Roughly a full year into the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be difficult to enumerate all the hard lessons we have learned as a global community.

Professional associations, employers, banks, and alumni groups. This is the traditional core of affinity, and for a good reason. These tight-knit groups comprise a channel that’s consistently delivered some of the best customers to insurers. The challenge of affinity isn’t the quality of leads, it’s the quantity. But today, digital delivery is reshaping that, and proving it can be much bigger than we thought.

Just over 10 years ago John Fees and I founded Next Generation Insurance Group (NGI) because we firmly believed the buying patterns of the next generation of consumers would reshape the industry. After a decade of building two InsurTech companies, it is fair to say we were wrong about many things and right about a few. Reflecting on the journey, here are some observations from an entrepreneur and long-time insurance agent coming off ten years of zigzags, pivots, wins, losses and second chances.