Optimizing Insurance Premiums with Jeff Arnold

george grombacher 0:00
Come on one Leffler This is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong and powerful Jeff Arnold. Jeff, are you ready to do this?

Jeff Arnold 0:18
And I’m excited. I’ve been excited ever since we connected on our calendars.

george grombacher 0:23
I love it. I’m excited as well. Jeff is the president of rate short Inc. They’re offering consumers a wide selection of insurance solutions that hassle free purchasing process. He’s also a best selling author many times over and a speaker, I believe, a dad and human being and a thinker as well. Jeff, tell us a little bit about your personal last more about your work and why you do what you do.

Jeff Arnold 0:45
Passion, man, right, if you everyone starts life with a passion about something I’ve been fortunate, as odd and quirky as it may be to have a lifelong passion about a word that most people just don’t even think twice about insurance, right? How in the world, it can be sexy, exciting and awesome. People don’t understand. But to me, it just, it can be the way we transfer risk and work through things of Lloyds of London and read their insurance stuff. So that’s, that’s what I love. Right? The passion about writing about what we do and doing what we do on a daily basis.

george grombacher 1:23
Nice transferring risk. I think that if we were to align sexiest words in the world, for the most, for most people that probably be in the lower quadrant, but not not for you, Jeff. Fact. So I been working in financial services for 20 plus years, and I definitely happened into it had no, I did not know that I would find these things to be sexy and exciting. You.

Jeff Arnold 1:56
My apologies. No, I also really kind of happened into it. If you if I can bore your listeners with a story a bit might be a little long and words, but I’ll try to be succinct. I’m 14 years old, standing on a hay bale in Western Kentucky. Everyone in my family is either preachers or farmers or to escape they join the military, right? That’s just that’s how it happens. So I’m standing on a hay bale working tobacco and hay with my friend Chuck up drives this guy in a four door Buick with the windows up which to the audience that you mean, the man has air conditioning, this is fantastic.

george grombacher 2:34
Awesome. He steps out of

Jeff Arnold 2:37
his four door air conditioning Buick, with a nice crisp shirt, white Iron Shirt and some slacks dress dressed up. So I poked my friend on the halo next to him. Hey, Chuck, what’s that guy do? And he said insurance or something like that? You know, fast forward a decade I’m I done some theater and drama, trying to escape my little town to in North Hollywood. I got three months have nothing signed up. And I haven’t been super successful at it. Right? So I head back to Tucson just to meet my mom for Thanksgiving. I have to get a job. You know, pay rent put gas in the car. Here’s the cliche part. I answer an ad that says insurance salesman wanted. And so a decade after I saw the guy step out, I’m like, oh, let’s go. Let’s try this. I you know, when you’re supposed to do something or just resonates in your being a flip of a light switch just flipped inside my body. I fell in love with it from from the first day on and here I am 31 years later. So I get a lot of words, but

george grombacher 3:47
it’s awesome. kind of happened

Jeff Arnold 3:48
into it too. But it was this this kind of neat route that took a decade to come to fruition.

george grombacher 3:54
Yeah, I think that that’s awesome insurance salesman wanted, I wonder how that ad would play today. It’s you know, it’s we we all have these experiences. And it causes us to sort of be wired in a certain way. Right? We all have these operating systems and you’re really positive experience with a a, a professional looking person with in a great looking car with air conditioning surance good. It doo doo doo most people do they do find that, that this is something they want to think about? Is it something they never want to think about? And how do you meet that desire one way or another? Yeah, well,

Jeff Arnold 4:37
absolutely. I would submit to you that they do not desire to think about it, nor is it a top of mind. Right so. So to kind of different directions to that question. Let’s let’s do the first one. We challenge customers of right here to just for a moment, stop and think long term how much You will or have paid for insurance in your lifetime, right? And so when you aggregate total sum, all of the dollars that you pay or will pay over your lifetime, it is a significant amount of money, right? Hundreds of 1000s of dollars. So the first direction of the conversation is that that’s why I wrote my book, how to be your insurance company, right? Because it explains how to help people beat the insurance companies and not like negative claim stuff, or questionable coverage things, but really, how to plan how to be specific, disciplined and approach insurance with a new way of thinking, that doesn’t just involve, hey, every year I’ll shop and save 15%. Because mostly what happens is, in our business, like any other business, you get what you pay for. But for some reason, the consumer has this mindset that says, Oh, if it’s cheaper, it’s the same because it’s insurance, right? Well, that would not be true if you’re comparing a Hyundai to, to a Mercedes. Nor to be true, if you were taking your significant other for two out to a quick Chinese restaurant versus a steak restaurant, right, you can get what you pay for. Yeah, and we just can let consumers know. The same is true in insurance, you’re buying a legal contract. So just be aware of what’s in it. But the book explains that and then the second piece is kind of a pitch for our technology, right? Our our rate guard platform in rate guard does just it. This is the end of insurance shopping, because our technology, wraps in fuses combines artificial intelligence, multivariate reading, and analytics into this engine. I know it’s a lot of words, and then you throw a multi syllabic insurance words like at my brain, or it’s hard stop. But But do you wrap all that together in a platform that hugs the customer very tight, lets them know if a better rate exists at every renewal. And then we offer our discount discovery technology, another multisyllabic word, insurance companies can’t get away from these long words. They love it. Discount discovery technology is just that it helps people find discounts and discounts is the same as savings and so not meaning to dominate the mic here on your doors, but to different kinds of directions for that on rate guard. And in some of my publications.

