Why Alliant: The Importance of Expertise and Experience

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 (00:28):
Welcome back to another episode of Why Alliant. I am Bledion Dizdari, your host, and with me today I have Kenny White. Kenny White is the Senior Vice President of our managed care organization platform. Kenny has recently joined Alliant, and today he's going to discuss what the transition was like, how he's feeling here at Alliant, and what the goals are going forward. Kenny, welcome.

Kenny White (00:53):
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Bledion Dizdari (00:56):
Alright. It's amazing, Kenny, so you have one of the most unique entries into insurance. Ninety percent of the folks who are dragged into it fell into it or had an uncle or a cousin that brought them into it. You have a very different path. Can you expand upon how you got into insurance and when you got into it?

Kenny White (01:12):
Certainly. So, decades ago when I went to college, I thought I wanted to be in the State Department and be the ambassador to Kenya or someplace like that. And then I realized that if I went to the School of International Relations and got a degree and wasn't made the ambassador, I was going to be unemployable. So I went to law school. I spent 30 years practicing law as a healthcare lawyer, primarily as a trial attorney. After 30 years of doing that, I was approached to form an industry specialized group addressing the needs of managed care, which I affectionately refer to as the island of misfit toys. I moved over from the practice of law into insurance using a background where I moved around from one side of a table representing managed care entities in the courtroom to representing them in their risk identification, risk financing and risk transfer needs.

Bledion Dizdari (02:09):
That's amazing. Being an insurance broker, you are an ambassador of sorts and specifically you, in the island of misfit toys as you like to refer to it, you definitely are an ambassador to all parties, the carriers, the prospects, the clients. Tell us a little bit about managed care and what that means, Kenny.

Kenny White (02:26):
Certainly. Managed care historically was referred to as the payor side of healthcare, the entities that paid the bills as opposed to the entities that actually provided the care. So rather than being hospitals or physician groups, they were entities like Blue Cross Blue Shield plans or United Health Group or Cigna or Aetna. Any number of them from relatively small local or regional carriers to the big national or international carriers. Also on the island of misfit toys are pharmacy benefit management entities, third party claims administrators, vision, health plans, dental health plans, pet insurance is an interesting thing, and there is a big market in that as well. Then there are the managed or management service organizations or MSOs that run medical practices because most of that is value-based or risk reimbursement providers. So those are part of managed care as well as health plans that are owned and operated by a provider such as a hospital or a health system that happens to own a Medicare Advantage plan or something like that. And then there's a smaller subset of government plans that deal with federal employee benefits, veterans benefits, et cetera. Those are all what we call big bucket managed care.

Bledion Dizdari (03:52):
Super interesting. Kenny, tell me a little bit about your journey and how you got to Alliant. What attracted you to Alliant prior to joining us?

Kenny White (04:00):
Well, I had a desire after being on this part of my journey for about 10 years to look for positive change. Everybody wants to continue to grow, and I'm no spring chicken, but I wanted to be someplace dynamic. I wanted to be someplace where I thought they were investing in the industry where I worked primarily. And I wanted to be in a place where I thought that most of the investments being made were being made in a way by a company that was going to drive the company forward so that when I got up in the morning, I was energized to go to work. I got to work with some great people and do some very good things for clients, and that's what attracted me to Alliant.

Bledion Dizdari (04:44):
That's awesome, Kenny. What has impressed you the most since you've joined us?

Kenny White (04:49):
Wow. The investment in people, the investment in products and services, the one P&L concept that removes barriers to collaboration, not only geographically and not only person to person or group to group, but also across segments such as Alliant, employee benefits and the Alliant P&C side of the house work very, very closely with one another. And in those ways, it's very impressive in terms of being able to do things here that in a more segmented location or company is very difficult. I used to say when I first got here, what amazed me the most was at former places, law firms and brokerages as well, everybody was willing to get into the boat and ride.

What impressed me about Alliant was that everybody was willing to get into the boat and row. That makes all the difference, where you go to a group. I have a wonderful deep experienced and expert team around managed care, but if I need bits and pieces, it's like a football team. I have all of the blocking and tackling. I have the running backs and the wide receivers and stuff like that, but you would never put the special teams people into a group. It doesn't make business sense to do it that way. But I can go to analytics, I can go to alternative risk transfer, I can go to M&A, I can go to captives, I can go to health and benefits. I can go to stop loss, analytics, placement, reinsurance, et cetera and pick out those people who have expertise in their given field at Alliant, but also experience in managed care and healthcare and draw them in on a dotted line to our needs as we go. And that's fairly seamless, and it has been a great experience.

