Part 3: Agility Sets Renaissance Apart

By: Rob Mulligan, CEO & President of Renaissance In part three of our six-part entrepreneurial leadership series, Rob Mulligan shares how agility has helped Renaissance break through a cluttered marketplace. It’s more important than ever for insurance providers to be agile in the ever -changing insurance landscape. Just like a running back in football, we need to be able to change direction in an instant to avoid bigger defenders, or, in our case, bigger insurance providers trying to keep us out of the game. Renaissance is able to stay light on its feet even as we add more options to become a complete ancillary solution. Medical carriers have been offering ancillary coverage to some extent for more than 20 years. But more recently, because of the ACA, they’ve become more competitive with providers who have always focused on it. Before I came to Renaissance I worked for one of the biggest medical carriers. I went there because I thought medical carriers would eventually do a better job of bundling services. I was wrong. Ancillary insurance is done best by companies like Renaissance that focus on it exclusively. As the CEO of an ancillary carrier, I know that the insurance market is still driven by medical coverage. It’s the biggest decision point for consumers, and just about everything follows after it. In some respects, companies like us could be considered vulnerable because many of the big medical carriers do what we do. But we have the opportunity to do it better — and we are. While the ACA has muddied the waters for medical carriers, it has actually helped ancillary providers. One reason is that since the ACA has given medical carriers so much to think about, they’re not able to put the time in to sell ancillary. Medical carriers try to pay attention to ancillary, but no matter how hard they try, they eventually lose focus. That loss of focus is where Renaissance has its opportunity for growth. If customers want a better experience with dental, vision, life and disability insurance, we can bring that to them. We pride ourselves on limiting the distractions that can happen when people look at their insurance options. Whether it’s a private consumer or someone making a group decision, they often get bogged down by the medical options. That is where Renaissance comes in and offers expertise that the big carriers lack when it comes to ancillary coverage. We’re capitalizing on the opportunity presented by the ACA by becoming a complete ancillary solution. By adding vision, life and disability to our flagship dental product, we’ve become a one-stop shop for consumers. It’s been our goal to be able to walk into an employer and say, “Look to us for your ancillary insurance needs,” and now we’re able to do that.