Peter Carpenter Joins the Why Alliant? Podcast

Intro (00:03):
Welcome to the Why Alliant podcast, the show that takes a deep dive into what makes Alliant not only a great place to work, but a company that is laser-focused on putting our clients first, by investing in the best people, removing barriers, and delivering the best outcome and every possible competitive advantage. Here is your host, Bledion Dizdari.

Bledion Dizdari (00:29):
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Why Alliant. I'm Bledion Dizdari, your host. With me today, I've got the pleasure of having Peter Carpenter, the Chief Operating Officer of Alliant Insurance Services. Peter, how are you?

Peter Carpenter (00:42):
So far, so good.

Bledion Dizdari (00:43):
This will be fun today. You're always really good about explaining the Alliant story, and we'll ask you some questions about Alliant and we’ll go from there. We're excited for it.

Peter Carpenter (00:52):
That's fantastic.

Bledion Dizdari (00:54):
Peter, recently the Insurance Insider released the report based on its U.S. top talent tracker stating that Alliant received the highest net inflow of industry leading talent on the broker side amongst the nation's leading P&C insurance brokerages. Do these results surprise you?

Peter Carpenter (01:09):
No, not at all. It's a growing trend line actually.

Bledion Dizdari (01:12):
Yes, of course. What about Alliant attracts the best talent in the industry, Peter?

Peter Carpenter (01:16):
Well, what we're finding is the highly and most productive insurance producers, brokers, consultants, whatever terminology you want to use, are very driven and entrepreneurial people. Our culture is very unique, particularly for a company of our size in that it is a very low bureaucracy, low interference, entrepreneur friendly type of business. I believe that coupled along with our approach to getting company equity into people's hands that are helping build the company, helping build Alliant, is a pretty unique combination for people who want to be in this business for the long term.

Bledion Dizdari (02:06):
Yes, absolutely. That's awesome. So, speak a little bit about the equity and how that works for employees.

Peter Carpenter (02:11):
The way that we are structured is we are a privately held company. There's different definitions of private that different brokerage firms like to highlight about themselves, but I'm using the difference between publicly traded and privately held right now. That structure allows us some great flexibility to get our people into the game of becoming Alliant shareholders and actually participating in the upside of the growth of the company alongside typical and competitive normal compensation. In most or many cases, our competitors are not in a position to offer that type of arrangement. Further that, we've had by far and away the highest performing returns in the value of our equity for people. That’s driven by all three of our main platforms, which are attracting experienced hires that want to be in a better situation for themselves and their clients through very specific and strategic merger and acquisition and the organic growth of just bringing new customers on board have all been firing very strongly here at Alliant for a long time.

Bledion Dizdari (03:33):
Yes. Peter, you mentioned the equity. What else makes Alliant entrepreneurial? You mentioned entrepreneurial before. What other aspects of it?

Peter Carpenter (03:41):
I wouldn't refer to the equity as being necessarily entrepreneurial. The culture that we have here is, you'll see in a lot of places they talk about wanting to "institutionalize their customers" or "institutionalize their clients" and have the clients be loyal to the brand and recognizing the brand of the business and attracted to the brand and that sort of thing. By doing that, you're de-emphasizing the importance of the brokers, consultants, account management, and all of the people that are actually working to build the trust and bring their expertise to their customers. I think a big differential, again for us, particularly for a company as large as Alliant has become, is that we have many, or most of our senior leadership, our field leadership have been brokers working to serve customers. We institutionally understand the importance of our people and how important that is to building our client loyalty. We want our customers to feel institutionalized to Alliant too, but the reason they are is because the people that they actually work with and trust are raving fans of Alliant.

Bledion Dizdari (04:57):
Right, absolutely. From your perspective, what's a typical profile of a leader at Alliant? Is it professional leaders or are they more player coaches, or how would you view that?

Peter Carpenter (05:08):
I would say that particularly within the field operations, it is a very strong culture of player coach. So, it's people that at least have been, but in most cases are currently, still in the position of working with customers, working inside of their own personal client bases and that sort of thing. Again, the point of view of the majority of the leadership comes from a seat of having been a broker. That ability to understand where people are coming from and what they're experiencing and what the difficulties are and the pitfalls as well as the ability to recognize opportunities are all uniquely driven out of having the experience of having done the job.

Bledion Dizdari (05:55):
Absolutely. Now let's talk about you, Peter. So, how did you wind up at Alliant? Give us just a brief history on how you got here.

Peter Carpenter (06:02):
I started in the business as a sales rep for an insurance company and after five years of that, I became the head of sales for a local insurance brokerage in the Seattle area. That's where I started my career, and about a year and a half into that, that wasn't a good fit for me of a place. One of the people that I had brought over soon after I went to that firm, he and I ended up starting our own benefits brokerage firm and bringing in a third partner. So, the three of us owned the company equally. That was Kevin Overbey who today is the President of Benefits at Alliant, and Steve DiPietro who runs a big section of the country for employee benefits based out of Seattle, but I believe he goes east all the way through Wisconsin, Michigan type-thing, the loop around. We ran our own business, it was an employee benefits firm only, and at about the 10-year mark, we sold that company to Alliant in 2008 and have been here ever since.

