P&C Insurance: The Missing Link in Wealthy Family Financial Plans

But first of all, welcome to everybody. Thank you for joining today. We're very excited to roll out this new partnership that we've established with Charlie's firm. And as many of you know, we don't establish that many partnerships like this that often. And I think the reason why I highlight that is when we bring something to clients, we really want to make sure that it's going to be useful and valuable to them. And just kind of going back to the origin story of how this came about.

Kate, I was just thinking the other day, it was actually almost a year to the day. I was visiting my parents with my wife and I was on a walk and I sat in on like an hourong webinar that Kate hosted. She was invited by Schwab to talk about this property and casualty insurance and I think more importantly what they were getting at was really risk management as it pertained to you know wealthy families. And what really stood out to me as part of that experience, was just some of the storytelling that Kate was doing as part of that presentation and some of the things that Kate had highlighted, and being in Florida at the time.

And we have some clients that have homes in Florida was just, you know, natural disasters that have been occurring in California and Florida. You know, it seems more so than the historic norm over the last couple of years. And a lot of people just asking themselves, you know, how do I deal with insurance? It's getting extremely expensive to have policies. Obviously, states like those are being affected. People's homes are being affected. You know, they're having homes that they've had for family vacations being ruined. And they're just wondering, how do I approach this?

Because it seems like the insurance I've had maybe wasn't enough to protect what I needed. At the same time, it's becoming extremely expensive to keep these policies in place. Another thing that Kate highlighted was just, you know, we've seen this tremendous growth in wealth over the last 15 years as the market has done very well. And there's a lot of people and a lot of our clients fit this bill, that have more wealth now than they thought that they would ever have. And what goes along with that, when she was talking about insurance was this idea of umbrella insurance.

This idea of, hey, maybe I've got homeowners and car insurance, but if something happens on my property, we live in an extremely latigious society today. And one thing Kate was highlighting was how underinsured people are as it relates to their umbrella insurance. And a lot of it just has to do with people whose wealth has grown significantly, who maybe had umbrella insurance in place, who are just now saying, you know what, I don't think I need any more coverage. This coverage has always been really good for me and my family.

And yet, their wealth maybe has doubled or tripled over the last 10 or 15 years. So, a lot of that really hit home with me. And I had thought about, you know, we're getting some of these questions from our clients, people that live in Florida asking us. I remember one gentleman candidly saying, "I'm wondering whether I should have insurance at all." I was I was calculating how much it would cost me to rebuild part of my property versus how much it was costing me for my insurance.

And people just asking us about, you know what, I'm just not thrilled with the broker that I have. You know, maybe it's one of with one of these bigger firms and they're not sure, should I be bundling my policies with one company? How often should they be reaching out to me? So, we're hearing about this from clients. And so what that led me to do was really just to reach out and contact Kate and just say, "Hey, you know, this is something that seems to be very important to our clients." and it's something our firm hasn't really covered in depth in the past for people.

And so one thing I talked to Kate about is, you know, is this difficult for McCabe to do in-house or is this something we should be outsourcing to someone like Kate? And in talking with her, it became very apparent that this is can be a very complex animal to tackle. And so doing this in house for McCabe would be something that would be a big undertaking and really it's part of why there's people like Kate and Charlie who have really made a career on specializing in this area.

And so in talking with Kate, it became very apparent to me that this is something that McCabe wants to outsource and tackle for our clients at the same time. And one thing I will highlight, you know, I've talked to Kate and she really specializes in working, I believe the term you used, Kate, is the diamond sandbox of, I mean, really wealthy families who have 50 or hundred million dollars. And we talked about, you know what, we may have some clients like that, but the bulk of our clients maybe don't fit that bill.

And what Kate had highlighted to me was, well, I also work as a consultant for firms like McCabe where I can go out and fit you with the best firm that really works day in and day out with the clients that McCabe serves. And really what McCabe is, we invested in that. And you know what we've decided is, and I highlight this not to pat ourselves on the back, but just to highlight the importance of it. McCabe invested a good amount of money with Kate to go out and go through this process over the last year to find what we think is going to be a really great fit for our clients knowing that people that put policies in place or you know tweak the policies they have McCabe's not going to be compensated for that.

And so again I highlight that just to say you know what if McCabe is investing in this and yet they know it's not going to be something that's going to be you know money maker for their firm it must be really important. And so, you know, with that, all that being said, you know, Kate, I thought I might turn it over to you for a couple of minutes just to kind of talk through the process we went through last year, cuz I think people will find it insightful of, you know, what was the leg work that went into George deciding that they wanted to cover this for their firm and ultimately starting this partnership with Charlie's firm.

So, you know, if you can give you some give our clients some comments on kind of the different steps we went through, I think that will be helpful in kind of highlighting what went on behind the scenes.

Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, the first thing was figuring out how did McCabe and the organization want to think about managing full-on balance sheet risk for the clients, right? So, it was that do we do it in-house? Do we outsource it? And it became pretty clear early on that the best path was outsourcing. So with that we said okay how do we go about finding the best partner? Well to find the best partner I needed to understand who the McCabe clients were. So what does the what does a McCabe client look like?

