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Episode Summary:
This episode highlights how in-house legal and HR leaders can collaborate to navigate compliance, mitigate risk, and support business growth. David Hall speaks with Andrew Suesserman about building tech-enabled insurance solutions, managing compliance in a startup environment, and the importance of partnering with trusted advisors. The conversation also touches on emerging trends in risk management and the enduring value of strong relationships in a tech-driven world.
Transcript:
David Hall
Hello and welcome to in-house counsel and HR perspectives. I’m your host, David Hall, chief administrative officer at Hall Benefits Law. This podcast is dedicated to highlighting how in-house counsel and corporate leadership teams successfully collaborate to drive compliance, innovation, and business success. Before we get started, I’d like to thank our sponsor, Hall Benefits Law, where we help businesses maximize the value of their employee benefit plans while minimizing legal risks. We’re proud to support these important conversations. Today I’m thrilled to welcome my friend Andrew Susserman, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Affinity Advisors. Andrew has an extensive background in compliance, risk management, and HR advisory services with leadership experience at major firms like Marsh-McClennan and Aon. His work focuses on helping organizations navigate complex compliance challenges, optimizing their HR strategies. We’ll discuss the evolving role of compliance and business leaders the intersection of legal and HR and managing risks, best practices for aligning corporate strategy with regulatory requirements and more. Andrew, thank you for joining us today.
Andrew Suesserman
Thanks David, appreciate you having me, great to be here.
David Hall
Well, I’ve really been looking forward to it. I think you’ve got a lot of great things to share with our audience. So let’s just jump right in with both feet. Andrew, tell us a little bit about yourself. Maybe share a little bit about your career journey, and then we can pick it up from there.
Andrew Suesserman
Awesome. Thanks David. Yeah, so I was born, no I’m just kidding. I was, have grown up in Atlanta pretty much my entire life. I’m an identical twin. My wife and I live in the Alpharetta area as you know. We have four little kids that are five, six, seven and eight and never intended to get into commercial insurance and employee benefits. I don’t think most people do, but it’s been a wonderful career and spent the nine years at AON and the three years at Marsh before jumping into the company I’m with now.
David Hall
When you said you had children, five, six, seven, and eight, and then you immediately said, I never meant to or never thought I was gonna do it. Thought you were talking about your kids. And then you talked about, you shifted back into your career.
Andrew Suesserman
I only feel like that one day out of the week.
David Hall
You mentioned your career at Marsh, your time at Aon. Tell me a little bit about how that shaped your approach to risk management and your connection with HR, and then we can segue into a little bit more about your current role at Affinity Advisors.
Andrew Suesserman
Yeah, that’s perfect. So AON and Marsh, I would say, are both pretty different in the way that they approach…risk and HR or risk and health coming together, the way that they go to market is pretty different. So we could speak to either of that, but obviously both are great firms, number one and two within the world in terms of size and revenue and the impact that they make. But I think overall the way that it impacted my approach to risk from more of like an individual contributor standpoint because I was, lot of my role was sales and production, client development, bringing new clients to the firm. And those clients would have been a lot of the listeners today. So, you know, these large insurers or policy holders or applicants or…you know, whatever, whatever, however you want to refer to it. But I think oftentimes because my job was to go bring those clients in that I had to think about risk and compliance, but there were such large teams within Aon in March that all they did was focus on those things that it’s very different to the way I think about risks today with an emerging insurance, or within emerging technology business in a much smaller company where I really am responsible for it. Whereas before, I know I had to do the right things and I had to listen to the webinars and the videos on compliance and anti-trade laws and insurance regulation and all that stuff, but it didn’t feel as personal as it does now.
David Hall
Well, now it’s a bit ironic because now you’re in the C-suite, right? And I feel like a lot of people would think, oh, well, that’s probably a place of disconnection. It shouldn’t be, obviously. But perhaps as an employee at Marsh or Aon, you were more kind of boots on the ground. But it sounds like your perspective on compliance has evolved and that transition from the larger firms to more of a startup environment. I know you guys have been around for a little while now and are having great success, but your perspective on compliance became became what? How did it change as you made that transition?
Andrew Suesserman
Yeah, I mean, now the importance of compliance is what protects literally my family and my kids and everything getting sued, right? And the thought of getting a letter from the Department of Insurance or some sort of regulatory body because we didn’t do something we were supposed to do is very real. Whereas, yeah, mean, Aon was, what, 80,000 employees and I think Marsh was just the same or at that or more, so many different…entities within the organization that, yeah, we had a different legal counsel for every different thing. So, you know, broken out, like you had your person around employment practices and the person that dealt typically with non-competes and it was, yeah, a lot of different support across the firm. Whereas now, yeah, I mean, it’s way more personal and need to make sure that gray area doesn’t stay the gray area, that you have really good partners and outside counsel and just good guidance on the decisions that we’re making and why.
