A bondsman must become a keen judge of character, which is one of the “Three Cs” of bonding. Far more important, the nature of the contract between an insurer and the agent is far more important. Most operating agreements between carriers and bondsmen are “liable” agency contracts. The agent is fully liable for the bonds that he or she executes. Any bondsman that has written a quarter million dollar check to satisfy a bond forfeiture feels the pain of the surety. Having “skin in the game” makes a good underwriter. He can stand in the shoes of the surety, know the feeling of loss, and broadly understands how to both mitigate risk at the front end and how to adjust it at the end. A bondsman learns quickly not to write what he or she can’t pay. It’s close as one can be to being surety as one can get.

What guiding principle has consistently helped you achieve success?

Without being trite, fanatical focus on the happiness of the customer is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room. How one achieves that full client satisfaction is the “secret recipe”. An individual that wants to be successful in the surety business, or really any customer-facing enterprise must focus on the voice of the customer. I am not suggesting that streamlining the process is irrelevant. Efficient handling of incoming requests, clearly understanding the customer’s need, competently offering the appropriate insurance product and execution are imperative however the surety business is unique. Much like insurance generally, a surety bond is not a product that a client wants to purchase. Acquiring one is often obligatory. The question becomes, “How do we provide a product to a client when he or she really doesn’t want to buy it AND leave him or her smiling?” There are good ways to accomplish this. The Surety One, Inc. Team is very good at the empathy part of client servicing as well as the expeditious delivery of the surety product. Those two items are ninety percent of the client-satisfaction model. The remaining portion depends on the firm’s ability to offer solvent, highly rated insurers and the manuscripting of bond forms that are not declined by the obligees (beneficiaries) of issued bonds. A guiding principle? Fanatics focus on the client, . . . hearing the voice of the customer.

What are some of the most significant milestones in your journey so far?

There have been many milestones. The access to formal learning resources is imperative. Discovering the availability of and accessing industry-specific learning for the first time was a milestone. I need to offer here my endorsement of and a big thank you to ‘The Institutes’. It is in its essence a university for insurance professionals. I hold CPCU, ASLI, ARe, AFSB and several other associate’s degrees/certifications and designations awarded by the institution. That bunch of professionals has done a superlative job of providing knowledge specific to what we and other insurance operators do on a daily basis. A ‘milestone’ for me was the discovery of the breadth and depth of the knowledge that The Institutes offers and availing myself of the opportunity to acquire that insurance knowledge. Other milestones are a bit more difficult to define. There is rarely a day that I do not learn something new about insurance, and more specifically the surety class. Those lessons are tradecraft acquisitions rather than book-learning and are equally valuable to a surety professional. They just make more sense in the context of what one learns from study. Forming a surety company, Janus Assurance Re marks another significant milestone in my thirty-year trajectory through the insurance world. There are many surety brokers and agents that probably dream about owning a carrier. Its meaning is significant. One is no longer tied to class restrictions other than those that are self-imposed. The appetite and risk tolerance is internal rather than dependent on a particular surety’s tastes, and it means that an insurer can’t arbitrarily pull the carpet out from underneath its producers and sub producers. Of course, new challenges accompany carrier ownership. The back-office, statutory compliance requirements, accounting and other tasks become much more complex. Nonetheless, it is a milestone.

Which three-character traits have played the biggest role in your success?

Character traits are important. I have mentioned empathy, however, just as important I think is the willingness to work, . . . I mean work HARD. Someone asked entrepreneur Mark Cuban what his regrets looking back over his career. I think that his response was instructive and prescient. He said, “You’ve got to grind to be successful and my regrets have come from [times when] I didn’t grind hard enough or maybe there was somebody out there outworking me. That’s just not acceptable.” He is correct. It’s the one thing that you have full control over. If you are not willing to work hard every day, and at times sacrifice personal moments in pursuit of your goals, then you won’t get to superstar level in the insurance business. It’s never easy but I will state that it is easier to apply yourself when you remember that other people, in some cases hundreds of others, depend on you to deliver. Employees, their families, insurance carriers that a broker represents, clients and their families, and the value of insurance to the community are all constituencies. They all rely on promises, the implied promises of the entire corporate group and the promise of the insurance industry.

What are your standout offerings that have made a strong impact in your industry?

I don’t think that Surety One, Inc. or Janus offer a product that would stand out as singularly impactful in the insurance industry. I think that our impact is more a result of our ethos, our way of looking at surety, and more broadly why clients need surety bonds. Within our operation we are willing to go where other sureties will not and do what other sureties will not. There is always a set of terms that we can offer. We never say, “no”. We find a way. Often a client is happy with our terms. Sometimes a client is not, but we always offer terms.