Where are you know where are the families located? I am a I like to say I'm a kid from the southside. I grew up in Palos Heights. So as I started talking to Tim and George and the other adviserss, it was as if I was talking to people I have known my entire life. And as everyone in the firm described their clients, the background of the client, each and every one of your clients, I could relate to somebody I knew or somebody I grew up with.

And I was thinking about what did they need? What were their needs and expectations today? And what did I see kind of in the future for that family or those families and what were their needs going to be kind of going forward 5 years from now 10 years from now 20 years from now because risk management isn't something static that you do and you put in the drawer it continually evolves so once I understood kind of what the needs were and the needs vary you know the clients aren't all the same they're not all homogeneous they don't all have houses in one area.

So we had to really identify who were the brokers that could work in this space. And when we say insurance broker, we're talking about a firm that could work with a family with a million dollar and work with a family with $50 million. Well, not every firm can do that and do it well and do it at the same level of service and the same level of high touch and provide the client across the entire spectrum with picking up the phone and answering the question. And so, in a prior life, I had worked on the company side, meaning I had worked for Chubb Insurance.

And at Chubb there were 3,500 agencies appointed to sell Chubb product directly. There aren't 3,500 agencies that can work across the spectrum of client and do it well with the right level of service. So I narrowed down that field of who are the right brokers. We ended up sending out an RFP, a request for proposal to seven agencies that I felt had the right balance of service that could work at that with that million-doll family in growing and the $50 million family and growing. And we sent it out.

We received the responses back and immediately the group kind of separated itself into two buckets. So we had, you know, four on the bottom, three on the top, and then out of those three on the top, there were still really two on the top that that mattered. In between the two on the top, I had a feeling where we were going to land. Now I will tell you, I'm a professional insurance broker matchmaker to the clients. I have done this a very long time and I get a feeling for what clients need with the right broker.

So, we ended up interviewing the top two. George and Tim were on the call with both brokers and the calls were exhaustive and we didn't just have the one person from the firm. We had one person from the firm and the service team members because we wanted to know who was going to pick up the phone when a McCabe client called. And we did both those calls and after each call we did a debrief, George and I, and it was we were quick to figure out that this decision was not going to be easy.

However, it became very clear to us that the team of Charlie and his team at Epic, they just had this certain synergy with McCabe and how McCabe did things. It was a very aligned client service model that we couldn't you couldn't have scripted this. And I didn't realize how aligned the client service models were between the two firms, until we were in those dialogue meetings, after. And so I, you know, to me it was kind of finding those needles on the haystack, but there was just something about both Charlie and George, it was kind of like, of course you guys have to work together.

Like it you have to and I feel like it you have such similar clients it just it was a match made. So that's kind of my

I'll give a couple more comments just specifically if people were wondering well what did McCabe see specifically that really spoke to them about Charlie's firm you know a [clears throat] couple of things one just in terms of structure and culture and I'm sure Charlie will get into his family firm has been around for a number of generations and being a second generation owner of the firm I think what that spoke to me about was hey you know this is an important area you know financially that Charlie's family is covered for families for decades.

And what's really important about that is just knowing, you know, that clients are going to be taken care of across generations or at least that there's a there's a game plan of, hey, we're going to make sure we have these resources here so that we don't just leave your family, you know, high and dry, you know, come a generation later when someone retires. Tim and I went through a similar experience with how we structured our firm. That was important. You [clears throat] know, what's also really important about a firm like Charlie's is that they're independent.

And again, that was very similar to how hard our firm is structured in that Charlie doesn't work for a specific insurance firm. He's not selling a specific type of product. You know, name, you know, name State Farm is an example. Charlie doesn't work for a State Farm whereas, hey, I'm only selling State Farm products. That speaks to a company like McCabe who deals with investments when we decide between the different investment companies your family can use. We love when people are independent and unbiased. Another thing that that spoke to us was just, you know, they're locally owned.

They're Chicago based and we have a lot of our clients that do they're okay doing things, you know, online and they like to have that capability if they're on vacation or whatever, but they do like to be able to possibly see people in person and know that the firm that they work with is within arms reach. At the same times, you know, a lot of our wealthier clients may have homes in multiple states. Charlie, you know, similar to our firm, has also have has a partnership with this Epic Insurance that has national reach.

So, it's kind of nice to have the best of both worlds there where it's like, hey, they're locally owned, but they've got national reach to help our clients all over the country. And I think the biggest thing to us, was that Charlie's room has a dedicated review process, which I know Charlie will go into later, but just the main thing we would hear from clients is, you know, I got my insurance needs in place and then I never heard from my broker again or I'd hear from them like every five or 10 years.