David Hall
What were you doing day to day at Marsh and at Aon? Andrew, can you just share with our listeners so that they get a better sense of what your role was at those two so that we can really draw a contrast and talk about how you got to where you are now?
Andrew Suesserman
Yeah, definitely. So at Aon my first few years, I was a casualty broker on the commercial risk and insurance side. So those types of coverage lines would be workers comp, auto, general liability, umbrella and excess, like working with very large complex employees, several Fortune 500 companies, even ones that are well known here in Atlanta. Did that for a couple of years got some technical expertise under my belt and then actually moved into a small commercial group where I was working with the complete opposite. A lot of small commercial and like lower end middle market businesses and helping them with everything from those casualty lines to their property insurance and began to have a heavy focus on cyber, directors and officers, employment practices, crime, fiduciary liability. I think that’s probably when you and I got connected was when I was dealing with like excessive fee litigation type issues around fiduciary plans and ERISA bonds and things of that nature. But really that was all those commercial insurance areas and then after that I went on to produce business there. They would have called me a producer. That’s where I mentioned being like an individual contributor where my job was to go and develop relationships and bring new companies into the firm that we could then support and put resources around and I produced business there for about six years and I would say it was 50-50 split between like commercial risk and insurance and employee benefits probably also another area where we got to know each other I know it’s been a while now so obviously employee benefits being health, wellness, medical, dental, vision, life, lot around retirement, 401k advisory, 403b, depending upon the situation, executive benefits, so a lot around deferred comp or individual disability insurance. And at Aon, typically risk and health was both delivered under Aon. It was just Aon. mean, previously it was Hewitt, so I’m sure a lot of this from the call, remember the Hewitt days. Or even like Radford was like the talent and data business that would do a lot for large employers like your audience. But my job really, yeah, to develop that relationship and then bring the right resources in. So typically didn’t have one person that was working on both risk and health. It would usually be a commercial risk and insurance team and then employee benefit team. It could be completely separate from the retirement side of things, depending upon what the client needed and what we were working on. Didn’t usually do much around legal. So that was where a lot of times where you and Ann Tyler and the team would come in because Marsh and Aon being consultants in that risk and health space did not and still don’t take the stance of providing ERISA guidance or legal advice because they’re not attorneys.
David Hall
Exactly. Well, and I think this is a nice conversation we’re having because there are people on the call, as you said, listening to podcasts who are HR professionals, ERISA attorneys, maybe some brokers, definitely some planned sponsors, right? And we talk about the ecosystem around benefits and HR and all the things that go into running a business and having people that work for a business. And it’s, I think, nice for people to hear that you don’t always have to stay on the same trajectory. You can do something, and as you did, Andrew, be very successful in those roles and then find yourself now, know, a father of four, a co-founder and in the C-suite. So help me better understand and our audience understand because I know how you got here, but what led you to co-founding Affinity Advisors? It seems like maybe a risky move for a young buck like yourself who’s being very successful in a previous life.
Andrew Suesserman
Thank you. I appreciate that. The first thing I think about is the support of my wife, truly. Would not…be able to do it or have done it if she wasn’t okay or on board with it. So that’s definitely a huge part of it. But I think a little bit of my Marsh story. So I know I share kind of like with Aon, I’ll share a little bit about Marsh and then I’ll answer that question. My job at Marsh was very similar to the one at Aon to bring in new clients and produce that business across the firm. The way that Marsh went to market was very different, like big Marsh McClennan, and then you had a bunch of different units that were called different names. So from a human capital and benefits standpoint, had Mercer, you also had several Marsh-McClennan agencies. I was sitting at corporate Marsh, so I’d work with both of them. I would also work with Oliver Wyman, which is our consulting arm, and Guy Carpenter, which is our reinsurance arm. And a lot of the work that I was doing was commercial insurance, so professional liability, like specifically errors and omissions, directors and officers, cyber, for insurance companies, not to overcomplicate it.But lot of insurance companies and insurance brokers were my clients, were always helping them with their corporate risk. And several of them, kind of all at the same time, at about the end of 2022, were looking for a way or an easier solution to transact insurance. Oftentimes those insurance carriers, those insurance brokers worked with a lot of small to middle market businesses in different capacity. It could have been that they were offering them medical insurance, they wanted to cross sell voluntary lines, or that they were offering them workers’ comp and auto, and they wanted to cross sell cyber insurance. So they started asking me about insurance marketplaces and comparative raiders is what kind of the terminology that we would use and if we could do something like that within the Mars technology business or some of the different things that we were doing and my job being able to try to help them solve solutions and figure out what they were looking for and you know kind of bring it to fruition I guess you could say I looked at the market at large I looked outside Mars I looked inside and realized that there was an opportunity based on what they were asking to be able to develop the solution. And my CEO and business partner, Alan, who’s a great friend and has been for many years, was leaving his Fortune 500 company that they had taken public and he was in the M &A consulting, roll up space and…we decided to start the business and as we picked up more traction and got more clients and he has four kids too, so he understood I I couldn’t be too risky with it, but as we got to where we felt like there was a sustainable business, I left Marsh full time, the end of 2023, and jumped in with both feet. And like I was saying, definitely with the support of my wife, Erica, and yeah, it’s been a ride over the last two plus years.
David Hall
That’s an incredible story and we know what it’s like to have supportive spouses around here at HBL. It’s been a hallmark of our firm as well over the years. So it’s great to see somebody with a family mentality having success in the industry. Tell me, Andrew, what are some of the core services that Affinity Advisors is offering? Somebody says, what do you do? And I know you talked a little bit about the need that you saw, but now that you’ve established the business, if somebody went on your website, what would they see? What are you guys putting out there to the world?
Andrew Suesserman
Yeah. So we are working squarely within commercial insurance. We will look to branch out into some other areas being like the employee benefit or health insurance market, which I’ll talk a little bit about. But at its core today and what we have been doing over the last few years and what we’re staying laser focused on is we are a digital marketplace or a digital intermediary, truly a technology company. We don’t act as the broker and we really just partner insurance carriers with insurance brokers through different APIs and different technology terms, which I’m the insurance one over here, so not the technical one, but to break it down very simply, it’s yes, a digital platform connecting carriers and our clients and those clients, like I was saying, are insurance brokers. So it could be clients like an Aon and a Marsh or a Hub or a USI or even some wholesale brokers that we do a lot of work with really just an easier way for them to go on behalf of their clients. For those brokers, their clients would obviously be the insurer or the end company themselves, whether that’s a small middle market client or whether that’s a really large business. Depending upon the complexity of that end business, they may or may not be able to help them acquire insurance through our portal, but it’s something where they could at least start the process through us. Because the way that it works today and the lines of coverage that we are focused on cyber, technology errors and omissions, core professional liabilities like normal errors and omissions coverage, directors and officers, employment practices, crime and fiduciary. So those would all be lumped under management and professional liability or executive liability. And the way that end clients get that today is they go to their broker. Their broker makes them fill out a bunch of paper. So for any HR individuals that are listening, mean, especially if it’s dealing with like fiduciary or employment practices, they’re going to ask things like, do you have an HR handbook? Have you had any claims? you have any rifts? Do you have wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination? I mean, and that’s just for one coverage line being employment practices. And it’s probably going to be like a 10 page paper application that paper application is going to be sent back to the broker. That broker is then going to go to an intermediary like another broker or if they’re sophisticated enough they’ll go directly to the insurance markets and they may go they’ll go to the incumbent market right who they renewed the program with last year it’s not new coverage and then they’ll go to a couple other markets to make sure that it’s competitive and that they’re doing their diligence for that end client and that could be 5, 10, 15 different insurance carriers they’re talking with. And then those insurance carriers are going to come back a week or two later and they’re going to ask questions and that broker is going to compile the information and then go back to the CFO or the general counsel or the head of HR, depending upon who the key stakeholders are from the client standpoint. And then maybe a few weeks later, you’re going to have full quotes and that broker is going to do a coverage comparison and present it to the executive team. And then they’re going to say, they’re going to ask questions and then they’re going to formally bind coverage is what it would be referred to in our, in our terminology. Very similar to the healthcare side of things where you would have to provide that the head of HR would provide or the CHR would provide a census and their summary plan descriptions and their renewal package whatever it is and they would go to Aetna and Cigna so very similar process as is on the commercial insurance side but just different markets and different acronyms different terminology that whole process I just outlined we take and we digitize the entire thing, there’s no paper applications and a broker can…partner with their client, like for Cyber for example, they need about seven data points, seven questions. They can come into our platform and they can get multiple quotes that can be, that are bindable right then and there within about 15 seconds. And they can get back to their client way faster. And because it’s a marketplace, it’s a lot more competitive. The benefit to the broker is it’s faster. They don’t lose commission to do it because we support the way that we structure our pricing models is a benefit to them. And the benefit to the end insured is that they don’t have to go back and forth filling out paper applications. They can actually go focus on what they love to do and the core competency of their business, right? So hopefully that was hopefully I answered that well for you.
David Hall
No, that was excellent. And I mean, even thinking that I knew what you guys do, that really helped fill some gaps for me. Thank you. Okay, so maybe you can tie this to affinity. Maybe you want to tie this question back to your time at Marsh or at AON or both, or maybe you want to go completely off the reservation because you’re a guy who knows a lot of people, a lot of people know, like, and trust you. And as such, I’m going to ask you a question that I think will just maybe consider as general advice for our listeners, what strategies do you, recommend for businesses to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to regulatory changes or challenges with compliance? And take that at whatever level you want.
