Connell Insurance shifts focus to keep up with ACA

Connell Insurance Inc. tripled its group benefits business in the past year, a move company President Tim Connell says keeps the Hollister-based firm in line with the times.

The company, largely known for its workers’ compensation services and its support of the hospitality industry, has shifted as the Affordable Care Act takes hold, Connell said this morning in a live interview with Springfield Business Journal Editor Eric Olson as part of SBJ’s 12 People You Need to Know series.

“We saw ACA as an opportunity to not only help our clientele but also expand our writing base,” Connell said at Hilton Garden Inn. “In an independent insurance agency, and insurance agents in general, we were all like everyone else in every other profession. It’s been tough for us to grow too. We had to get creative in the way we did it.

“If you’re not evolving with it, you’re not going to evolve your company.”

Being a small business helps, Connell said, as the 40-employee firm adapts its own policies along with others. He said the company can test policies on its own staff before shopping them out to customers.

“As a small company, we were faced with probably about a 48 percent rate hike about three years ago,” he said, noting the company negotiated a large-deductible plan. “There is no standard of what ACA has done and not done on pricing.

“We’ve served a 98 percent up on the plate, we’ve served a 30 percent below. Rule of thumb is, if you have older people in the group, the pricing is going down. If you’ve got younger people in it, it’s going up.”

Springfield opening
Connell Insurance expanded into Springfield with a mid-August office opening at 909 E. Republic Road.

In the 5,200-square-foot former Assist 2 Sell building purchased from Great Southern Bank for $700,000 with financing by First Community Bank of the Ozarks, the office employs around 13.

Connell, who said the company’s employees meet about twice a year outside the office to plan strategically, said officials came up with the idea during a session last year at Missouri State University’s downtown eFactory.

“We have always been good planners,” Connell said. “As we were growing, our staffing was becoming an issue on attracting talent into our organization.”[[In-content Ad]]