And we found that to be really important when Charlie had mentioned, hey, one thing that's important to us is that we try to reach out, you know, annually and just as a check-in to say, hey, what has changed? Your review date, your policies is coming up. That we knew was going to, you know, really speak to our clients because our clients, you know, they like to re review things or at least to be offered to review things, right? And just make sure that their whoever their professional is that they're working with the knowledge that they're on top of it.

So, I just want to give a couple of those, you know, specifics of how we landed on Charlie's firm. And, you know, maybe with that, Charlie, I'll kind of turn it over to you to maybe go into some more specifics about your firm and, you know, some of the more specifics around the planning that, you know, you and I have been talking about doing for some of our clients.

Yeah. Well, George, thank you so much, Kate, thank you so much. It's a it's a big honor to have been awarded the opportunity to work with all the McCabe families and clients. I just want to start off by saying like, you know, I'm not here to sell anybody insurance. I'm here to be a resource for any of the McCabe clients that have questions or concerns, want to do a review. It's what I do and I'm very appreciative and I really want to just reiterate everything Kate and George said about what a good match we seem to be.

Our values as a as a originally a familyrun agency founded in Chicago in 1873. I got in the business in 2008 and I worked with my dad who still is my business partner. The legacy firm Phillips Brothers was a 150y old business and we were acquired back in September of 2024 by a wonderful shop named Epic that we selected because their values were so aligned with our values and the resources they provided us and our clients we felt were invaluable. I was an attorney, straight from school.

Went to Emery Law School, practiced law for a few years in Chicago before joining our family practice. That background is a bit unique in this space. And essentially, when you purchase insurance, you're buying a contract. And having a background as an attorney has proven very invaluable in this industry because when there's claims, when there's issues, when there's problems, having someone who understands the language, understands the form, and can speak that language to the underwriters and to the claims adjusters has been very helpful. So we kind of had a discussion about how to make this introduction and what might be interesting for the McCabe clients.

We brainstormed and kind of came up with, you know, just kind of other than just who we are, just some interesting things to consider about this personal insurance space, which has really changed a lot over the last 15 and 20 years. It used to be something that I think most clients would kind of purchase and kind of set it and forget it. To steal that line from the infomercial. And I think because of inflation and weather changing weather patterns and what George referenced and K referenced with the increase in wealth, it's become a lot more nuanced and a lot more complicated.

And having an adviser that you really know and trust and pay more attention to has become more and more important. Just like you might have a family attorney or a family accountant, someone that you have a relationship with and know and trust. Having someone and obviously a wealth adviser that you know and trust. Having someone on your personal insurance has become something that's very important as well and something you guys should all consider. So, I'll jump right in. I'll keep it a little bit brief because there's only so many minutes that people can pay attention to an insurance presentation.

So, let me share this here and hopefully everyone can see it. Okay. And I will mention, Charlie, just as you're pulling that up, there is a Q&A feature at the should be at the bottom of your Zoom. If you have questions as Charlie is going along and we'll leave time at the end for any outstanding questions, feel free to type them in and because we want this to be as interactive as possible and get your questions answered as Charlie is talking about some of these items. So, sorry Charlie, I'll pass it over to you.

Yeah, no problem. George, I just want to make sure everyone can see it. Okay, it looks good on your screen here. Great. So, the first thing I wanted to cover very briefly is something that George kind of hit on this concept of the captive marketplace versus the independent channel. Epic, which is a wonderful firm, and I'll cover some of the things that we provide, is an independent broker. A lot of the companies you've probably worked with in the past or thought of as a quality carrier, the state farms, the all states of the world, the farmers, they're what's known as the captive market.

And the captive market is a wonderful channel of insurance, but it's typically for homes under a million dollars of replacement cost. And I think a lot of families get comfortable and start their pathway in their life with one of those firms and they sort of outgrow it without realizing it. One of the big differences is that if you're a State Farm agent, for example, you are an employee of State Farm, you represent State Farm, there's no one else you can market your product with, and if there's a problem, you're kind of stuck with that as your only option.

What kind of leverage could you really have when you only really have one option? So, the independent channel, we represent lots of really high quality carriers that specialize in insurance across every state that specialize in insurance for high net worth clients. Homes, you know, a million and up. Obviously, they go much higher. They can handle complex risks in Florida and Wyoming and all the states that have some weather issues. But most importantly, I think is the relationship you have with your broker because we represent you.

So I work for you. I don't work for the insurance company. I go to Chubb. I go to Pure. I go to Berkeley 1. I go to AIG, Vault, Cincinnati. There's a host of really wonderful options and carriers. And I have them compete for the opportunity to work with you and make sure that you get the best result. And further, if there's a claim or a problem, we have a lot of leverage because these companies know if they don't act honorably, we can move all of our enormous book of business.

We have millions of dollars up with each carrier, tens of millions and more. And we just it just creates a situation where we can really represent you instead of you kind of being at the whim of some of these insurance companies. So, when we picked Epic, a lot of companies were trying to work with us. There was a couple really big key pieces and I'll kind of jump ahead and then come back briefly, but one of the key pieces that I wanted to talk about was the vertical expertise.

