FROM THE PRESIDENT
A PAUSE FOR PERSPECTIVE written by Kevin J . O ’ Brien , KAIA President , The Reilly Co .
As we look ahead to the end of the year and begin to think about our plans for the upcoming new year , it ’ s important to take a pause . To assess the year nearly over , not in terms of the marketplace disruption or premium increases that are out of our control . But instead to assess our own actions that we do have control over .
At the beginning of my term last February , I spoke about the increasing pace of change and with it , the evolving threats and challenges we face . We ’ ve been on this path of change since 2020 , when we saw the beginning signals of things like climate change taking hold and more serious hacking concerns leading to ransomware attacks . Additionally , it was at that time that the COVID epidemic began a domino effect of global supply chain problems leading to significant inflation . These disconcerting events affected our industry and more importantly our customers .
“ We ’ ve seen , in fact we ’ ve lived through ,
the unprecedented disorder and confusion in the marketplace and it ’ s impact on our customers .”
We ’ ve seen , in fact we ’ ve lived through , the unprecedented disorder and confusion in the marketplace and it ’ s impact on our customers . So when we take this pause , it ’ s important that we do so with the goal of determining what we accomplished as well as what we still need to work on achieving . Did we meet the challenges before us , with the means we had in our control , and what is our best way forward ?
There are three key questions that we can ask ourselves to measure how well we met these challenges :
1 ) For our customers : Did we help them understand the reasons for the market disruption ? Did we help them reduce exposure to risk , present appropriate insurance solutions , and help them recover from the unexpected , when it came ?
34 KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER