A conversation with Vertafore’s Tim Owen, VP of Product Management

During its 2024 National Education Conference in San Diego this week, the Securities & Insurance Licensing Association (SILA) named Tim Owen, VP of product management at Vertafore, board president. Serving SILA’s members alongside the Board of Directors, Tim is focused on providing value to current members and growing the SILA organization.

In this informal interview, Tim answers questions about his life, future SILA leadership, insights about past trends, and what’s ahead for the new year.

Q&A with Tim Owen

What are you most looking forward to as SILA’s president?

I’ve been part of SILA—the non-profit association for insurance licensing and securities registration compliance professionals—since 2002, and I’m excited to give back to the community. At Vertafore, we use SILA’s resources to keep up with the news, provide education courses for our staff, and keep our finger on the pulse of regulatory changes.

I am looking forward to working with SILA staff, the SILA board, and SILA members to drive engagement across the organization and strengthen best practices, charts, and other materials relevant to the members’ daily activities. I hope to help insurance professionals discover these resources and to take advantage of the helpful information on the platform. I’m excited to work towards these goals in the new year.

What do you love most about autumn?

Two of my favorite fall activities include watching football and hanging out at the local cider mill—Uncle John’s Cider Mill. I enjoy pro and college football, rooting for the Detroit Lions, MSU, University of Michigan, and Ferris State University, my alma mater.

If you could only cook one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

A nice, juicy ribeye. Once I learned how to cook it, all bets were off.

What phrase or cliché do you most live by?

“You don’t get what you don’t ask for.”

How can professionals engage with SILA to maximize their membership benefits?

There are so many opportunities to find value with a SILA membership and to get involved:

• Use the member page to post and respond to topics in the discussion forums and review the best practice guides, charts, educational, and other reference materials. Members can also access valuable resources like the SILA Digest, with content frequently contributed by Vertafore through our ongoing partnership with SILA.
• Attend a SILA chapter meeting, join a committee, or participate in one or more of SILA’s subgroups, which are great ways to find best practices in a particular region and nationally.
• Take courses, consider getting a SILA designation, or attend SILA national conferences.

Now let’s talk about some insurance industry trends you are seeing. First, how is onboarding evolving within the agency-carrier relationship?

Agent onboarding has two parts. First is the onboarding process for the agency, brokerage, or securities firm, which involves education, training, and credentialing. Second is establishing selling relationships with one or more carriers. Digitization is driving change in these key areas to streamline the full life cycle of the agency-carrier relationship.

At Vertafore, we are eliminating repetitive data-entry tasks and moving towards solutions that collect data all at once. This allows producers, distributors, and carriers to focus on their core business without spending valuable time on administrative tasks.

This momentum will continue to pick up speed in the years ahead with an increased emphasis on verifying data and ensuring compliance for producers conducting business with carriers.

How does technology help navigate compensation challenges in the agency-carrier relationship?

In Vertafore’s recent carrier report, agents ranked simple compensation statements as a must have when working with carrier partners.

Compensation is key to any agency-carrier relationship. A fair and competitive pay structure helps build strong selling and servicing relationships between agencies and carriers. It encourages agents to focus on quality sales opportunities while promoting the sale of profitable products. On the flip side, inadequate compensation can lead to agency turnover, lower production, and a shift towards short-term gains rather than long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships.

Maintaining multiple back-office systems is an ongoing challenge for carriers. These systems might be outdated or provide difficult to understand statements when multiple lines of business are involved. Agents, on the other hand, are looking for consolidated, accurate, and simple compensation statements to make sure they are receiving the correct payment for their work.

Technology simplifies the process by taking these statements and consolidating them, some carriers can become or remain a partner of choice. Carriers can also optimize agent incentives to drive growth while making it easy to do business. The opportunity lies in modernized technology solutions.

How can technology help carriers manage increasingly complex compliance requirements?

Stakeholders in the insurance distribution value chain—including regulators, carriers, distributors, individuals, and education providers—benefit from technology that provides greater efficiency and better serves consumers across all states. Technology can connect all of these stakeholders meaningfully to automate and eliminate redundant and error-prone manual tasks.

In the industry right now, there is attention on new industry requirements such as annuity sales and Medicare plans to seniors. There is also a uniform push to make it easier for organizations that sell across states to comply properly. Regulatory changes often affect training and compensation standards. Technology can be leveraged to help streamline and manage these ongoing changes efficiently.

What other insurance industry trends are you seeing as we look ahead to 2025?

In this year’s hard market, we saw economic uncertainty, higher interest rates, accelerating inflation, and greater regulatory scrutiny taking a toll on mergers and acquisition (M&A) activity. I think M&A will pick back up next year due to interest rates starting to come down. If we do see a pickup, that could lead to more system consolidation and process changes.

We continue to be in a hard market in the property and casualty space, but that might soften a bit in the coming year. There will always be disasters and ongoing climate challenges to contend with, but premium rates might start to level out.

If you are looking to get involved with SILA, head to www.sila.org/home.

If you’re ready for forward-looking solutions with proven results, see how Vertafore can help

Tim Owen, VP, Product Management

Tim leads product management for Sircon, Vertafore’s suite of distribution channel and compliance management solutions. For more than 25 years, he has leveraged his deep understanding of the industry to help Sircon and Vertafore identify problems the markets face, define product solutions, and maximize customer success.