Bledion Dizdari (07:11):
That's amazing, Peter. Let’s talk about that sale, that process. As you were getting ready to sell your company, what were the things that you took into account when deciding to go with Alliant?

Peter Carpenter (07:21):
Someone else put it better than I was able to at the time, but we didn't want to sell out, we wanted to buy in. We wanted to ensure that we ended up at a place that wasn't going to try to ruin the magic of what we had created in our own company or find ourselves working for bureaucrats without experience, maybe credentials or degrees, but not really practical people who've been in the trenches of doing the important client work. There were a couple organizations that we felt that way about, and Alliant was pretty much top of the list in that. When it came down to it, it was the people. At the time, Greg Zimmer was the CFO, and he was the primary person we were dealing with. It came down largely to trust and believing that the approach that Alliant took wasn't going to mess with us too badly and that we were going to be able to stay and thrive. I was 38 at the time, so I had a lot of runway left in my career. We were really worried about what people we were going into business with as the primary concern.

Bledion Dizdari (08:33):
I love that phrase, Peter. We didn't want to sell out, we wanted to buy in. How would you parallel that to an experienced producer who's not at Alliant today? What's the equivalent of them wanting to buy in instead of sell out if they're thinking about moving over to Alliant?

Peter Carpenter (08:46):
I think I have to give Marcus Jackson credit. We were “buying in instead of selling out” line. If someone's, I don't know how to put it other than done, they're coasting, they're not really into it the way they used to be. They're probably going to be fine riding out their career wherever they are because it can be very disruptive to make an employer move in the world of insurance brokerage. But the people who are most attracted to us are ones that are feeling somehow, I'll say, held back. There's a big spectrum depending on the firm that they're at from feeling underappreciated, undercompensated, certainly under equitized, but also feeling like they're capped out where they are with their current client base because they can't get the level of investment to support them in going to the next level. A lot of people that have this entrepreneurial mind frame, they don't really go into it thinking about caps on productivity. We've proven and are highly referable by the many hundreds of people that have joined us from competitors over the last 10 years or so, that we are the place that fits that bill for them to be able to take things to the next level and enjoy the ride along the way, while then participating in the growth of the equity of the enterprise.

Bledion Dizdari (10:11):
Absolutely. Peter, in your role as the Chief Operating Officer of Alliant Insurance Services, obviously you oversee a large part of the company in all various departments and operations, but what makes you so passionate about the producer recruitment component of your business?

Peter Carpenter (10:25):
I think it's obvious. It's a fun thing to do to help facilitate people being able to get into a situation to take their career, their net worth, all that to many levels of next level, right? It's an exciting thing to be part of. I've been around here doing this long enough that I get to talk to people that joined us 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago, maybe more, about "how it's the best thing that happened to them professionally." The excitement and appreciation that producers that have joined us have, there's a very, very, very small percentage of people that join us that, where it doesn't work out for the long term. To a person regardless of where they came from, there's a lot of excitement and energy about being at Alliant. That type of person joining continues to fuel the growth of the organization, so creates better opportunities for the employees, for corporate staff, for shareholders and everything else. It's a really enjoyable part of the business to work in.

Bledion Dizdari (11:31):
Let's talk a little bit about you, Peter. We'll get personal. What was your first job?

Peter Carpenter (11:36):
My first job, I was 14 living in Scarborough, Maine, and I was a fry cook at McDonald's. That was my first job in that. I worked at a gas station, I moved furniture, I worked at a seafood restaurant. Again, coming out of college, I got into the insurance business as a wholesale sales rep. Phenomenal and lucky opportunity for me.

Bledion Dizdari (11:58):
What was your proudest moment?

Peter Carpenter (12:00):
Oh boy. I think in retrospect, the best thing I pulled off was being partners with Kevin and Steve, and ultimately believing that they felt like they were better off being in a partnership with me than they would've otherwise. I felt the same way about them. Partnerships are very tricky, particularly when money is involved and a lot of them fall apart, and people don't appreciate the totality of what people bring to a relationship at any given point in time. A lot of times people can think they're unfair or unbalanced. I think being able to build a great company over a 10-year plus span with two great people and all of the high caliber people we were able to attract to that is probably the thing that I look back on with the most appreciation. We were young when we did it too. All predictions were that we would fail.

Bledion Dizdari (12:53):
Yes, that's amazing. That's a great story. Peter, thank you very much. Thank you for joining us on another episode of Why Alliant. We look forward to talking to you in the future, and we look forward to speaking to other folks in the company in the future. Thank you.

Intro (13:09):
Thank you for listening. For more information, visit us at www.alliant.com/whyAlliant.