That's something that's become very important due to the weather changes and challenges in the property marketplace that we'll cover a little bit later. But specific to Epic, we have a dedicated California group, a dedicated Florida group, a dedicated group that does nothing but insurance for boats, insurance for international. We have a group that does nothing but claims. And though having that at our fingertips is a very powerful and helpful trait and quality and something that filters down to our clients. So we get best-in-class results. We're able to provide, you know, local boots on the ground to make sure that our clients are getting the best underwriting, the best pricing, the best coverages, all that sort of things.

Have dedicated claims is obviously a huge thing. So, these are all sort of free resources included. And when we were a smaller family agency, we were very good, but you obviously can't have the detailed expertise in every single vertical that you can get with a company like Epic. So, being infused with these resources has been very helpful. There's certain things we do too for our clients. Replacement cost analysis. The idea that you have to insure your home for what it would cost to rebuild it, not what it would cost to sell it or what it's worth in the marketplace is a big concept we spend a lot of time working on.

Really working with our families to ensure that as their net worth has grown, we shift the focus of what we're kind of doing here to focus on catastrophic type losses. You know, a lot of people without realizing have their insurance set up from a long time ago when they were worried about a5 or $10,000 water claim in their basement or, you know, a little modest fender bender. We really spend time with our clients to make sure we're insuring for the huge loss, the umbrella claim, the big liability claim, the, you know, massive flood loss, water claim, and we, you know, we use tools like risk sharing and high deductibles to make sure that we keep the cost down while making sure that our clients are protected where they really need it.

So thing, you know, your nanny's driving the car and crashes and there's a big incident, your kid has a party in your house and a and a child's underserved or the hurricane claim. So those are the kind of things we really focus our attention and time to protect our clients with. And lastly, umbrella benchmarking is something that George and Kate kind of hinted on. As your wealth has grown, you become a bigger target for litigation and making sure that we have this properly benchmarked and you have the proper coverage if you're sued for bodily injury, property damage, exposures in your personal life, that you have adequate coverage.

It's not expensive. I think many of you would be surprised to find out what a 10 or $20 million umbrella would cost, how cheap it is relative to the exposure. And that becomes really the focal point of most of our presentations is covering the large whatifs and making sure that you're properly protected for those things. Obviously, making sure you have all your entities added. It's a common mistake we see. A lot of people as they grow their wealth have estate planning and they've added LLC's and trusts.

Kind of making sure all that is included is a big part of what any broker should be doing for you and something that you cover in these annual reviews that we'd be doing. You know, because even over the course of a year, things change. You rent properties, you go on vacation, you sell cars, add cars, add jewelry, and constantly need to be in communication with your broker. And frankly, that's why having a strong relationship with the broker is so important is to manage these things as the years going on.

Your life isn't static. It doesn't start and stop at the renewal date of your policies. And making sure you have this, you know, prompt service, excellent teams. And that's something that I guess I should cover to very quickly is we have wonderful team. It's primarily the employees that worked with me at my small family agency. We take customer service very seriously and, you know, have the verticalization to handle all the different McCabe clients in the way that Kate and George thought was important and was something we were very aligned on. I'll just keep going through to keep it quick unless George or Kate have any, you know, thoughts or questions so far.

The only thing is just couple [clears throat] of things. Yeah, Charlie, I was going to hit on the same thing. And I think you have different team members that specialize on different client groups. You know, I know Liliana I think specializes more the private client at a certain wealth space. I don't know if it's 5 $10 million, what it is. And then you have a separate team member that really handles kind of the more you know maybe half million dollar million dollar family with one home.

So I think in a sense that's a that's a good thing in that they really focus on one type of client so they really have their system down pat [clears throat] by the time you get to them.

Yeah. And I think it's also important to know that any you know person that's referred or wants to meet with us is going to have a dedicated person. It's not going to be, you know, like a call center experience, even if it's a smaller, you know, profile. You know, we take our relationships very seriously and we have a wonderful team and obviously George and Kate vetted them and met with them and that's something that was very it's always been very important to me is making sure people have a point of contact that's actually a person and build that relationship.

And obviously I'm available anytime if there's claims or problems. But [clears throat] that day-to-day need having a great relationship with a very competent trusted adviser who handles that day-to-day is something that we provide and you know is something that's very important to us.

Yeah. Yeah. And the second thing was just and I think it's part of why we're here and you're doing it as you're speaking is just that education piece of it. I remember I was talking with somebody last year who was reviewing his umbrella. His wealth had changed and he was considering like a $10 million umbrella policy. And his biggest thing was like, I don't necessarily mind paying it. I just want to know why, like why it's so much more expensive going from five to 10. And if someone could explain that to me, cuz I think, you know, you probably agree there's no necessarily silver bullet where something like this, hey, partnering with Charlie's going to get everyone's insurance costs and bring and bring them down, right?