george grombacher 7:20
You know, I I’ve never, I’ve never thought to add up. Here’s how much you’re going to spend on health insurance alone. My goodness, it literally is got to be hundreds of 1000s of dollars. And that’s also true of car insurance and homeowners insurance and life insurance. And oh my goodness, you know, lions and tigers and bears Oh, my. So it behooves me to spend that little bit amount of time that you’re talking about to make sure that I am being a good steward of my premium dollars. And cheaper is not better. And it’s legal contract. So if I can get coached up and I can make good decisions on the front end, it could save me 10s of 1000s of dollars and or horrible headaches with trying to get a claim paid with a company that I cheaped out on?

Jeff Arnold 8:11
Yeah, absolutely. That’s, you know, this is the part where people like, oh, boring insurance talk, but you’re absolutely right. Because you’re typically all people hear about our industry is the negative the claims that weren’t paid or this and that, right. And I can assure you, I work with 180 Plus insurance companies, they’re gonna pay the claims they’re required to pay, they’re also not going to pay the claims are not required to pay and, and that is coverage that was not purchased. And so it’s easy to go to sleep on this. It’s easy just to follow a cute ad on TV and call that one and, and save some money and surrender some coverage. But it doesn’t take that long, you know, of a commitment 2530 minutes every six months to have an insurance portfolio review. Again, not sexy, not exciting to most people. But when you look long term, like you just mentioned the most expensive one, health insurance, right? Absolutely insane. How can you save on that? There’s ways to be sophisticated and and retain more the risk yourself a little bit, right, but still save and still get the deductions, right. And the same for auto insurance. If you have young young drivers, there’s a whole bunch of different things to do that, you know, we will go into all the your show because that’s like, yeah, if I wanted to do an insurance agent talk, I could call somebody, but there’s just a lot of really cool planning techniques that can be leveraged leverage you can pull to save. And so again, does that make it sexy and exciting? No, but if you put enough money back into your pocket, you’re like, No, you have some knowledge along the way. Yeah, it’s kind of cool.

george grombacher 9:43
Yeah, well, that’s sort of, I imagine, and again, it’s first time really thinking about it. That we are probably more attuned right now when we have inflation going up by however much it’s going up. And these little bites that are getting taken out of everywhere that we’re consuming, that probably the thought of spending 25 minutes six times or twice a year is not the end of the world if it’s going to help me to save money or just get a better product. And I, I’d like to, I think that when something’s a problem, when you make it a process, then it’s not that much of a problem anymore. And the first time of calling Jeff, right, sure. Like, oh, my gosh, what a pain. Am I really going to do that? Am I going to spend 20 minutes talking to insurance person? But once I do that, and then that’s just something that I do, that it’s a lot more palatable?

Jeff Arnold 10:36
Yes, sir. I know, Nothing’s easy going through the first time, or, you know, quite frankly, we’re all busy. We’re tired of meetings. We want to, we want to be distracted and get back to nothingness. So, you know, if COVID has taught us anything, it’s we’re gonna have to be very disciplined about our time and intentional, because if we don’t, we’ll be on 17 Zoom calls a day. And, you know, looking for distraction. So yeah.

george grombacher 11:00
Yeah. So is that, I mean, you try to train people to be good consumers? Is that something that you stress? You say, you know, we’re, it’s great that you’re a client of ours. Now, we would like to just get this scheduled in advance? Or how does it work? What is the process? Like?

Jeff Arnold 11:18
Thank you for asking a deeper qualifying question there. So our, our AI Artificial Intelligence platform, right, because it’s deep machine learning, right? And it’s just kind of this pre built framework of code that goes into hugging this customer tighter, right. And so we have outside of our tech folks, there’s a 52, folks in our call center that just focus on the outbound review process, right. And so the technology would happen like this to keep it simple. 45 days before, policy renews text goes out to the customer hunting really tight says, Hey, George, you renew in 45 days, your current company is x at this rate, the exact same coverages with these other three companies are this rate, right? We also recommend, because in these inflationary times rates are creeping up, right? That you may be self insurance. And well, what’s that mean? Well, mostly motors will allow a $2,000 deductible on your 500. Let’s go to 1000. A lot of sophisticated things we can do if you with the same company for three or four years, they have discount forgiveness. So you’re really not out any money claims time you’re saving money. So again, it’s a it’s really deep and insurance legal up with our technology. And our record platform does, does all of that and prompts the consumer all along. It’s like sitting in an item on autopilot. Right. So the individual and shopping is what we call it.

george grombacher 12:37
Yeah, it’s interesting. Well, I think it’s interesting. You know, when when you’re inside the jar, it’s kind of hard to see what’s on label and all that stuff. And when you’re deep in the industry and thinking about it all the time. You know, I think sometimes it’s like, okay, this is not going to be interesting to people. But I think that the average consumer, myself included, I don’t know, is it actually beneficial to stay with my car insurance company for multiple years in a row? Um, what are your thoughts on that?

