Understanding Insurance with Jeff Arnold

Jeff Arnold Jeff Arnold, president of RIGHTSURE, INC., has been an industry leader for nearly 30 years. He is an expert on insurance mergers and acquisitions, managing deals ranging from six figures to more than $100 million.

He has authored Four Number One Best-Selling Books on Insurance and Technology, including: “The Art of the Insurance Deal” and “How to Beat Your Insurance Company,” His writings and leadership focus on reengineering the insurance environment to be more policyholder friendly.

His latest venture is a newly created platform called Rateguard: A DONE-FOR-YOU service leveraging RIGHTSURE’S award-winning and innovative technology that intends to END INSURANCE SHOPPING as we know it and disrupt the entire insurance ecosystem.

Episode Highlights Here:

Jeff:

Listen, your business is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it and what you’re willing to sell it for. That’s precisely what it’s worth, right?

Pierce:

You talked about buying and selling a bunch of different ones. So the tax events like the capital gains tax, what? What do you guys do for that?

Jeff:

So that’s a very important part of the conversation, right? and it’s got to weave its way in from the very beginning and how we handle it as we advise them to cook because we’re not in that space. Right? I’m not, I don’t have the knowledge that you have with the experience that your firm does and so we advise them, Listen, this will be our offer. Go push this up against not only your legal counsel but your tax advisers and your counsels and see what the tax burden the tax bite is going to be and then if we need to rearrange the payment structure, or how we’re doing it, you know, part stock part asset sale, part, goodwill, you know, how do you draft the agreements? That’s agreeable to both, right? Because we need some deductions for write-offs and they do too. But it’s real; it’s a place where both of you have to meet in the middle and compromise right? and so I often said, this is a good takeaway for anyone buying and selling businesses because they always want to know, well, how much is my agency worth? How much is my insurance operation worth? Or how much is my food service business worth? Whatever it is, I always tell them, Listen, your business is worth what someone’s willing to pay for it and what you’re willing to sell it for. That’s precisely what it’s worth, right? So that number is going to be different on both sides. When you come to that number, now, there’s the tax bite, the capital gains piece, the other piece, and so that could move the number in either direction. So it’s hard to give you an exact answer. What you need to be doing is get your lawyer involved, get your capital gains, people involve your tax people involved, and then the contract folks in the money people involved. So that’s a long-winded answer. Sorry, but that’s how we make sure it’s part of the conversation.