Why I Left Corporate Insurance After 30 Years to Join a SaaS Startup
After 33 years on every side of the industry — Advisor, Agency leader, Bancassurance, Agency Management— the decision was quiet. And entirely deliberate.
In 1993, I walked into this industry as a rookie insurance advisor. Thirty-three years later, at an age when most of my peers are comparing retirement plans, I did something that surprised nearly everyone — including myself. I joined a startup. Not as an investor. Not as an advisor on the side. As a Business Development Director at Producer Framework, a Singapore SaaS company building an operating system for the financial services agency and advisory team market.
When I broke the news, the reactions were what you'd expect from people who've known you for decades in the same industry. One former colleague said, "Lawrence, I didn't know you were into tech." Another, with genuine concern: "At this stage?" A few just smiled the way people do when they think you've gone slightly mad. I understood. From the outside, it looked like a strange pivot. From the inside, it felt like the most logical decision I'd made in years.
Why I finally left
The honest answer isn't one reason. It's three, and they arrived together.
The first was exhaustion. Not physical, but motivational. After years as a Director of Agencies, I found myself caught in the same loop: chasing monthly targets, watching the annual numbers reset to zero every January, repeating the cycle. The work stopped feeling like it was building toward something.
The second was harder to admit. The agencies and advisory teams I supported were struggling with the same problems year after year. Leaders came in with energy and hit the same walls: recruitment that didn't stick, advisors who quit, accountability that lived in morning meetings instead of systems. Then they either ground through it or quietly faded.
I was advising around a structural problem I didn't have the tools to solve.
The third is something I suspect many people in long corporate careers quietly recognise. You start to feel your contribution is no longer seen clearly. The energy you spend getting things approved stops feeling like investment and starts feeling like friction. When the work you care about and the place you're doing it pull in opposite directions, something eventually has to give.
When all three arrived at once, the decision wasn't dramatic. It was quiet. I was done.
What I saw in Producer Framework
I've watched technology initiatives wash through this industry for thirty years. CRMs that agencies subscribed to and abandoned. Portals built by insurers that nobody used after the project sponsor moved on. I don't trust software easily.
What stopped me with Producer Framework was one question I'd never seen answered properly: do your leaders and their advisors have the discipline and the system to build their business, consistently, month after month, year after year?
The platform is built around the fundamentals that have always separated producers who last from producers who don't: activity discipline, client trust, team accountability, and recruitment with intention. Every tool maps to something that actually matters in the field. How many calls were made. How warm a prospect is before they meet you. Whether a leader can see who's drifting before they resign.
And it's not standing still. Producer Framework is building AI into the platform, including an AI-enabled Cold Calling Coach that gives new advisors real-time guidance and feedback on their calls. I spent years watching green advisors flounder through their first hundred calls with no structured feedback. That feature alone says something about where this product is headed.
I'm convinced that leaders and advisors who are persistent and disciplined in working with this system will build something that lasts. That conviction, not enthusiasm or novelty, is what made me say yes.
What startup life actually feels like
I won't pretend the transition has been seamless.
The most significant shift has been learning AI — properly, practically, not as a spectator. In a company this size, there's no department to hand things to. If I need a presentation, I build it. Business plan, market analysis, a report for a prospect — I work through it myself, and AI tools have become the colleague I didn't expect. The speed at which I can now produce work that would have taken days in a corporate environment is, genuinely, one of the more surprising things that has happened in my professional life.
The uncomfortable part is that I probably could have been using these tools for years. A startup simply didn't give me the option of not learning.
The other surprise is how much energy there is in a small team with a clear mission. Corporate life has many strengths, but clarity of purpose is not always one of them. Here, everyone knows what we're building and why. That focus, without the layers of sign-offs and committee reviews, is something I hadn't realised I was missing.
Why I'm writing this
I didn't leave the industry. I moved deeper into the problem I could never fully solve from inside an insurer.
If you lead an agency or an advisory team, in Singapore, in Malaysia, in any market where advisors are still being recruited with hope and lost through neglect, what I'll be writing about in the months ahead is for you. The feast-and-famine cycle. Why good advisors quit. What accountability actually looks like as a system rather than a speech. How AI is changing what it means to prospect, to coach, and to lead.
Thirty-three years of watching this industry from every angle has given me a lot to say. I'm glad to finally have the right platform to say it from.
Now I get to work on fixing those problems. And I'm building a team of people who want to do the same.
This is Article 1 of 15 — a thought-leadership series on agency leadership, retention, accountability, and AI for leaders and advisors operating in Singapore and SEA.