Carrie Shaw

Business Insurance Services Manager
OneGroup
Syracuse, New York

Age: 31
Guilty pleasure TV show: Walking Dead
Uber or Lyft? Uber
In your earbuds? “I have a young stepdaughter, so it’s a lot of Frozen and Disney Channel.”

Why insurance?

I went to college for sport management and worked in college athletics for several years in my 20s. I transitioned into wealth management and worked for a hedge fund in Manhattan for a while, and then went to a wealth management firm on Long Island. I started working with professional athletes and really high-end clients, and I just loved it. I was studying for my CFP when I left that job and moved back upstate—I’m from Syracuse originally. Because of my financial planning background, I thought insurance was the next logical step to really round out my skills as part of the certified financial planning track.

I got licensed in October 2015 and I started here last February, and it’s been nonstop the best year of my life. OneGroup brought me in to run their small business department—they had just separated out their small business and decided they were going to do it differently. A lot of agencies are doing that, but I think we really mean it. These can be smaller-revenue accounts but very needy, so the question was, how do you remain efficient and profitable with those lines of business?

We’ve really done well over the last year. We have a growing team, and we’ve made a lot of changes to the traditional way things have been done at this agency. That’s made a lot of impact. Last year, we really nailed our revenue goal, which we thought was far-fetched, and we’re on track to do it again this year. We’re increasing the expertise of our team members every day, seeking training from all over the place. I’ve been able to leverage carrier relationships to get the kind of ancillary training and knowledge we need to grow and be experts in our field.

What’s to love?

Nobody intends to end up insurance, but I think people are generally happy when they did. Every day is different, which is really exciting. I have a chance to make an impact on a level I never thought possible. Insurance is an aging industry, and I could really be an impact player in 10 years. This agency has given me a chance to really take ownership and be a leader—not just manage things, but really lead through change.

Biggest role model?

Our senior management team as a whole. They bring inspiration and leadership from a lot of different areas, which I think is important. We do a lot around motivation and making our employees happy—a lot of those little things that I think have been lost, in addition to trying to utilize technology to its full efficiency.

Thoughts on Gen Z?

They have very different needs. As employees, they want to be constantly challenged. They haven’t had that first job that gave them a little bit of an idea of how organizations are run and how business goes. I think older generations may have had the mindset that you do your job for 50 years and then you retire, but business isn’t like that anymore. Business is changing so quickly that it can’t be. Young people want to be a part of the change, and they should be. They’re really looking for opportunity. They don’t want to stay stagnant.

Industry’s greatest challenge?

Technology and efficiency. How do you measure how much work someone can handle? That’s difficult to do, but you really have to be focused on that to remain profitable. As technology makes things easier, we then have to figure out, do we need as many people? Are our people being efficient? Everyone’s using agency management systems and software programs, but how can they make you more efficient and productive so you have time to service and be an adviser, rather than being an order-taker?

I’m all about using data to make decisions, so we’ve started really leveraging big data from our carriers. If the numbers are there and we spend all this time putting information into our agency management system, we should be able to get it out in a meaningful way that can impact our work lives. I’m trying to use that to devise a workload, structure and strategy to gauge productivity and make sure we’re on par with where we need to be to grow. A lot of carriers use big data to help limit the data-gathering process when quoting new business, so as that technology continues to improve, our jobs will get easier. Using the data that’s out there is really important. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Future goals?

I want to be a player in the industry. It’s very important to me to be involved in the community, in industry groups, local committees—young people aren’t really doing that in our area. A lot of people in those insurance networking groups are aging out toward retirement. We have to backfill those groups with young people. That’s a major focus for me in 2018.

Advice for a fellow young agent?

Consider everything that comes your way an opportunity to better yourself, perhaps to make more money, to get a different job, to impress people who have power. Grow yourself professionally. If there’s any way you can be mentored by someone more experienced, take advantage of their resources.

This interview is the eighth in a series that profiles 10 millennials in the independent insurance industry, based on IA’s July cover story.

Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.