I mean, the pricing is what it is. Firm does a lot of research to find, you know, the most competitive prices where they can, but I know another part of what you do is just explaining to people why they're paying what they're paying. Yeah. And price is an important thing and I respect that and our goal is to always provide the most efficient program. We're probably not always going to be the cheapest, but I want to make sure that if there's a claim that our clients are provided the best service and actually get something for their value. Again, with insurance, you're just buying a piece of paper, right?

And if you have no claims, you know, buying the cheapest one was always the right answer, right? But the second there's a real claim and frankly most companies will pay a $6,000, you know, pipe claim appropriately, you know, but those aren't even necessarily claims that most clients should be putting in anymore, right, at this level. And what you really want to make sure is when there's a real problem, you know, the hurricane, the fire, the wildfire, the litigation, the lawsuits. And in my experience, it's the litigation and the lawsuits, the umbrella, the liability piece that's really the most stressful, the most impactful on people's lives, the most challenging.

And the feeling that you have good counsel and that you're represented and knowing that you're going to be okay is a really big weight in something that becomes really important to people. I mean, getting sued is no fun. And having confidence that you're with a Chubb or a Pure or Berkeley and that your panel council that's representing you has your best interest at heart and that you have adequate limits, this horrible thing occurred, but knowing it's not going to ruin your life, ruin your family's life, ruin your kids' futures.

And by the way, the cost was a few thousand a year, which hopefully we just distributed from lower deductibles to higher deductibles, keeping your costs relatively flat. You know, that that's that's when I feel good about what we do and you know, I'm sure a lot of people don't think of insurance agents really helping. You know, but I can tell you that that that that's when we I feel that way is when there is that horrible scenario when a client calls me and says, you know, there's been an injury potentially they're at fault.

It was a car crash or a slip and fall or other crazy scenarios. And for me to say, hey, look, you know, we got great insurance. You've got more than enough coverage to cover this. And within 24 hours, they're on the phone with their adjuster who makes them feel good and makes them feel covered and protected instead of making them feel like they don't know if they have coverage or that there's potentially ambiguity or that the feeling the insurance company's not going to try to help them.

I mean, these are real things and until you're sued or in that scenario, you it's probably something you don't really appreciate. And part of our job is making sure that people think about that because it happens, you know? I mean, I see it and you know, I think that's the most important part of any insurance presentation is the liability piece.

Yeah. And I think, you know, when George called me after my presentation, I think what I heard from George saying, Kate, how I you know, he actually said, he goes, "Kate, what I heard you say is your job is to help us better protect the balance sheet. Our job is to grow the wealth and protect the bottom line. And your job is to help us put that wrapper around the bottom line. And really, that's kind of what the, you know, risk management, it's about all of the balance sheet, right?

And I think putting, you know, bringing Charlie in to get the right insurance structures in place, that's critical. You know, it's I [clears throat] always tell people the amount people pay in insurance is minute compared to what it could be out of pocket if it's not there, right? And you know, I had a an advisor friend call me up and he's like, "Thank you so much." And I, you know, gave advice to him. I said, "You know, you need a really much larger umbrella than you think you have." His wife was in a accident in the Jewel parking lot almost to the date of where a lawsuit couldn't be filed.

She got a notice in the mail. $2 million. Jewel parking lot backing out of a space. The stress. And he's like, "Kate, we're not that stressed. You have like our broker was right. We're with the right carrier. We're not worried. And I think as I think about it, to me that's why that partnership between McCabe and Charlie and his team at Epic is kind of the it t I would say risk management takes a village and this is you know this is the village.

Right. Right. And I think you both highlighted and Charlie I'll throw back over to you get back into your slides, but you bring up a good point about there's having the policy in place and making sure that's as up to date and as competitive as possible. But when something happens, having a team to then file the claim and make sure that's handled as efficiently as possible and making sure you have all your ducks in a row when you're handling that. That really on the back end probably gives people more peace of mind if they know they've got a team they can trust if something does happen.

So, I'm glad you highlighted that cuz I think people are more concerned about what they're paying today versus what the process is going to look like if something does happen. So, yeah, and did you list that LLC on your policy?

Did you remember to add that rental location to your umbrella? Like, you know, even the best insurance companies will won't pay claims if they don't have to. And you know, you certainly want to be in a position of being organized and having things properly set up heading into the claim versus, you know, kind of having to go beg well, you know, we didn't add that location, but you know, we should have. We're so sorry. Please pay the claim. We've been great clients. You know, it's never the conversation you know, that's not the ideal way to attack these things.

So, you know, being, you know, communicating, you know, having that relationship, making sure things are set up in the proper way ahead of time. You know, just I totally agree, important stuff here. And I'll jump back in here to the slides and just, you know, for the sake of brevity, we'll try to keep it brief. There's only a few slides to cover. So this won't be too long, I promise. But this slide is called state of the personal insurance market. Really what this is is like, you know, sort of like why do I want why is this something I need to pay attention to right now, you know, and we've covered some of like the liability stuff to consider, but the last 10 years, I'm sure you've noticed, inflation and rate increases have become the norm.

