NYSE Texas: Globe Life's Co-CEOs on Building a Resilient Insurance Giant

**Brian Daniel** (0:12)
From the historic Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas, Texas, welcome to the Inside the ICE House podcast. I'm your host today, Brian Daniel. I'm president of NYSE, Texas, and I'm joined today by Frank Svoboda and Matt Darden. They're the co-CEOs of Globe Life. They've joined us today to talk about their company, doing business in Texas, and just really the growth that we've seen here. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. Well, thanks for having us. Glad to be here. Oh, this is great. I love this opportunity to talk with folks that are anchored down here and doing business in Texas and doing business all across the nation. It's this great combination that we see, and we're excited to talk about the companies that we've been working with and the success that you're seeing. Let me, Frank, if I could, I'll just start with you, but chime in. I mean, Matt, we're here for a conversation. I think folks are really interested in what we're here to talk about. Frank, let me just start with you and just really ask, Globe Life.
Tell us about the business model. Tell us why it's different in the marketplace and what that means for your customers and others.

**Frank Svoboda** (1:21)
Sure. Now, what Globe Life really focuses on and we have for a really long time is just really serving the lower and middle income, working families of America.
And we do that by providing basic protection products to them. Some just very simple, easy to understand products.
And then we sell those products through a combination of exclusive agencies and a direct-to-consumer channel. And we do have some products that we sell through purely general agencies, but we really focus on the exclusive and the direct-to-consumer. And I think what really makes us a little bit different, especially from the other public companies that are out there, is that focus, true focus on that market. And most of the companies over the years have kind of left that marketplace and started to really focus on more upper income, selling retirement products, selling high-face, cash-surrender value, saving for retirement-type products. Whereas we've really stayed over the years selling essentially the same products of just very low-face, simple, easy to understand, and doing it through that exclusive distribution.

**Brian Daniel** (2:34)
And so that's been your core product then for a long time. Yes.
And the customer base looks probably very similar to what it's always looked like.

**Frank Svoboda** (2:43)
Yeah, very similar.

**Matthew Darden** (2:44)
Yeah, it's very much a lower middle income. And so the products that Frank's referring to are your just traditional term and whole life products. They're designed to really be there when a family has that immediate need after the death of a loved one or a critical illness on our health side. And so we're not trying to do financial planning and investment products, all these complicated things. And so that's the uniqueness. And it's frankly the biggest market place out there from just a quantity perspective. And so our long history in that market enables us to serve that market very well.

**Brian Daniel** (3:27)
And so the business model, because you're describing very major life events for people. But your business model has to be, I would think, somewhat more resilient to just fluctuations in the market place, things that might be going on economically. How does that play in to what you're able to do for your customers?

**Matthew Darden** (3:46)
Yeah, I think what's very interesting about that, and we've looked at our experience over time, different economic cycles. You know, you go back to the.com bust and the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009
The business is extremely resilient because once a customer buys that policy and has been paying on it, they are using that for the protection of their family. And so we see that our customer base is very resilient through all those different economic cycles. I think the other thing that really helps is the affordability of the product. And in many cases, most of our products may be 40, 50, $60 a month. And so that is very affordable to that marketplace and it really provides the resiliency of that business over a long period of time, because the customer wants to keep it even if it's not seen as a discretionary purchase. And so they want to keep that even during different cycles. And there's always a value to that. And our sales do well during those timeframes as well. So we've been very impressed as we've looked at that over time, the resiliency of our business model is just tremendous.

**Frank Svoboda** (5:03)
Yeah, I do think that's one of the really, the core things about the marketplace and the products that we provide. I think it's the combination of both of those that really make the big difference.