Agency Profile: Never a Dull Moment for Expert New England Risk Advisor

Boredom in the workplace can be a dangerous thing. It can lead some to stagnation, and lead others to success. The latter is undeniably true for Matt Newell , Managing Director and HUB International Healthcare Specialty Insurance Practice Advisor and Broker. His drive to steadily grow, strengthen his expertise, and, most importantly, keep things interesting has led him on a rewarding career path that continues to advance and stay in step with the constantly shifting healthcare landscape.

Wise Move

Matt’s insurance career kicked off shortly after graduating with a business management and history degree from Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island.?

“I was offered a few jobs in sales, but there really wasn’t a support network or structured training, and I was smart enough to see that was not a recipe for success,” Matt recalled. “A friend of mine had gotten into the insurance industry and was doing well for one of the top personal lines carriers in the country and recommended I apply—so I did and was hired for a claims position. They had a very detailed six-week training program where you basically got immersed in the industry, gained all the technical knowledge, and learned how to interact socially with real higher-ups in the company to develop proper business etiquette. So, I was happy to land there—it was a good choice.”

Over the next five years Matt promoted several times, but he struggled with sticking to personal lines because he felt the subject matter was a bit dry for his liking, and he wanted more of a challenge.

“It shocked the company because they felt I was on the fast track, and they didn’t understand that I just wanted to work in more complex areas of insurance. A colleague had left not long before me for the same reason and became a claims manager for a medical malpractice carrier. The work he was doing intrigued me, so I followed him—not to the same company but to a competitor based in Boston. And that was the start of my exposure to medical malpractice insurance.”

Matt held several claims management positions with the carrier over a 10-year period and then ultimately decided it was time to branch out and take on a new challenge.

“I thought medical malpractice claims were fascinating, but eventually I wanted to do more in this space than just claims. And when you’re experienced in claims, you learn the coverage, you know the claims scenarios, and that in turn empowers you to talk knowledgeably about the product. So, I decided to pivot to a business development role and work closely with brokers and get to know the brokerage world.”

Major Shift

Matt learned pretty quickly there’s a sharp learning curve transitioning from an-office based claims job to getting out and pounding the pavement as a business development representative.

“It was difficult because there wasn’t much formal training and we had a lot of agents and brokers appointed by the company,” Matt explained. “I was very much on my own to figure out who everyone was, how significant or insignificant of a relationship they had with us, and at the time, during the late ‘90s, we were just getting involved in the computer age, so I didn’t have the benefit of access to data that I do now. At first, I spent a lot of time wading through files and talking to people to figure out who’s who. And at the same time, the expectations of my manager were to go out and do agency and brokerage visits four days a week, getting face time—and on that fifth day, I’d be back on the phone scheduling more appointments for the next week.”

After a few years of mastering his craft, Matt joined another malpractice carrier in a similar business development role.

“I had three great years with them—we wrote a lot of business, and it was a great organization—but in the fourth year, they merged with a larger malpractice insurer, and it was clear the company they merged with was now in control and they were pumping the brakes, if not screeching the brakes, on a lot of new business initiatives we were doing previously. I could see that ride was going to take a significantly different turn, and quite frankly, I was going to get bored, and I just wasn’t going to wait around for that to happen.”

That’s when Matt realized he wanted to jump onto the other side of the brokerage realm.

Specialization

Matt put feelers out to former colleagues and associates letting them know he had his eyes open for an opportunity and one of those people, unbeknownst to him, was looking to start his own agency.

In 2003, they launched the company and joined an existing agency as a separate corporation, concentrating on property and liability insurance for any and all types of healthcare providers, with medical malpractice coverage for physicians and groups being the primary focus.

“That was my birth into that side of the brokerage world—being a healthcare specialist. And I’ll tell you what: I love supporting the healthcare industry. It’s one of the most important industries out there. It’s something that as consumers we all rely on. And the medical malpractice piece of it, for physicians, it’s a big expense, but it’s also critical for them—and it needs to be done right. They need to have a great deal of confidence in it, and they need to feel like they’re not overpaying. It’s an essential product. It’s never gotten stale and probably never will get stale. And that’s one of the biggest reasons I gravitated to it.”

Matt then took it upon himself to learn other lines of insurance, like workers’ comp and directors and officers coverage, to round out his understanding of the suite of solutions they could offer.

After much success, in 2010, the agency Matt and his business partner had joined spun the separate corporation off by selling them to HUB International New England.

“We instantly became HUB New England’s Healthcare Specialty Practice because they didn’t have one for that sector and they wanted to grow in that space,” Matt said. “Up until that point, we had 12 employees, were just under $3 million in revenue, so it was about $30 million in premium that we were managing. And it wasn’t HUB’s biggest acquisition by far, but it was a very important one to them because HUB was recognizing at that time they needed to get into industry specialization—they couldn’t just be generalists. They needed producers, account executives, and account managers working in teams that were focused on specific industries.”

Ever since the 2010 acquisition, HUB New England’s Healthcare Specialty Practice has continued to grow and heavily stake their claim in the insurance brokerage market. The acquisition also began to lay the groundwork for what is now HUB’s National Healthcare Specialty Practice, which involves all HUB regions, and New England team members remain very active with their healthcare specialist colleagues throughout the U.S. and Canada.??

Reflecting on his path leading up to today, Matt makes it clear that he started his career as a specialist and not a salesperson, and even though he has had multifaceted roles with producing being a part of that, he wants to be looked at as a risk consultant and licensed advisor first and foremost.

“The risk management, or technical side, of medical malpractice insurance is the part that gives me the most satisfaction—helping our clients protect themselves and their practice. I want the relationships to be consultative. Through all of my claims experience, I’m able to use hindsight to help them prevent risks I’ve seen others in the past be exposed to. But I also make sure I keep my fingers on the pulse of the evolution of healthcare and use foresight to be able to advise our clients of what’s coming down the pike so they can continue to thrive in such a rapidly changing environment.”

This article originally appeared in the March 2023 issue of The Agent’s Advocate, a publication of The Doctors Company.

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