InsurePodcast #7: Brandy Henriquez with Tom Polowy

Note: this episode recording got interrupted, so there's a sharp cut halfway through.Brandy Henriquez and W. Tom Polowy run Insure Connecticut, an independent brokerage based in West Hartford and licensed in seventeen Eastern states. Brandy came to insurance from twenty years in radio and entertainment production. After looking at real estate and insurance as his next chapter, he landed at a State Farm captive in May 2022, ran it for two and a half years, and left when the captive model stopped letting him serve his customers the way he wanted to. Tom started his own agency during what he calls "the P&C apocalypse" of COVID — a period when carriers were closed to new appointments and there was almost nothing to write. The two of them partnered in 2024: Brandy oversees personal and commercial insurance, Tom focuses on wealth management, and together they run a content studio with podcast rooms on the side.In this conversation we get into how Insure Connecticut operates differently from most independent brokerages. Brandy walks through the AI workflow they've built around Cara — feeding carrier appetites into an AI tool that helps them figure out who to quote a hard Connecticut property with before they ever pick up the phone. We talk about their carrier panel — about twenty for home, twelve for auto, plus wholesale through Burns & Wilcox and others — and their internal "Alan," the guy on the phone with underwriters who solves whatever Cara can't. We get into the workflow texture: SOPs by line of business, dec page and ACORD form intake, and the limits of every AMS and rater on the market.Tom is sharper than most agency owners on marketing strategy. He talks about why most agencies aren't actually running businesses — they're just existing, buying leads, doing what they've always done. Insure Connecticut runs eighty to a hundred leads a month, almost entirely through SEO, with referral partnerships from real estate and mortgage professionals layered on top. We get into what he's learning about AI engine optimization — including a regular stream of referrals from ChatGPT and Claude that he didn't believe when it first started happening — and his honest take on why no startup has solved the agency workflow problem yet despite many trying. Brandy closes with a reminder that gets lost in the scaling race: a lead is a person with a problem.Brandy, Tom, and Insure Connecticut: myinsurect.com