare's future.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Well, that that certainly is a lot more descriptive than the National Association of Health Underwriters. And you know, in the process of changing the name, I'm I'm losing a little bit of trivia because what you may know, maybe you don't, is that for a while we were called the International Association of Health Underwriters. And the reason is because we're such an old organization that we had members in uh in Hawaii before it was a state.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Oh, wow. No, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Yeah. So, you know, fiction and fact from David's almanac. But I digress. You know, one of the things that really jazzed me up at convention when we were all in Austin uh a little while ago, besides some amazing brisket, which is, you know, I that that's my thing, is that there were seven goals, seven areas of focus that you all talked about. And I'd like to touch on those briefly so folks who are listening get kind of an idea of where the association is going, what the thought process of the board is. And the first one is to talk about changing customer expectations. Tell me what that means and and you know how we're going to do that.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Well, we have to kind of serve our members, our constituents, people who you know are collaborators, people that we collaborate with, other sister organizations, if you want to call it that. Because our customers' expectations are changing. They are wanting us now to help them solve the high cost of healthcare. And so we survey everybody and we get these results back, and we start crafting our goals around that metric.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

The second goal was, you know, mergers and acquisitions. And I, you know, there anybody who's in the business knows that there's been a lot of attrition and a lot of roll-ups. And so it's, you know, there are fewer players than there were by by far. And some of the players are becoming fairly big and monolithic and, you know, almost a monopoly in their particular geographic areas. What's our take on mergers and acquisitions? How can we be active there and help influence what's going on?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Well, we're seeing a lot of that across just all over the nation, where smaller firms like mine, possibly, would be interested in a merger with a larger organization, like a Gallagher or a Locton or a Mercer, one digital. There's so many of them. And so when I think about me doing something like that, I'm operating in an environment I I know nothing about. I don't know how to merge and be, you know, acquiesced into another organization. And I think that our members that would be considering this need assistance with how do you go about doing this? How do you create a win-win-win? How do you make sure that your interests are protected in this merger and acquisition? Because I think we've seen two situations across the spectrum where there have taken there have been mergers and acquisitions that have taken place. And after about a year or two, the parties involved are like, you know what, this isn't working out, we're gonna undo this. We've seen a lot of that too. So if we can help our members be better equipped to and and know what to expect and have a toolkit, so to speak, on how to go about doing this and doing it right, then I think we'll create a better situation for our members and we'll become more valuable to them.

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SPEAKER_01 11:45

I think that's a great idea. Now, the next goal is something that's been near and dear to my heart for quite a while, and it's member compensation. What's going on with that? What's the thought process?

SPEAKER_02 11:54

Well, this is a goal that I actually had an opportunity to champion, and now as president, I'm going to be passing this along to someone else to champion. But you know, we think about what has happened to commissions. We have typically been a commission-based entity. That's how I make my money is through commissions. And really, there's been a lot of perverse incentive around can commissions. The more my client pays, the more commissions I make, right? And whenever I sit down at the negotiating table representing my client and they have this on their mind, are they recommending this to me because they get paid more commissions? Is that why they're making this recommendation? But if I change from a commission-based agent to a fee-based, then when I'm sitting on their negotiating table along with them, there's no question in their mind who I'm representing. And the recommendation that I'm going to make is in their best interest.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Yeah, it's clear that you're sitting on their side of the table. That's it, that's hugely important.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

But we we're looking at how do we go about educating our members because it's scary to move from a commission-based model into a fee-based model. But I believe because of things like the Consolidated Appropriations Act, that this is so so timely. We have an opportunity here to cut a new trail, so to speak. We have the opportunity to take what we do, communicate what we do to our clients, and have more value. Because a lot of our clients don't know what we do. And so it's hard to create value around something that we just bring a renewal to you, and here it is, and it is what it is. There is so much more than we can communicate. By the way, we're taking care of a lot of these other administrative services. We're educating your employees. We are talking about Cobra, Orissa, Plan Docs. We're assisting your human resource person that's taking care of all your employees. We're taking care of claim issues on the back end. We're going to try to help your employees navigate to lower cost health care. So all these things are things that we do. And whenever the employer hears this, they're going, oh goodness, yeah, you're right. There's this fee is definitely worth what I'm going to be paying you. But yeah, we have those clients out there that think about we get paid too much. They're going to accuse us of getting paid too much. This is an opportunity to dispel that myth.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Yeah, well, you know, a question about that though is is there are some states that still prohibit licensed insurance agents from taking fees rather than commissions or fees in addition to commissions. I mean, it's a real hodgepodge. What's the thought process about getting that straightened out at the state level, or is are you looking at a federal solution?

SPEAKER_02 14:48

I don't know. I mean, it could be both, but we are putting together for our members those states that where they are prohibited from doing those sort of things. And I think it's going to take that state chapter working with the legislators or their state insurance department to say, hey, let us start looking at different ways in which we can create revenue for ourselves and help our clients. This commission thing can be perverse.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Yeah, there's no question about it. Plus, you know, you got somebody, some external company capping the amount of income that you can make, and that's never a good thing either. Moving along, because I want I want to make sure we get all these in. The fourth goal is to talk more about employer market issues. What does that mean and what is NAHU or NAHIBP, I guess it is, and I N-A-B-I-P. I'll get it, I'll get it sooner or later. I'm an old dog. It's hard to learn new tricks. What's the organization doing about that?