Jeff Arnold 13:07
You could be right, it depends. Everyone, every insurance company has consumer loyalty discounts, right. But also, unbeknownst to you, because most people don’t read this insurance contract. Because why? If something goes wrong, then just get an attorney today. Right. But what’s happened is, when that renewal contract came to you, it probably said these changes have been made. What does that mean? In our speak in insurance? geekspeak. It means we most likely have had you surrender some coverages or reduced some limits on you somehow, right? Because we keep paying claims. A quick example, like if you live in the Midwest, when in hell, right? I mean, that is gone from being just a small deductible on your home policy, to one to four 5% of your home’s value. So if you have a, you know, a million dollar house, now all of a sudden, you have a $50,000 deductible right on $500,000, you have $25,000 deductible. People don’t think about that till claims time. And so it does behoove you to not only just look at the premium dollars, understand what you’re buying, again, you’re buying a legal contract, you’re only going to get what you pay for. But the questions everyone asks, this is kind of interesting. And because you’re in the financial services business, we have you know, over 60% of our staff has secondary degrees or credentials in the insurance space, right legal contracts, they understand how to write this price it package it up. And the majority consumers who leverage that, you know, 40 plus folks, his knowledge base, the conversation all dives down into one piece, how much why so much. And I get that because we’re all driven by price and insurance is seen as this vanilla commoditized product. But the point of that, that statement was just understand what you’re buying if you get the right credential knowledge or person, instead of just focusing on price all the time focus on some coverage scenarios to be informed, right? Unfortunately, our industry is one where you learn on the backside by bad experiences instead of getting good counsel on the front end. And that’s, that’s on consumers. And that’s on us, too, because insurance executives and folks are trying to talk value and coverage. The consumer mindset is, am I trying to be sold something I just want to pay the least and get out? So you got to, you know, you got to bridge that gap?

george grombacher 15:29
Yeah, yeah, I think that that’s really well said. And we do have a tendency, as consumers, just to look at things in silos are vacuums. So I don’t I don’t think about my insurance portfolio. In total, I just think about car insurance, health insurance, and these are totally different. So why would I? Why would I take a more comprehensive view. But as you start to dig into that, and as you start to get these messages from your carrier, and say, oh, you know, these things have adjusted a little bit. And now I’m trying to manage all those things independently. I see value. And as I do a commercial for your company, I see value in being able to have a conversation with somebody, and just so I’m not having to comb through that stuff on my own. So thanks for doing that, Jeff. Awesome. I love it. Well, Jeff, the people are ready for that difference making tip? What do you have for them?

Jeff Arnold 16:20
I would say after some premeditated thought it is, what is your passion? And I know that’s easy when people get that. But it’s really easy to say, Oh, I got to provide for my family and working. But what one thing, if you focused on would make a difference for you and your family?

george grombacher 16:43
One thing that is great stuff that definitely gets Come on, be able to focus on that one thing. When you ask people that question, they have a hard time coming up with it.

Jeff Arnold 16:53
What one thing can you focus on at work? You know, we’re also busy with providing men women, too, right? But we’re, our mindset is on providing right and how to be a provider out of this net. And so we often are guilty of failing to stop and think if I can, what am I here for? What’s my true passion? What one thing could I do to make the world a better place or to make my life better? So it’s not easy to sit and contemplate difficult?

george grombacher 17:20
Thoughts? Yeah. Again, just getting in the habit of doing it. And once you start doing that start to be a little bit more reflective. And to dig a little bit deeper into why it is that I’m going through these motions that I’ve gone through every day and doing the hard things that I do every day. And to link that together. I think that that’s that makes a lot of sense. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? Where can they find right Sure.

Jeff Arnold 17:49
Awesome on this little thing called the interweb the worldwide web right shores ri ght s cure right show.com And then you know my books are available on Amazon I just a plug for my personal site because I give away a lot of free publications on there. It’s Jeff Arnold calm

george grombacher 18:08
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, sure, Jeff, your appreciation and share today’s show with free also appreciates good ideas go to Jeff Arnold comm check out all the great resources, find his books on there, and then find right shore as well and take advantage of all the tools and resources that just been talking about today. Give us the website again, Jeff.

Jeff Arnold 18:30
Right shore calm, perfect, but in the good

george grombacher 18:33
fight. We’re all in this together.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai