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Meet Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs of Quantum Insurance Services

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Burnham-Grubbs.

Jennifer, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
After graduating from Princeton and moving to LA, I took a job at a boutique insurance firm in Beverly Hills. It was meant to be a short-term stint while I explored various jobs in the financial sector. They hired me for assistant work, but before long, I’d tripled my firm’s business without knowing it. I found out when a carrier rep came in reading results from a spreadsheet, asking, ‘What are you doing right!?’ Suddenly I realized that, by focusing on solving problems for people with the help of critical thinking, math & listening skills, I’d created measurable value. Clients were happy, which had resulted in effortless growth, and I felt good inside on all levels. A win-win.

A bit later, the Affordable Care Act came on the horizon and suddenly, all this insurance experience I’d developed became super pertinent. A broker sees and understands healthcare from all perspectives – carrier, consumer, provider and industry. Being at that nexus, in the midst of a national paradigm shift with Obamacare, inspired me to launch a firm focused on doing whatever possible to help folks navigate the complexities of insurance. Because I saw most of my industry peers going the opposite direction. They were putting their heads in the sand about the ACA, instead of embracing inevitable, necessary changes whose time had come.

Plus, by this time I’d discovered something else about my industry peers: most saw their work as ‘sales,’ focused on upselling. This disgusted me. We tend to think that an uncle-type figure has our back on financial products and will give the best advice about how to spend our money. Behind the veil, it turns out, most don’t have our back. They’re all about commissions and will even deter you from less expensive solutions for their own benefit. We deliberately launched Quantum as a commissions-agnostic insurance consulting firm to remedy this problem.

My friend once said that opening an insurance consulting firm in the middle of the ACA was like piloting a helicopter through a hurricane, and that’s true. Fortunately, we won several awards within just a few years of opening and quickly became trusted advisors to many of the top business managers, CPAs and employment attorneys throughout SoCal since our reputation for high-quality advice grew organically. Now we have clients all across the US. The same focus on giving quality advice and empowering folks financially remains at the heart of our business and always will. Whether you’re a top tier celebrity/athlete (like many of our clients), a business owner, or an average family just trying to make your way, our consultants know their job is to make sure you get the best bang for your buck from your insurance and leave commissions out of the picture entirely.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Ha! Not at all. First of all, frankly, as a woman in insurance there can tend to be a bit of implicit bias or a perception that the more ‘seasoned’ male brokers know more, have more power/clout in the industry, or run bigger firms. I normally ignore these issues and live by the motto, ‘Just be undeniable,” which has served me well. But from time to time, we’ll lose out on a competitive bid and get the feedback that, even though our advice was the best and presentation was perfect, the decision maker wanted to go with someone who looked more like himself. That hurts, I’ll admit! But what feels REALLY great is when the same client comes back a couple of years later, expressing regret about their decision, asking us to be their advisors. It’s happened repeatedly over the years and my team always loves when that happens. It’s rewarding.

Taking the leap into starting Quantum required an incredible amount of courage. We began at ground zero, with virtually no clients whatsoever. It was just me with cell phone and laptop, in borrowed office space along the Miracle Mile. We grew exponentially from year one and I credit that to hard work as well as the vision my husband and I shared from year one. We wanted to make a company where people would love to work, and clients would feel joy as we result of our efforts. A lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into that, as any business owner knows. Twists and turns happen all the time. For example, with Covid19, most of our clients in employee benefits have been struggling mightily to keep their doors open. We’re advising them on complexities around workers’ comp, furlough, strategic downgrades and many other matters just so they can stay afloat in this incredibly challenging time. I call it the ‘economic front lines’ because it really is! And with this year’s election, we know that rules around employee benefits and health insurance could change at any moment. Our job is to stay sharp, ahead of the curve, and have our finger on the pulse of what’s coming down the pipeline for clients so we can guide them. We call ourselves insurance Sherpas for that reason.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
We’re a full-service firm with both a Life/Health division and a Commercial Property/Casualty division. In Employee Benefits, our client range is 5 to 2000 employees, with a special ‘sweet spot’ in the 50-500 range. In Life/Disability/Long Term Care, we typically support white-collar clients and many extremely high net worth/celebrity clients as well.

Our P&C division developed out of client demand; many people would ask if they could please place all their coverages with Quantum because they enjoyed the experience of working with us so much. We eventually created the commercial division so we could keep clients happy and service their needs even more fully.

In Employee Benefits, we’re known for using 21st-century, forward-driving solutions, smart tech​, and tailored benefits that really help improve the value of coverage. One proud achievement is saving a well-known business management firm in LA over $80K/year while actually making their health benefits even more robust. Another big achievement was helping Princeton University’s Eating Club system save over $40K/club without downgrading coverage on the employees, some of whom had serious health conditions. That felt especially good since the Board had already tried using two very famous firms – Aon and Brown & Brown – but neither solved their problems. Quantum succeeded mightily where the “big” firms failed.

In Life/Disability/Long Term Care, we’re known for procuring rich benefits while getting the lowest possible prices for our clients. We’re brokers, not agents tied to a specific carrier, so we can shop the entire market and get the very best rates. Especially since we take such a proactive approach in field underwriting, we improve the Health Ratings our clients receive by knowing which carriers react most favorably to any health conditions they may have. Almost every applicant has ‘health issues’ in the eyes of a carrier, and it’s easy​for them to bump up rates in response. We go the extra mile to advocate for our clients, so they get much better offers. This comes down to our completely commissions-agnostic approach. It’s actually working harder to earn less. We’re OK with that. Because if we save our clients money by getting them better rates on high-quality insurance, we’ve empowered them financially. That’s our goal, and the rest follows from there.

What most sets us apart is we work at a much higher level than a typical insurance agent. We focus on strategic designs that squeeze the most value out of insurance products on the market, not just slinging whatever carriers promote. Think of it as looking for the financial equivalent of an ‘avocado’ wherever possible, especially if we are working with permanent life insurance designs. We sift through and curate the most competitive options, fine-tune policies with a sophisticated eye and approach our work with a level of critical thinking most people don’t (since their motives aren’t aligned with doing so). We get asked to provide 2nd opinions on other agents’ work because of our expertise and are regularly consulted by Forbes, Kiplinger and other financial publications.

What were you like growing up?
I was a huge nerd!! Your classic straight-A student with no social life until middle school. Then I got contact lenses and became popular almost overnight but still only felt comfortable with my fellow nerds. We lived in a small, boring town so I channeled all my energy into learning, dance or sports. I loved Math, languages, and art. Definitely felt like a fish out of water until I could get to university and find more to feed my soul. Gosh, this sounds sort of like I’m describing myself as a character in “Footloose” which, not coincidentally, is one of my favorite 80’s songs.

Pricing:

  • Quantum has exclusive large discounts on employee benefits for minority-owned companies with 25 employees or more​. That includes women-owned businesses!
  • Also:  CoPatient – protection from surprise medical bills
  • Costs only $3/family/month
  • On average, saves $500 per advocated bill

Contact Info:


Image Credit:
Aaron Jay Young (main headshot), San Fernando Valley Business Journal (large group photo)

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