Bruce Fisher-Messier

Sales Executive
Butler & Messier, Inc.
Pawtucket, Rhode Island

Age: 27
Guilty pleasure TV show: Supergirl
Favorite beer: Guinness
Preferred social media: Twitter

Why insurance?

What got me into it was definitely my dad. He’s done it my entire life and his entire life—more than 65 years now. So I always wanted to do it. I went to the U.S. Naval Academy, so I was going to do the military for a while. But I ended up getting injured, and I left during my senior year. From there, I went to business school because insurance was always my end game. I got a degree in finance and economics, and about three days after graduation, I was in the office working.

Now, I like being able to go into so many different types of businesses, seeing how they run and how they operate, trying to figure out what the risk exposures are and starting from there.

Work/life balance?

I’ll be honest—since I’ve been in it for two years now, I’ve been all-out working. My personal life is really my insurance classes, because the classes I go to have younger people and we’ll all go out after class and whatnot. But it’s pretty insurance-driven at this point. Young professional networking groups, they have lots of events in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, so I try to go to those whenever I can.

Biggest role model?

My dad. I know it’s a cliché answer, but he’s worked so hard his entire life. He’s 85 and he still comes into the office every day at 9. He’ll never retire.

Motivator?

What gets me going is my dad basically built this agency up. He came in in the early ’50s and grew it to a pretty decent-sized company. I don’t want to ruin his baby.

Most annoying millennial stereotype?

That we’re lazy and we don’t want to work. In any generation, you’re going to find some people who don’t want to work. I don’t think you can stereotype an entire generation as lazy. You have people our age who have some of the largest companies in the world right now. Lyft, Uber, Facebook—they didn’t build all that being lazy.

Millennial stereotype that fits you?

We have all the resources we need on our cell phones, and we can find out anything. Thank you, Wikipedia. I think that might be one of the biggest differences—the older generation, they knew a lot. We might not know as much, especially not now because we don’t have the experience. But we have the ability to find out whatever we need to find out, as long as we’re willing to work toward it.

Industry’s biggest challenge?

Everyone’s been saying for the past 50 years that the independent agents are going to go out of business. I don’t see that happening in the near future at all. I think the hardest part right now is with the gap in the age of the average insurance agent, there really is no one taking over. Right now, you have all the agency principals who might be the head salesperson or they might have a couple salespeople under them all in their 40s and 50s, if not older. And they don’t want to waste any of their money investing in training the future, because it’s not going to benefit them directly. They could save their money and retire, live comfortably, or they could invest some of that money in training the future.

This article is the fifth in a series that profiles 10 millennials in independent insurance, based on IA’s July cover story. Keep an eye on IAmagazine.com and upcoming editions of the News & Views e-newsletter for more insights into how young people are working to secure the future of your industry.

Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.