Illinois is used to have some of the lowest insurance costs in the country in, if you haven't checked, your insurance has doubled or tripled in the last 10 years, even if you have just a normal house in a normal suburb of Illinois. In inflation has become a is coming down but was a real thing due to all the you know a lot hail issues were a major issue in Illinois and all sorts of weather problems across the country. I'm sure most of you are aware that wildfire in California inevitably impacts your home insurance premiums because the reinsurance the insurance for the insurance companies increases and all these insurance companies buy reinsurance through the markets in London.

Higher interest rates have led to higher costs. So it's not something you should just set and forget anymore. It's something you need to consider and just take a look at because you need that proactive guidance and rates are up and it's worth it's worth exploring if you haven't looked at it in a while. You know, I think, there's some things that people don't really consider that are also worth cons, you know, talking through and some of that is due to this inflation. You know, if you've had some State Farm legacy policy and your house burned to the ground, have they done any analysis about what it would cost to rebuild it?

The cost to rebuild in the 15 years I've been doing this in maybe longer 17 years, you know, went from $150 to $200 a square foot to it can be $1,000 a square foot to rebuild now. And if your policy hasn't been looked at in 10 years, you might be significantly undersured on your on your rebuild cost. You might not have water backup coverage. Your roof might have a hail exclusion or a roof depreciation, which might make sense, by the way. It might be something you want to have, but it should be something you think through and strategize about instead of something that's imposed on you by the insurance companies.

You know, as homes age, thinking through what the, replacement cost should be, thinking through improvements in your home, thinking through construction and builder's risk, all vacancies. Insurance companies have all sorts of language and exclusions around construction vacancies, things that you need to consider and talk about with your broker. Flood insurance for water backup coverage when your sub pump fails is is something that's sublimated heavily in the captive market. It's something that you're granted full coverage in traditionally in the independent channel with Chubb, Pure, Berkeley. Making sure you have that coverage if you have a finished basement.

Talking about flood coverage, earthquake coverage. And then a big mis topic is workers compensation coverage. Do you have an employee working 30 hours a week? If you do, there might be a liability issue if you don't have workers compensation for them. So if you have a nanny or a or a full-time helper, and then one thing I really like to focus on is technology. I think that's been a big shift in the industry in the last 5 or 10 years and it continues to be. There's all sorts of technology you can use to prevent claims from ever happening.

And that's sort of been I think instead of reacting to claims with sensors and alarms sort of letting you know the claim is happening or the break-in is occurring or the water loss has already occurred. There's been a big shift in technology now and the idea is to sort of make sure the claim never happens. And there's credits now out there that that pay for themselves over time. Things like automatic water shut offs in your house. I'm a huge believer and especially for people who travel during the winter months or the summer months, having that in your house can save your home and is a large credit generators.

There's a device called TING that's out now that you plug into an outlet and it's regularly searching for electrical issues. So even some of the things that don't generate large savings are really great risk control devices and can help you feel much more comfortable having a higher deductible. So a $25,000 deductible. You might feel very comfortable knowing that most of the companies we work with wave the deductible if there's a $100,000 loss or greater and also knowing you have all these devices that help prevent the claim from ever occurring.

So that's something I think that's really worth talking about and investigating with your broker or with us. I'm a big believer in it. You know, this slide we sort of talked about is just the concept of social inflation is the idea that jury verdicts are becoming larger and larger, especially in liberal jurisdictions like Cook County, like Los Angeles, like you know, New York. And making sure you have the right umbrella to offset this risk that you know a car accident can be 25 $10 million now where you didn't really see that 5 or 10 years ago.

I think you know making sure you don't have gaps in your coverage. There's a this is a little technical but you have to make sure that your primary policies have enough coverage that your umbrella fits on top of it. So, if you have that Geico jet ski policy or that Geico auto insurance for your child in a different state, making sure that's reviewed and there's that connectivity to the umbrella is very important. The good companies cover exposures in social media and cyber bullying and things like that that that are emerging exposures.

I think the biggest takeaway though is this one we call kind of emerging lifestyle risk bullet point here. And I want everyone to kind of think about this. There's all sorts of exposures that you have that you've probably not considered that you should consider. So you're on that not for profofit that charity board. Do they have directors and officers coverage? You have a nanny. Have you considered what does she sues for harassment or discrimination or wrongful termination? Cyber risk. Making sure you're adequately protected if you know you're doing wire transfers in your personal life and it's wrong or you know you send that mass email out or you're hacked and your private information becomes public.

A huge one short-term rentals air are you Airbnbing your home? If you are there might be a very strict exclusion on your policy that we need to talk through and vet. Do you have a home business, a gallery? Are you selling things out of your house? Those are concerns and need some strategy. RVs, jet skiis, and a big one, home construction. So many people in the last 10 years have remodeled, rebuilt, roundup construction, vetting your contractor, getting listed as an additional insured, making sure your insurance company knows it are critical things.

