Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, independent insurance agents were uniquely placed within the market. Amid a surge of companies looking to disrupt the industry with a focus on technological innovation and end-to-end digital accessibility, independent agents catered to a demographic that valued a more personalized approach.

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.

I continue to hear people talk about what the return to normal will look like once the pandemic is behind us. The reality is that as we work to regain our sense of normalcy, our new “normal” will still look very different, and business will be anything but usual. We have all been forced to adapt and change the way we live in order to survive. In the insurance world, independent agents (IAs) took a big hit due to the pandemic and many were compelled to quickly change their entire business structure in order to survive.