ET Insurance works with Knapp Miller Brown to cover customers

By: 
Kate Wehlann, Staff Writer

Eric and Sharon Williams, of ET Insurance, have been busy lately. So busy, they’ve reached out to another local insurance company to share the load and keep Washington County, and beyond, insured.

Due to the influx of Medicare, life and health insurance customers, along with training to stay on top of changes, ET Insurance is moving its focus there and Knapp Miller Brown is taking over ET’s property and casualty insurance policies.

“I’d love to say when the Affordable Care Act started that I saw it coming, but I didn’t,” said Eric Williams. “The ACA made it so people could retire early and have short-term health insurance until they could get Medicare. We’ve been doing a lot of that and transitioning people to Medicare.”

Mark Nantz of KMB said, “Our carriers line up, which makes it much easier when you’re rolling in policies. I thought he would do this at some point, but I wasn’t expecting it so soon.”

KMB’s acquisition of ET’s policies began on Wednesday, Aug. 1, and Nantz said the company is still working to get all the new customers set up in their system.

“It’s been a bit of a scramble,” he said. “We’re on different systems and we hand-carried more than 60 boxes of information to be put into our system. It will be a little hectic for a month or so, but we expected this and next month will be much smoother.”

For Eric Williams, this is something of a homecoming. His father sold health and life insurance and that’s where he began his career 37 years ago.

Lately, the Williamses have been handling a health insurance customer, on average, every 30 minutes, and that time has been shrinking, even with bringing new staff in to be part of Medicare enrollment. Some customers, especially new enrollees, can expect to spend between an hour and 90 minutes, but those just in for their annual meeting to look over their plans will spend between 20 to 30 minutes at the office. “We want to make sure our customers know what they’re buying,” said Sharon.

“There’s no cookie-cutter fit,” said Eric. “We help them figure out goals for the long-term and short goals and find the plan that’s best for them.”

Because they sell insurance from so many different companies, the mandatory training took up a lot of time as well, as they needed to get training not only with general changes, but with each company they sold for. Something needed to give.

“There wasn’t enough of me to go around,” said Eric Williams. “We did five times as much as we planned last year and we met our yearly goal for 2018 in June.”

Eric Williams said Steve Miller from Knapp Miller Brown approached him in the past about handing off some ET customers.

“I said, ‘No way! I’m not doing that,’” Eric Williams recalled. “He asked me if I ever considered it, to talk with him first.”

As ET Insurance kept popping up on Top 10 and 20 lists, including claiming the No. 1 spot in 2014 for Affordable Care Act policies with their marketing company, larger agencies began approaching the Williamses about selling.

When it did come time to consider it, Eric Williams said he had no trouble choosing which agency to partner with. “We’ve had some of our customers since 1983,” he said. “We wanted someone local. We wanted someone Kristy [Cheatham, who has joined the KMB insurance team] could work with. They don’t do Medicare, so we’re focusing on that.”

The Williamses said ET Insurance will still carry life insurance, annuities, long-term care and short-term health insurance policies for people in between jobs or people looking to transition to Medicare within the next few years. They said people are already scheduling appointments for Medicare open enrollment. 

“We’re pretty much full-time just scheduling right now,” Sharon Williams said.

Eric Williams said their customers have been supportive of the move.

“We wanted to make it work for everyone,” he said.

“We’d like to welcome his customers and I think Kristy is a really good fit and we think everyone will be happy and pleased,” said Nantz.

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