SPEAKER_02 15:45

Well, again, we're evaluating all the different components of that employer market, demographic trends, benefit programs. You know, when we think about the things that you can do in the self-insured market that's really creative, things that are actually changing and bringing solutions to these larger employers, direct primary care, you know, implementing direct primary care into a health plan. Those types of solutions are things that we're talking about, and also those things that are related to the employer market issues that are legislative in nature. So we're focusing on all those things, everything from the Affordable Care Act to the pharmaceutical benefit manufacturers, mental health issues, public option issues on exchange, off exchange. So that employer market issue is is very vast and all the components that we're measuring, evaluating, and then deciding how we're going to move forward with showing our members these employer market issues. Even consider Medicare. You know, we we've got a large part of our membership that is a Medicare agent that they focus solely on Medicare. So we're trying to silo all that so that our members can come to the website or come to a professional development meeting that will show them the details on those particular issues in that market.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

Yeah, we've got uh about four or five minutes left. I want to make sure we touch on the rest of these. And and the next one is a next one is a biggie. It's technology. And for some agencies, that is both a kind of a double-edged sword. It's like, you know, ooh, that's good, no, that's bad, like the old song says. Talk about what you guys can do as an organization to help everybody with get to find their way through technology, find the right technology, understand how to compare them, et cetera.

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Well, I think just like what you said, is identifying the pieces of technology that an agency like mine versus a large agency can implement. You know, we have a lot of new things up there like employee navigator, ease. We have other technology that's coming in as well from different vendors. It's just identifying what those pieces of technology will do, how they can enhance your business, and how you can take advantage of those, and maybe even as a member give you a discount to access some of that technology.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

That'd be great. The sixth major goal is the sixth goal is major health policy. And boy, I know that's someplace where the association's been really active. It's got a very active pack. What are you guys focused on?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Well, right now it's transparency. You know, when we think about the last decade, it has been a lot of focus on the ACA. This next decade it's gonna have a lot of focus on transparency because I believe that's where we're gonna start solving a lot of our healthcare problems. So again, it's about developing a map about what do we want to prioritize when we take our legislative agenda to Capitol Hill.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

And you know, I know the the seventh thing that you guys are working on is some organizational changes, you know, briefly, because for a lot of people, a lot of members, that's kind of inside baseball, but it's necessary, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 18:54

It is, because there was a day that back that you can recall we had 20,000 members. Even though we represent a hundred thousand agents nationwide, our current membership base is around 12,000 members that are actively engaged. And so we need to align our organization to take care of 12,000 members in hopes that we're gonna continue to grow, which I think we will, because we're becoming more relevant. But it takes a different organizational structure to take care of 12,000 members than what it took to maybe take care of 20,000 members.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

You know, it that's really true. And and you know, it it's I think some of it is just the fact that, you know, there wasn't the kind of direction that maybe some people want to see. And I'm I'm certainly heartened by the stuff that you know you guys showed off in Austin and and the the caliber of folks who are on the board. I have no doubt that you guys are gonna accomplish this stuff. I know there's two meetings that we do every year that are are really important Capital Conference and Convention. Capital Conference, of course, is probably late February, mid-late February, and that's in in Washington, D.C. But where is just as we wrap up, where's Convention gonna be this coming year? Going to be in New Orleans. Oh, that's that's a terrible city to visit. I mean, who would want to go to New Orleans?

SPEAKER_02 20:07

I mean, you know, it's the well you know, I've been there several times. They have good food. There's a lot of stuff about New Orleans that I would rather not participate in, frankly. I gotta be honest. But um, but yeah, we're gonna make it a good convention. It's a great city, great hotel. We just want to get more people engaged in this process of our annual convention. And we've got some great professional development lined up. We've got great speakers, so it's a great place to come and bring your team with you, learn, collaborate, go back home and motivated and grow your business.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

And the the chocolate chips and the cookie that is NEHU, we were talking about this a little bit um off-air, is that you make friends that are become lifelong friends and become part of your circle. And it's a really, I mean, we we joke about it, we call it Camp Nahu, but you know, I'm still waiting for camp shirts, but uh that'd probably be kind of maybe not a not a not the eighth goal, I guess, huh? But it there's a lot, you gain a lot more, and especially if you can be there. Our having been virtual the last few years has been challenging for for a lot of folks. And it's nice that at least in Austin this year we were able to get together. And you know, my only problem that I have with New Orleans is that I start by eating my body weight and beignet and I work my way up from there. So, you know, it's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

Friendships. It's true. I mean, I have people that I have met, and I've actually had clients l move from Wichita Falls to California.

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Yeah, I can't imagine why anybody would have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

I know that's unusual, but that's happened. And I know an agent that's in California that I can send them to that I know that's gonna take very good care of them.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah, it's amazing. I you know, I was telling you, when when my wife passed away a number of years ago, it was the NEHU folks that kept me, you know, battened down to the planet. It's just and that's the intangible. It's hard to explain that to somebody when you're talking about seven objectives and rearranging the board and changing the name and whatnot. But that's a piece that's not ever going to change. And and to me, that's been the most enduring part of it. And you know, plus, you know, when you serve, you you get a lot back and you learn a lot. And and I think there's there's something to be said for that as well. Kelly, I know you're a busy guy. I know you're juggling flaming N A H U or N-A-B-I-P hamsters these days. I'll let you run. But I want to thank you so much for A serving and B for taking time to do this the podcast. And when you become immediate past president, we can tell you about the past president's retirement fund.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

That is great. I'd love to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_01 22:37

Don't plan your retirement around it. Kelly, take good care, my friend. Be well. Thanks again. Thank you.

Announcer 22:44

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