Lay of The Land #133: Mike Schroeder (Roundstone Insurance)
Mike Schroeder, Founder & President of Roundstone.
Mike founded Roundstone Insurance in 2003 — when they launched the first Group Medical Captive of its kind, and have since revolutionized the self-insurance industry. Roundstone’s captive approach to insurance allows small and mid-sized businesses to take advantage of the benefits of self-funded insurance that previously only larger enterprises could enjoy — such as plan flexibility & control, transparency, and cost savings. By banding smaller companies together in a shared-risk community, those companies are protected from volatility and can be rewarded with extra savings — in practice, since its inception, Roundstone has distributed over $72 million dollars back to its captive participants – money that, in the fully insured model, would be pocketed by the insurance carriers instead.
This idea, which began with an entrepreneurial vision of creating a better life for his family and for his employees, has since evolved under Mike’s leadership into a thriving 140-person company with more than 700 employers participating in Roundstone's Group Medical Captive, saving participating companies 20% on average relative to traditional insurance plans;
With more than twenty-five years of management experience and recognized by EY as a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year in 2022, Mike has a proven track record of growing Roundstone with a 30% CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) over the last two decades, which has earned Roundstound recognition as one of the fastest growing companies in America by Inc. 5000 for five consecutive years as well a Northeast Ohio Top Workplaces — all while remaining a fully independent, family-owned organization.
In our conversation today, we explore how Mike’s experience as a practicing attorney and a property and casualty insurance expert inspired his application of self-funding and captives to employer health insurance; we talk about what captives and self-funding even are and how they compare to traditional and fully insured coverage, we unpack the biggest challenges in the employer healthcare system today and how misaligned incentives encumber attempts to solve those challenges… and importantly, how Roundstone is trying to explicitly align those incentives. This was an amazing and wide-ranging discussion — Mike is a formidable builder and leader and has built an inspiring organization with Roundstone, based here in Lakewood, Ohio.
-----
Lay of The Land is brought to you by Ninety. As a Lay of The Land listener, you can leverage a free trial with Ninety, the platform that helps teams build great companies and the only officially licensed software for EOS® — used by over 7,000 companies and 100,000 users!
This episode is brought to you by Impact Architects. As we share the stories of entrepreneurs building incredible organizations throughout NEO, Impact Architects helps those leaders — many of whom we’ve heard from as guests on Lay of The Land — realize their visions and build great organizations. I believe in Impact Architects and the people behind it so much, that I have actually joined them personally in their mission to help leaders gain focus, align together, and thrive by doing what they love! As a listener, you can sit down for a free consultation with Impact Architects by visiting ia.layoftheland.fm!
-----
Connect with Mike Schroeder on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelaschroeder/
Learn more about Roundstone — https://roundstoneinsurance.com/
Follow Roundstone on Twitter @CaptiveInsurer — https://twitter.com/CaptiveInsurer
-----
For more episodes of Lay of The Land, visit https://www.layoftheland.fm/
Past guests include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Steve Potash (OverDrive), Ed Largest (Westfield), Ray Leach (JumpStart), Lila Mills (Signal Cleveland), Pat Conway (Great Lakes Brewing), Lindsay Watson (Augment Therapy), and many more.
Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up for Lay of The Land's weekly newsletter — sign up here.
Connect with Jeffrey Stern on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffreypstern/
Follow Jeffrey Stern on Twitter @sternJefe — https://twitter.com/sternjefe
Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter @podlayoftheland