Bledion Dizdari (06:48):
That's awesome, Kenny. I love that. I love the line that everybody in most places is willing to get in the boat and ride, and your experience at Alliant, everybody's willing to get in the boat and row. I love that. Keeping in the theme of sports, you might be the Bo Jackson or the Deion Sanders.

Kenny White (07:03):
Well, I went to the University of Alabama, so let's use Deion because Bo went to Auburn.

Bledion Dizdari (07:08):
That's right, yes. So I had Deion Sanders where he's had two hall of fame careers effectively or close to it like you have had in the lawyer profession and then as well as on the broker side. We're very fortunate to have you on our team, and it's always good. A large part of our platform, we like to attract the most talented people and the people that can solve the problems as well as maintain the relationships. What would you tell an aspiring producer to consider or an aspiring professional to consider when choosing a career in insurance?

Kenny White (07:38):
Specialize. Dabbling is wonderful. I don't have the experience of being an insurance agent or somebody like that, so pardon me if I'm eliminating a large portion of the insurance agent and brokerage industry from my response. But on the brokerage side, everything requires specialization these days. Being a jack of all trades is great if you're repairing your house. It's nice to be able to change the light bulbs and fix the electric and maybe repaint or repair something minor, but that doesn't work very well in the insurance brokerage industry these days. If you look around Alliant or any other of the big brokerage houses, they have some very specialized people who are brought to bear on some very unique challenges, and there are enough of them to generate the economics behind having people like that. You have people only keeping with the sports that do nothing on a football team but return kickoffs. That's all they do. They don't do anything else or a long snapper. But if you don't have one of those that's very good, you have a real big problem. So I would recommend to anybody that they specialize in something. Specialize in an industry, specialize in a product line, specialize in a service. There is no substitute for experience and expertise in a particular field, and I think that that's very important. Even for older folks like myself, being specialized I think is a very important thing, particularly if you are involved in healthcare, there's just too much going on to keep up with it. If you are too far afield, there's no way to be an expert in healthcare and healthcare risk identification, quantification, mitigation, management, finance and then risk transfer to the extent that that's possible in an industry like healthcare and also do auto or mining or marine. It's just not possible. So that would be my big word of advice, whether it's practicing law or being in medicine or being in brokerage for risk transfer, specialize.

Bledion Dizdari (09:51):
I love that Kenny, and that's the backbone of our platform here. I like to say that a lot of our brokers within our platform and all the professionals, whether it be a claims or data analytics or loss control or everybody else, they're in the industry first, and then they just happen to do the insurance component of it. And so specialization is key for us. Kenny, let's get a little personal. What was your first job?

Kenny White (10:15):
Oh. Very, very, very first job that wasn't cutting grass in the neighborhood, I parked cars or directed traffic at a mall at Christmas time. And from there, I think I was 15, I got a job at the Ferrell's Ice Cream Parlor in the same mall. And my entire career of that type of a service industry, I think lasted three months before I figured I was not cut out for being a waiter or a wait staff or anything related to that. So that was how I got started.

Bledion Dizdari (10:52):
What is your guilty pleasure? Something that a lot of people don't know about you?

Kenny White (10:57):
Wow. I guess you’d call me a whiskey aficionado. Some people know lots and lots and lots of things about wine, and they like to enjoy wine, and they know all sorts of things about wine. And they'll grab a 60-page wine list and flip through it and pick out exactly what they want. I'm that way on whiskey. I have spent years and years and years learning everything that I could about whiskey.

Bledion Dizdari (11:21):
Oh, that's amazing. Alright. Maybe you could share some of your whiskey knowledge with us. What is your proudest moment?

Kenny White (11:27):
Oh, wow. Other than my children, those are probably the two. Having been married for 33, 34 years now, pretty proud. She hadn't kicked me out yet. That's a good thing. Eighteen national championships for the University of Alabama. Those were all proud moments. I would say that the one thing that meant the most to me professionally to date as opposed to just personally was being sworn in to the bar of the United States Supreme Court.

Bledion Dizdari (12:01):
That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, sounds like there's a lot to be proud of. Kenny White, thank you for joining us on this episode of Why Alliant. Once again, Kenny White is the managed care industry group leader here at Alliant, and we're very, very excited to have him as part of our team and on our boat rowing along with us. Thank you.

Intro (12:24):
Thank you for listening. For more information, visit us at www.alliant.com/WhyAlliant.