John Melton is an Independent Insurance Agent and Partner at RCI Insurance, an independent insurance broker that finds personal and commercial insurance for its clients. He is also a real estate investor and an entrepreneur who’s owned multiple businesses. At RCI, he specializes in worker’s compensation insurance for businesses, including contractors, manufacturers, and bar and restaurant owners. After eight years of serving in the United States Air Force, John joined the Oklahoma Air National Guard, where he received the rank of E-5 Staff Sergeant, journeyman status as an in-flight refueler, and craftsman status as a vehicle operator.
Kyle Beggs is the Owner and CEO of RCI Insurance and a real estate investor with over 25 properties. As a designated commercial lines coverage specialist, he has been named as one of the 42 Young Guns in the industry by Insurance Business America magazine. Kyle is also the President of the Rogers State University Alumni board and serves as the Executive Vice President at the Chamber of Commerce.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How John Melton and Kyle Beggs became involved in commercial real estate
- Kyle and John talk about RCI Insurance’s offerings
- Market challenges and costs of commercial multifamily property insurance
- How often do insurance carriers write multifamily property claims, and how does competition affect pricing?
- Key considerations for comparing commercial multifamily property insurance policies and how to acquire optimal rates
- Determining fair pricing on insurance policies
- The impact of inflation on insurance rates
- John and Kyle explain minimum earned premiums
In this episode…
The 2023 insurance market is projected to be the most challenging. Inflation has increased the cost of rates and premiums, and Hurricane Ian has impacted commercial carriers’ profitability. When it comes to commercial multifamily property insurance, optimal coverage is especially difficult to find. How do you assess policies and ensure the best rates?
Policy terms and conditions are becoming increasingly strict, so John Melton says to always analyze the fine print when comparing carriers. For instance, vacant multifamily properties often have little to no damage coverage, and a penalty may be imposed if your property is not insured at its initial value upon a loss. Kyle Beggs always selects policies with replacement costs to offset possible coinsurance penalties and says to be aware of your loss ratio to get affordable rates.
In today’s episode of The Same Day Podcast, Mat Zalk talks with John Melton and Kyle Beggs of RCI Insurance about the commercial property insurance market. Together, they discuss the costs of commercial multifamily property insurance, how to compare insurance policies, and the impact of inflation on rates.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Mat Zalk on LinkedIn
- Keyrenter Property Management
- Keyrenter Property Management Tulsa
- Keyrenter Property Management Oklahoma City
- Keyrenter Property Management Arkansas
- Keyrenter Property Management email address: [email protected]
- John Melton on LinkedIn
- Kyle Beggs on LinkedIn
- RCI Insurance
- Business Networking International (BNI)
- Insurance Journal
- BiggerPockets
- “Closing the Deal With Real Estate Investors” with Scott Reeves on The Same Day Podcast
- “Renting to Own: The Advantages of a Contract for Deed” with Brook Reutter on The Same Day Podcast
- “Building a Successful HVAC Company From the Ground Up” with Will Gilbrech on The Same Day Podcast
Sponsor for this episode…
Keyrenter Property Management:
This episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management.
Keyrenter Property Management is a full-service property management company who helps their clients buy, renovate, and operate real estate assets.
They help clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management.
That’s why, no matter what rental you have — single-family homes, condos, townhomes, or apartments — they can give you the management solutions you need.
To learn more about their services, go to https://keyrenterpmc.com/ or send them an email at [email protected].
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:05
Welcome to The Same Day Podcast where we discuss driving incremental business growth and other topics related to real estate, property management and entrepreneurship. Now to the show at hand.
Mat Zalk 0:20
Mat Zalk here on the host of The Same Day Podcast where I connect with top business experts and real estate leaders past guests include Brook Reutter talking about contract for deed versus lease to own options Scott Reeves the Chickasaw Community Bank talking about commercial banking options. And we just had on Will Gilbreth go Franklin Heating and Air out in Northwest Arkansas one of the fastest growing HVAC businesses in the country. Talking about all the complications of HVAC and servicing equipment in summer and winter. Super interesting podcast we talked about home warranties and why they suck. I hope we don’t have any home warranty people that are listening to this or want to come on the podcast. Today’s episode is brought to you by Keyrenter Property Management at Keyrenter Property Management. We are a full service property management company helping our clients buy, renovate and operate real estate assets. We help our clients build wealth while taking the headache out of property management. John, Kyle, you both are real estate investors. And you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say it’s hard to win up contractors to get in make ready done in a reasonable amount of time after a tenant leaves a property. Sometimes they leave it in not the best conditions. But you know, contractors are busy, the work seems to drag on forever and all that leads to lost rental income. At Keyrenter, we line up our dedicated vendors so that turns can happen super quickly, and we get more money back into the pockets of our owners. And on that topic. We’re gonna have Tom Watkins of our maintenance team come and explain how we do make readies and while we’re doing super effectively, he’s gonna be on at some point in the near future. But that is why no matter what rental you have single family homes, condos, townhomes apartments, we have the management solution that you need, go to keyrenterpmc.com. Org, [email protected] Before we introduce John and Kyle say John, I originally met at BNI BNI. Business Network International, it’s a great networking organization where it’s a referral based networking organization where each person or each seat is designated for one professional classification. So there’s one property manager, one attorney that focuses on divorce, one that focuses on whatever and then you know, a CPA and a contractor and whatever else and it’s, you know, passing referrals back and forth. So John was John held the commercial insurance seat in our chapter for a long time. And that’s how we built a relationship originally. So I’m grateful to BNI for having connected us two together. The other thing is that John, a real estate investor is you know, took a stuck his neck out and bought a very risky asset that he did a beautiful job turning, renovating and ultimately sold it to one of our investors. So we still manage that property. We’re about the quick trip at 11 and Utica so happy that he was able to do all that hard work and capitalize on some of the value that he created. Let me do a quick intro John Melton is a military veteran commercial insurance broker, entrepreneur, real estate investor and multi time business owner. He’s also an aviation enthusiast. Just have we recently reconnected and I love talking aviation. So anybody wants to come on and talk general aviation I’m, I’m always I’m always open to that. But he’s a longtime insurance broker with RCI insurance and Kyle Beggs has been in commercial insurance in the commercial insurance world for 10 years. He’s also a real estate investor with over 25 doors. John and Kyle are partners and with you know, having bought into the business in 2016, Kyle and John have a unique perspective on insurance because they both write insurance on a commercial basis and they also pay the premium. The premiums as as investors, Kyle’s a native of Claremore, where he lives with his wife and his two boys. Kyle, John, welcome to the show. How are you?