Our social responsibility program is also impactful. Charitable work is not an outlier in our industry. Most insurers are involved in philanthropic work, however Surety One, Inc.’s and Janus Assurance Re’s work with kid’s charities and support foundations that support terminal illness in children. I believe our contributions are prodigious for the size of our overall operation. Solidarity with those members of our community that are less fortunate than us and contributing to the relief of those in need is a very big part of what we do. I hope that the examples that we set with regards to social responsibility are visible to our industry and that it encourages emulation.

Could you tell us about the key projects you’re currently working on?

I believe that I am safe to state that our key project mirrors the key project of most insurers that are involved in the surety class presently. Artificial intelligence is the shadow that looms over everything right now. The industry likes the term “enhanced underwriting” as a sort of cover-all description of how A.I. will contribute to operations however there is a lot to unpack with that term. Janus Assurance Re and its affiliate companies have integrated A.I. into a significant portion of all steps of the underwriting process except for customer interface. The difficulty with A.I. is ensuring that the model acquires robust and accurate training data so that the output is reliable. The adage, “Shit in, shit out.”, is instructive. For instance, if in the process of underwriting a surety bond we upload a contract and prompt a review for onerous terms and other deal-breakers, then the platform compares our upload to unacceptable learning samples, then we’ve wasted our time. The output is worthless. So, at present our key project with regards to A.I. integration is the build-out of a strong library of reference. It will never be a panacea. Given the error rate and hallucinatory weaknesses of A.I. at present, a line underwriter is still reviewing refined A.I. output.

Where do you envision your company in the next five years?

I hope that the future is bright for the entire operating group. Unless an alternative to surety is found, the opportunities to exploit what I perceive as a growing demand will continue. Surety One, Inc. is sharply focused on surety but will continue to offer products adjacent to our clients’ professional needs. Janus Assurance Re will continue its targeting of international surety opportunities, however it also engages in finite reinsurance agreements and is preparing to introduce a coverage suite for drone (UAV) operators. After the 2008 financial meltdown in the United States, the surety sector rebounded well. There may be big boosts from the CHIPs Act and IIJA work, we are watching closely. The global surety market is projected to grow to $27 billion by 2030, so I think that if we don’t deviate from acceptable underwriting discipline that profitability will grow right along with the economy and the expansion of surety demand.

What challenges have you had to overcome to get to this point?

The greatest challenge for an emergent broker is client acquisition. It’s no longer a “build it and they will come.” The greatest challenge for managing general agents or a new carrier is capacity. Both challenges are met by writing more premiums. More revenue for a brokerage provides a greater budget for marketing. More revenue for a carrier result in growth of surplus so long as it is controlling loss and reserving appropriately. Growth is impeded by intense competitive pressures. There is a lot of capacity out there and the incumbents are hungry. Insurers are offering unprecedented commissions, low premiums rates for bonds, creating special “bargain basement” pricing for programs, and providing brokers “click and issue” platforms which are popular. The competition is unprecedented. We’re moving to a surety market in which there are fewer personal relationships between the consumer, the insurers and their appointed representatives. New entrants and smaller insurers will face severe challenges in building their books of business in the face of the well-established and seasoned surety companies.

What advice would you give to those striving to reach top positions in the industry?

I am not sure how to define “top of the industry”, as the moniker could mean many things. If a young aspiring insurance professional seeks a managerial or executive position with an established insurer, there is a clear path to getting there. If one is a budding entrepreneur, then the path is different. In both cases, I believe the sector-specific knowledge and the ability to move comfortably about an information environment are imperative. With the adoption of artificial intelligence in all facets of the insurance industry, many of the positions along the chain are going to go the way of the dodo bird. AI is already streamlining underwriting, claims processing, fraud detection, and the bot mechanism will replace human customer service. Lack of fluency with what AI can do, failing to see its importance to strategic decision-making, product innovation, risk modeling and regulatory compliance will effectively close opportunities for job candidates. The surety sector is a bit different in the sense that personal relationships, especially with regards to contract surety bonding may be imperishable, however I wouldn’t bet on it. A.I. may become a better judge of character, capacity and capital than the most experienced underwriter out there. What will NOT change is the customer’s expectation of superlative attention to his or her needs. Not everyone will be ok with a sending ten or hundreds of thousands of dollars to an account provided by a chat bot. The human facet is the wildcard.