So, not to overwhelm you, but I'm guessing that most people who watch this are going to say to themselves like, "Wow, we're not really doing a lot of these things." And this is why having a relationship with me or someone like me or my firm is just you know, it's just important. And I think my last thought before I just kind of pass it back to George and Kate is is simply this. If you haven't dived into this and looked at it, this personal insurance space has become much more complex in the last 10 years.

It's become much more nuanced and you really and you as George and K have pointed out have become more successful, more wealthy, and whether it's through us as a resource, there's no charge, there's no fee. We're thrilled to review anything and provide guidance and counseling even if you want to maintain your current broker. But doing taking the time to go through the exercises become very important and I think it's a good use of your time and our time to take a peek and that's sort of the you know and stop that's as long as I can talk about insurance and anybody would listen.

So I pass it back to George but I just want to say lastly thank you for the opportunity to talk to all of you today and thank you to Kate and George. It's a big honor to have been selected amongst these seven really high-end firms. It was a big honor and you know, I really look forward to working together a long time with both of you. Thank you.

Charlie, I appreciate the comments and I think people have hopefully gotten a really good sense of who you are and how you operate just based on those comments. And the last thing you were talking about really reminded me just going back to the review part of the process, all those things you listed are real things, not they don't affect everybody. Like being on the board of a nonprofit, you know, having, you know, a home business is so much more popular now after, you know, postcoid, you know, people are giving up their lease spaces, working from home, jet skis, RVs.

Probably doesn't affect all those don't affect everybody, but maybe there's one thing that speaks to a lot of people on this call. And I think the reason why they don't get addressed is again because people are only reviewing their policies like every five or 10 years. And if they, you know, start a home working from home or, you know, they join a nonprofit and then they don't they haven't reviewed their policy until like 3 years later, they don't think to bring that up. So like that annual review process of basically just saying like once a year what's new.

A lot of those things probably do get picked up cuz it's like every year you're thinking about what's you only have to think about what are the new things that have come up the last 12 months that I need to mention to Charlie. So, I think that that's critical. And you know, one last thing I just wanted to cover that I know is important to clients as we roll out these partnerships. And it's just like how when we invest money, clients ask us, well, are you are you investing your money?

Similarly, people have asked myself and people have asked Tim that and all of our adviserss that over the years. To me, it's the same thing with something like this property and casualty insurance. They're like, "Hey, I've listened to Kate and Charlie's comments. This seems important. Charlie's firm seems like a good fit, but like George, are you using him for yourself? Like, have you gone through their process? Do you know what it looks like? And the answer to that is yes. And I think it was really important for both myself and my father Tim both went through Charlie's process of working with their firm, not only to get a sense of what it looked like, but to make sure that our own insurance policies were in a good place for both of our families.

So, I just want to highlight, both my experience and then Tim's briefly, just because I think we're two different types of individuals. My experience may speak to some people on the call and Tim's experience may speak to some of the more older retirees on the call. And just give you a sense of what that process looked like over a couple minute period. Basically, I worked directly [clears throat] with Charlie's team, both Charlie and then his associate, Liliana. And essentially upfront we had to get you know my declaration pages together to get them over to their team just so they could get a sense of what you know I currently had in place what I didn't have in place and what went along with that was they had a really nice questionnaire that just kind of thoroughly went through at a high level like you know everything I had in place you know for myself some of the things that were pertinent was I had bought my first home last year and we moved in there in the summer and I went through the review process with Charlie in the fall.

And so, you know, we moved from renting in the city of Chicago to now owning a home. So, we had a homeowners policy through our quote unquote broker who I had never spoken to. And so there was a big question of like, do we have enough coverage, the things Charlie was talking about, like what's the replacement cost of our new home, you know, how is the home titled and how is it, you know, correspondingly our policy going to be titled? That was all really important stuff for us to cover.

Essentially Charlie's team looked at it. We came back together. One of the things I really liked about sitting down with Charlie was he basically presented me with a report that had three different options. So, it wasn't just Charlie coming back to me and saying like, I looked at this. This is the direction you're going to want to go. But he basically laid out, hey, there's a lot of different companies out there. I just want you to see what kind of the price differential is between company A and company C.

And maybe some of the pros and cons of going with, you know, option A, B, or C. And one of the things I found to be interesting, well, a couple things I would say. One is, the company we ended up going with, and we essentially went from a situation where my wife and I had things unbundled. We didn't have them with one company, but, you know, Charlie's best, you know, we thought it was a good idea to bundle. He had mentioned, hey, they're really competitive on price right now.

But he was even looking ahead to say, "You know what? But George, I'm anticipating that this company, they're probably due for a big price increase. So, it's going to be important that we sit down in like a year from now because I just know this company and I think that that's something where even though they're really competitive right now, they may not be as competitive a year from now." So, just having again that expertise and the foresight to say like this is where you should be today, but that may even change a year from now was crucial.

