About Rick
I've Been Selling Insurance Since 1977.
Fortunately, I Stopped Thinking Like a Salesman a Long Time Ago.
I began my insurance career while attending UCLA in 1977. Like many young agents, I wanted to make sales. Something changed for me years later. I began to understand just how much trust people place in the person giving them insurance advice. And one conversation changed the way I would approach my career from then on.
The Conversation I Never Forgot
In the early 1990s, I represented an insurance company offering a new Medicare plan. A woman was considering leaving her Medicare Supplement for it. She asked me, ‘What if they drop this plan and I can’t get back into my Medicare Supplement?’ I believed that wouldn’t happen. I told her so. A few months later, the company discontinued the plan. I was wrong. And she had trusted me. I resigned from the company. More than three decades later, I still remember that conversation.When someone trusts your advice, you become responsible for more than making a sale.
Clients Don't Need to Be Sold
Insurance and retirement decisions are rarely as simple as advertisements make them appear. Medicare Advantage can be terrific for one person and wrong for another. A Medicare Supplement can provide wonderful flexibility but become unnecessarily expensive. A MYGA may be a better home for certain safe money than a CD – and completely inappropriate for money someone needs readily available. There are advantages and disadvantages to almost everything. My job is to explain them. Then we decide.
I Try to Treat Clients the Way I Treated My Mother
My mother suffered a massive stroke at age 69. After rehabilitation, she came to live with me. For a long period she needed substantial assistance. Eventually she improved, but she never walked or spoke again.
I had the privilege of caring for her for twelve years. During those years I learned more about aging, healthcare, caregiving and family responsibility than I ever could have learned from an insurance textbook.
Would I do this myself – or recommend it to my wife – if we were in the same situation?
Sometimes Clients Become Friends
Years ago, I took my son to a youth production of The Music Man. I remembered the conductor because he was part of the fun of the performance. About a year later, I was meeting a prospective client at a restaurant. In walked the conductor.He became my client. Then my friend. He taught my son to play trumpet. We had breakfast together regularly. When I was discharged after a brief hospital stay, we had lunch. Our friendship lasted for decades. He died recently. I miss him.
People aren't policies.
There's a woman who has referred numerous people to me. Her husband became my client. Her friends became clients. But she didn't. I reviewed her coverage and couldn't improve it. So I told her: 'Keep what you have.' She apparently decided that was a good enough reason to trust me with people she cares about.
When I moved from California to Nevada, I discovered that Medicare Supplement policyholders here didn't have the same Birthday Rule opportunity I'd used to help clients in California. I arranged a meeting with a state legislator and explained the problem. That conversation helped begin the process that ultimately brought a Medicare Supplement Birthday Rule to Nevada. It's one of the accomplishments I'm proudest of - not because I sold anything, but because I helped change something.
My wife and I face many of the same retirement questions my clients do. We've had to think about income, taxes, Required Minimum Distributions, long-term care, and what happens to our money later. We purchased an asset-based long-term-care annuity because, after considering the alternatives, we believed it was right for us. That doesn't mean it's right for you. It was right for us. Let's determine what's right for you.
A License Is the Beginning
Years ago, in my late 50s, I learned to fly. Before my private-pilot checkride, my instructor told me something I’ve never forgotten: getting your certificate isn’t the end of learning. It’s when you really begin to learn. He was right. Passing the checkride meant I was qualified to be pilot in command. But becoming a good pilot came afterward – from experience, judgment and continuing to learn. I’ve come to believe an insurance license works much the same way. A license gives you permission to begin learning. Learning the products comes next. Learning the regulations matters. Keeping up with changes matters. But eventually you discover that the most important lesson isn’t about insurance at all. It’s about taking care of people. When someone trusts me with decisions that can affect their healthcare, retirement savings, income or family, I have a responsibility to live up to that trust. Nearly fifty years after receiving my first insurance license, I’m still learning. And I’m still grateful people give me the opportunity to help. Thank you for the opportunity and privilege to be of service.
– Rick Bronstein