Andrew Suesserman
Yeah, my father has, he’s 54 or 55 years now into his own business. And I think I mentioned earlier, I’m an identical twin. So if you see me around Atlanta and come say hello and that person doesn’t respond to you, it may not be me, just a heads up. But he just drilled into my brother and I that the same ladder of success you go up is the same one you come down. It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. Those are like the terms that he would just, he drilled into those. I think about those. I think about those things every day. And I think what is important when you’re trying to figure out the right partner, the right technologies, or how do you stay ahead of the curve on compliance, surround yourself with people you trust. Surround yourself with people you know have your back that are smarter than you and that really care about you. I think would be my biggest advice on that. I mean, that’s why we’re doing this, right? That’s why you and I have a relationship. I’ve gotten introduced to a lot of different law firms and service providers and vendors and other technology companies, like whether in the HCM or Ben Adman space over the years. And I think it’s really, it is crucial to have a partner that you know is going to be there for the long haul, that’s sustainable and that has your back and cares about the impact that cares about the impact that they’re making for you and that like I know and not to dumb it down but like working with good people or kind people or people that like share some morals to you it can’t be understated. So find those people. Find those people, find those firms, find HBL and stick with them.
David Hall
Well, and I think you said, you know, dumbing it down, I almost feel like those things that people feel are dumbing down the conversation need to be elevated sometimes, right? We forget about what’s really important. We forget our mission or we forget our core values in a moment of seeking profit or what have you. And going back to those core values of kindness or faith or family or whatever it might be, when we elevate those, I agree with you, I think businesses thrive when you’re surrounding yourself with people that subscribe to a similar mentality. So you’re now in a leadership role at your own business and so I’m going to kind of steer us towards the end of our conversation here, but as a leader, know, what are some emerging trends that you see, Andrew, both at Affinity and with the types of work that you guys do at Affinity but also just in general with risk management and know insurance HR there’s there’s things like AI out there there’s automation I you guys are automating a very burdensome process what’s the next step beyond maybe for folks in your industry what should we be looking for is the next big thing.
Andrew Suesserman
Our industry is unique in that there’s always going to be that relational component. Like I think a lot of one of the reasons that we’re having success is that we come from the business and we love the industry and we care about our clients. There’s a lot of technologies that have popped up. mean, like even in the legal field, I’m sure where they’re just technologists and they saw an old industry or an opportunity to try to revolutionize something and the kind of the individuals or the brokers or in your case, the attorneys that are in that industry, like they want to work with people they trust. want to work with people that they know understand the business. And I think those are the technology companies where it’s more like it’s tech enabled. It’s supporting an industry not to change too fast, but just to get a little bit better and more efficient over time. Those are the trends that I see. I think the ones that pop up with venture capital funding and come up out of nowhere and have what seems to be a great solution is going to be here today and gone tomorrow. I mean you mentioned faith, right? Just like the Bible talks about, flower grows but also withers the next day. We’ll return to dust. We have to focus on the things that matter. And what matters is making sure that our clients or the people, whether it’s HR or legal, they feel like they have a place they can come where there’s that trust. And that’s what we’re trying to create. And those are the trends that I see lasting in our business. Whether you’re with a large organization and your internal HR or internal legal or if you’re outside counsel or whatever some of the different listeners are here, I think it’s important just to remember that the same way you will build a relationship or the same way you’ll get a new client is the same way you’ll lose it. if something like if you build a relationship or win a new piece of business fast, you’ll lose it fast. But if you take your time and you focus on what really matters and you get to know those people, and you have a sustainable relationship, then it’s not gonna be gone like that tomorrow. I think part of that is my upbringing, but that’s just what I believe and I think AI and all these different tools are great in theory and I think I know for a fact, they already are today, we’re using it in certain capacities, that it’s going to make a positive impact. But it has to be in the right time.
David Hall
Well, Andrew, you’ve left me with a lot of things to think about and it’s been a fantastic discussion. Thank you for sharing your insights on compliance, risk management, the evolving role of HR, what you do at Affinity Advisors and the work that you guys are doing and will continue to do in insurance industry, I think is fantastic. Your experience across major firms provides invaluable perspectives for our listeners and just your personal perspective. I’d also like again to thank our sponsor, Hall Benefits Law, for making the podcast possible. For those tuning in, be sure to join us next time when we’ll be exploring another important topic with a leading industry expert. And to all the in-house counsel and corporate leaders out there, remember, compliance isn’t just a legal requirement, it’s a strategic advantage. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time on In-House Counsel and HR Perspectives.
Hall Benefits Law, LLC
