Dan Epstein walked into a New York career office in 2005 and noticed a handwritten ad seeking a sales and marketing professional to help with a startup company that provided insurance processing services. He got the gig.

His time at the company didn’t start with a bang, though. It took Epstein eight months to make his first sale.

Four months later, he’d be the startup’s CEO.

Epstein has since led ReSource Pro from a 12-employee team that worked with four clients to a strategic operations provider with a staff of more than 10,000 and about 1,500 insurance customers.

After that quiet start, and by the end of his first year with ReSource Pro, the company was growing so quickly that the bottleneck had shifted from sales to effectively scaling to meet the business’ growth. His parent company’s board told him his strategy was a winner.

“I think there was an understanding that if I performed well, given my background running a business association and having recently completed an MBA, that [becoming CEO] was a possibility,” Epstein said in a recent interview. “I think six months into it, it probably didn’t look like much of a probability.”

Professional Background

After studying history as an undergraduate, Epstein, who was born in the United Kingdom, earned a master’s degree in international relations. He spent a year in the United States while he studied, during which he held a six-month internship on Capitol Hill. That experience cemented in him a desire to eventually live in the U.S.

He would later serve as the economic officer at the Embassy of Israel. In that formative role, Epstein helped Israeli technology companies navigate the U.S. market and plan and execute market entry strategies.

Epstein went on to run a business association that did similar work. Before long, though, he realized he wanted to move from being an advisor to an operator. He wanted to try his hand at building a company. So, he enrolled in an executive MBA program at Columbia College.

When he finished, Epstein linked up with ReSource Pro.

He then aimed to figure out: What did his potential clients really need?

Growing and Evolving ReSource Pro

Epstein explained that ReSource Pro specializes in understanding the best way to utilize and integrate people, process, technology and data. The company works with retail insurance agencies, wholesale brokers, MGAs and insurers. Its services include consulting, systems management, staff outsourcing, policy processing and more.

After joining ReSource Pro two decades ago, it took Epstein a while to figure out what the market really needed and how to align ReSource Pro with those needs. His initial job was to show how ReSource Pro’s parent company — an MGA — had driven efficiency, productivity and employee morale through its offshore resources.

“My job was to really build a market,” Epstein explained, “because back in 2005, insurance outsourcing was still very much in kind of an early-stage game. Some of the big insurance companies were doing some of that, but certainly very few of the regionals or the middle-market [companies], certainly not on the retail side or the MGA side. There was very, very little of that at the time.”

His initial needs assessment was conducted during a tight insurance labor market. The industry needed people, Epstein said. It also needed reliability, consistency and partners who could do insurance work accurately.

So, ReSource Pro created a staff augmentation solution positioned as an alternative to temping agencies and an effective way of growing and scaling an insurance operation.

The company placed offshore team leaders who were insurance educated in positions that allowed them to interact directly with clients. Those team leaders became process experts who relieved the burden from clients’ managers.

Within four years of Epstein’s hiring, ReSource Pro climbed to No. 57 on the Inc. 5000 list, which ranks the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the U.S. (In August 2024, the company appeared on that annual list for the 15th time.)

Epstein said insurance needs are “actually still pretty analog” today. Because while opportunities exist to apply AI data to parts of the insurance business, much of the process is complex, not standardized and constantly changing.

Good process hygiene is a foundational component of digital readiness, Epstein said.

He explained that ReSource Pro helps customers integrate across large platforms, optimize process design and, finally, implement digitization. That is the final step, Epstein said, because processes can’t be automated and digitized if there is no standardization.

Industry Trends to Watch

When asked about key property/casualty insurance trends, Epstein pointed to the fragmented nature of the industry. Thousands of complex systems are used across insurance. Even within a single, sophisticated organization, there’s variability in how work is performed, Epstein explained.

“I would go so far as to say there’s incredible over-servicing of work, or over-customization of work, that leads to waste, inefficiency, lack of standardization, and therefore, lack of the ability to start applying automation AI technology,” he added.

Epstein also highlighted the aging demographic of the industry. He said all insurance organizations need to perpetuate insurance knowledge, increase the productivity of existing professionals, leverage technology and AI where applicable, and gain access to a global insurance talent base.

Epstein believes that technology, data and AI hold promise for insurance.

“But as I said before, the digital readiness is lacking,” he said. “And automation is rigorous [and] requires standardization and deep discipline of processes, which, process discipline is not necessarily a core trait of most insurance organizations. You need common systems and clean data and process to ensure that those stay maintained.”

He added that users with both insurance knowledge and technical skills, specifically AI skills, are also an important piece.

“And … insurance professionals often don’t have the technical skill sets, and vice versa,” he said. “And so, you’ve got to somehow get those two working together.”

Reflecting on Serendipity

Epstein first learned about the importance of both people and process, which eventually became two of ReSource Pro’s core values, in the mid-1990s. Before returning to the U.S., Epstein lived in Israel for about four years — a period in which he worked at the Bank of Israel and served in the country’s military as a tank gunner.

He has family connections to the country, and he felt that he had a responsibility to do his part. He remembers it as an experience that taught him about people and life. He also believes it showed him that a person is only as good as the process.

“You see how people deal with adversity,” Epstein said of his combat experience. “You see how large organizations operate. And one of the key takeaways for me that I’ve reflected on many times over the years, in particular as I run a company that’s focused on process and management, is the critical importance of process.”

He said that as a soldier, so much of the job is about following processes diligently — training, practicing, not taking shortcuts, and being disciplined.

“That doesn’t mean following orders blindly — you always have to think critically,” he said. “But aligning best practices to diligent process management, one of those without the other … just doesn’t work. But together, they can lead to consistency and effectiveness.”

Epstein made a series of suggestions to systemically boost morale and performance within his platoon during his army exit interview. The battalion head wrote that Epstein “performed his duties like an officer” in his exit papers.

Many years later when Epstein interviewed for his job in the U.S. at the Embassy of Israel, he said his future boss had an attitude of only hiring officers. When he saw that line in the exit papers, his boss knew Epstein was his guy.

“It’s amazing,” Epstein said, “the little, serendipitous things that happen that end up having a massive influence and impact on your life.”