John Melton 3:43
Doing great. Thanks for having us, Mat. Really appreciate it.
Mat Zalk 3:46
Good to have you on. Tell us a little bit about how you got started in commercial real estate. So commercial insurance,
John Melton 3:52
commercial insurance. You know, I got out of the military a little over gosh, I guess is eight years ago at this point. I was a part time or I guess you call it a weekend warrior. And I was doing sales and the industrials supply space. Look looking for something different Kyle and I went to college together, reached out and we kind of formed an agreement and started working together. So that was 2016, October of 2016. I believe and been doing it ever since. Yeah, I’ll say real quick. And I’ve Kyle and insurance to thank for my entrepreneurship, you know, us as insurer as as commercial insurance agents. We deal with nothing but entrepreneurs good, bad, good, bad, you know, mediocre entrepreneurs. We see all that. So again, insurance is really the thing that set me on that path. So
Mat Zalk 4:57
I love it. Kyle, you’ve been involved for just a couple years longer than John has what got you involved?
Kyle Beggs 5:04
You know, actually, I graduated college in ‘09, you know a great time to to try to get a job with no experience. So had a had a couple of buddies that reached out to me and said, Hey, man, he be good at insurance. And I said, No, I’ll never sell insurance. Is that a compliment? It is never, never, never say never. And so I dug into it. And, you know, my dad was my hero and a guy, I’m always still to this day look up to a lot. And he was an entrepreneur, and I love how he thought, and fast forward to today, I couldn’t think of a better business man I love you get to be surrounded by guys that started out their garage and now have 100 plus employees or, you know, whatever the case is, so kind of fell into insurance. And then kind of lucky I did.
Mat Zalk 5:51
Yeah, I love it. I mean, you guys get to see the back end of all sorts of businesses and frankly, through the sales cycle, and then through the audit cycle for anybody that’s listening, that does not know commercial insurance. Well, on the general liability side, for sure you you’re kind of understanding what sort of revenue a business is doing, and then get audited on the backside to make sure that the coverage was appropriate. And they can either give you a refund, or charge you a little bit more based on the accuracy of your prediction for a year. But you really get to see real numbers, I mean, a p&l for all sorts of businesses. That’s a pretty cool look under the skirt so to speak. What let’s let’s talk about RCI, what kind of insurance do you guys write?
Kyle Beggs 6:30
Well, we kind of, you know, we specialize in commercial insurance, I would say the majority of our firm, that’s what we do and have our staff build towards, but we’ve got a full department that does Group Health, for businesses, and then we’ve got a full personal lines department that does a lot of our business owners or just anyone elses insurance. In that case, we’re independent broker. And so I think what our biggest advantage is that we’re going to shop it out with probably over 20 companies, you know, and try to get the best rate for the best coverage. And, and so that’s a little bit about us to do that.
John Melton 7:08
John, anything. No, the difference in us in a State Farm agent is, or you know, any other farmers agent or anything like that, as we are a broker, we’re not tied to one company. So we shot the market, depending on whatever the risk is so.
Mat Zalk 7:23
So for our listeners, anybody that owns a business, we should probably touch base a little bit on general liability insurance, we should probably touch base a little bit on worker’s comp, and then predominantly, what I’d love to focus on is property insurance for big multifamily stuff. So we can talk about certainly single family and in the nuances there, but I’d love to touch base on the commercial insurance of multifamily properties, because that industry has seemingly gone up and up and up. For the last year, the pricing has gone up and up and up for the last number of years. And we often have clients that come to us and they are performing at a property, they say I’ve looked at the trailing 12 numbers, this property this 60 unit property is paying $45,000 A year and insurance, I think I can knock it down to $25,000. At least that’s what the the listing agent told me I can do. And I, you know, frankly, I roll my eyes a little bit, but then I understand that, you know, if this doesn’t happen, the numbers aren’t going to pencil out, they’re gonna start squeezing us on management fees and, and looking at us for you know, cost cutting measures and encouraging us to not change hot water tanks when they go out, so to speak. And, you know, pushing deferred maintenance and all sorts of other stuff. So let’s talk, let’s talk commercial multifamily insurance. Where’s what’s the state of the industry? Where are we going price wise, just generally?
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