Something else that was I'm not gonna say not insurance related but was really important was our home and when we bought our home we placed it in the name of a trust. Okay. And something Charlie and I talked about was well our insurance policy. A lot of times people have those held just in their name individually. And so it was really important to make sure that the insurance policy was also held in the name of the trust. And I highlight that because I know that there's a lot of clients that I have that they will get their policies early on and then later on in life they'll either, you know, move into a second home or they will buy, you know, vacation properties and they don't think to circle back and maybe change those policies and retitle them in the name of the trust.

Cuz a lot of those people in their, you know, 30s or even early 40s don't have a trust written at that point in time and yet they have, you know, insurance their insurance policies in place. When they write their trust later on, they don't think, hey, I got to circle back, you know, and make sure my insurance matches that. So again, that was something that Charlie's firm caught that I think is really important that may not have been caught had I not worked with them. So those were some of the things I found really important in my experience.

In Tim's experience, you know, he's a little bit different. He's a, you know, now retired, you know, business owner who had recently exited out of his business. Some of the things I know were really important to him is that he has always lived in Illinois with my mom. But they changed residency to a new state. And as part of that, it was really important to say, "Hey, how [clears throat] do things change now that we're moving out of Illinois to this new state and our primary home is not going to be in Illinois?" and yet they still have a townhouse here in Illinois.

So, that was something that was kind of new to them. I know was important to talk through with Charlie and his team is like how do you deal with people that have properties across multiple state lines and how do those things interact with each other? And just you know umbrella again somebody like him not too dissimilar from clients of somebody who was you know in business their entire career now they've exited out of the business they're retired just reviewing hey do I have the correct coverage from an umbrella standpoint and does how I look at that need to change now that I'm retired and not working anymore.

So I could tell you going through that process we found Charlie's team to be extremely responsive. They were able to pinpoint things that I think would normally slip through the cracks and, I've even had, you know, a couple things I've gotten in the mail pop up. I've been able to get on the phone with their team after these policies have been in place to just say, "Can you explain to me what this is?" and I know that we've got marked up for later on this year to take a take a look and review what we've got in place.

So, I will I will kind of wrap in my comments there. Charlie, anything I missed as we were working together on my stuff and my dad's stuff last year? No, I mean I think that's really terrific. I guess one small point was just for your dad was the ability to have one point of contact for multi-states. A big thing for a bunch of people. I think you hit on that. But no, it's been great to work with you and I very much appreciate the chance. Georgia, you have been great to get to work with.

Perfect. Perfect. And Kate, I was just going to wrap just kind of next steps for our clients if anyone's interested in this, but I certainly want to, you know, open it up to you if you have any ending comments of things we didn't cover before I get to that.

No, I think you guys covered everything. It's been great.

Well, I appreciate both Kate and Charlie being here today and, thankful that we found Kate about a year ago, to eventually connect Charlie and I. In terms of, you know, I mentioned next steps. If anyone says, "Hey, I've listened in, you know, and I think this is of interest to me." As Charlie mentioned, the first thing I would, you know, mention up front is this is a no strings attached as I understand it. Charlie, correct me if I'm wrong, but really this initial consultation and for a lot of people, I think it's just reviewing current policies they have in place.

There's no fee for that upfront. Eventually, if you know, end up changing your policies or purchasing a new policy, you know, Charlie from like every other business gets compensated for that. But it's a good to know that upfront that hey I can sit down with George and Charlie and just you know get a sense of where I'm at and if I decide not to make any changes or I don't need to make any changes there's no big cost to me upfront. But essentially what I think is a good idea you know for people they can always reach out to Charlie directly.

Our company has their information. As many of you know, McCabe likes to be a liaison, you know, during these relationships because a lot of the decisions that, you know, you and Charlie may be making as it relates to your insurance, McCabe needs to be aware of that. And as we think about your investment risk, we want to make sure that it lines up with, you know, your insurance risk and how protected you are from that standpoint. So, a lot of times I'll recommend to people, hey, if you want to reach out to myself or Ryan or Will or Zach or Julia to say, you know what, hey, I'm interested in sitting down with Charlie's firm.

We can reach out on your behalf and just say, "Hey, Charlie, we've had someone reach out to us. Let me give you just a little bit of background on who they are, what they're looking for, what's important to them." You know, we have a good sense working with clients for, you know, 10 plus years of, you know, the things that they value. I think that's good context for Charlie to know before you even sit down, to say, "Hey, this is the things that I'll want to focus on during this meeting cuz, you know, because of what George has told me." and really, you know, I think having that intro meeting is a good start.

And then kind of the steps that I've laid out for myself when I went through the process of collecting your declaration pages, getting it over to Charlie's firm, filling out their questionnaire, circling back, and then having that formal review, and then deciding if you want to make any changes. That's really what that step-by-step process looks like. So, I'll just kind of end on that. We hope this was educational to everybody. And again, Kate and Charlie, thank you for joining me today. And, just going to check the Q&A.

I don't think we have any questions that came through, but if you have questions that come up after this podcast, please reach out to me and let me know and we will make sure that we circle back with you. So, thank you everybody for joining.

Thank you everybody. We appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you K and George.

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain errors.