Agency Profile: New York Insurance Advisor Makes Care the Foundation for His Success

The Doctors Company
August 1, 2023

Great American novelist John Steinbeck once said, “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” All of us connected to the spectrum of healthcare understand the importance of empathy. Lawley Insurance Advisor and Healthcare Practice Group Leader Michael Knott has built his career around it.

Born in Buffalo, New York, Mike was raised in a Jesuit upbringing, attending Canisius High School and Canisius College in Buffalo, both private Jesuit schools. One of the most resonating Jesuit values Mike committed to at an early age was the idea of being “men and women for others.”

“It is important to me, and I want to actually live that motto,” Mike said.

Mike studied biology and psychology as a double major in college with hopes of following the career path of both his brother and sister as surgeons in the medical field.

“That’s the route I thought I was going. But after seeing what they went through and how passionate they were, I just didn’t feel as strong of a desire to enter the field as they did. At the time, I was struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with my long-term future, but I knew I wanted to help people and give back to the community. So, I decided not to jump into a job right away, and instead, volunteered my time at AmeriCorps’ Homeless Alliance of Western New York.”

Creating a Legacy

Since he was fresh out of school, the Homeless Alliance felt Mike would be well suited for research and writing, where he assisted with creating an ambitious 10-year plan to end homelessness in Buffalo. One of the main areas he and his colleagues focused on was establishing a program called Housing First, which helped utilize government funding to subsidize rented apartments for homeless individuals.

“When people are living on the street, it’s almost like a feeling of hopelessness sets in. It becomes so difficult for people to deal with life and all the issues associated with being homeless. We figured if we could provide people with stable housing, it would help motivate them into rehabbing themselves back into feeling self-worth and becoming productive members of society.”

It’s now 11 years since the 10-year plan was instituted.

“The number of chronically homeless in Buffalo has gone down significantly. And I think a lot of that has to do with the programs, policies, and procedures we implemented—we used best practices from other successful cities to help us get positive results.”

Finding Direction

Near the end of his year with AmeriCorps, Mike decided to do a complete 180 from his premed education and switched to prelaw aspirations.

“I took the LSAT and started applying to law schools. With both of my siblings being surgeons, I was interested in doing medical malpractice defense work. I still needed a job to fill the gap between AmeriCorps and law school, so I settled on getting some experience in the insurance industry. I had some friends who worked at Lawley Insurance, and all of the Lawley boys went to Canisius High School where I went, so I applied for a job and luckily, they hired me.”

For nearly a year, Mike worked in the claims department, which proved to be beneficial in terms of using the knowledge he gained toward future positions at Lawley.

“I think claims is an excellent place to start in insurance because you see the end product, where, even now in my career, when I’m writing insurance and working with clients, I can foresee risks or potential claims and tell my clients, ‘Okay, we need this coverage for your exposures because of a certain type of situation I’ve seen before.’ Having claims experience makes you a good risk manager and able to identify all the things that could possibly happen.”

After his time in claims, Mike shifted over to a marketing assistant role.

“I worked with one of our long-time marketers and she trained me how to build relationships with carriers and how to sell our clients to the carriers. Using that with my claims experience, and working with producers, I became more well-rounded over the next year and a half.”

And that’s when a sense of innovation kicked in for Mike.

Building Business and Relationships

“When I first started at Lawley, we wrote some nursing homes and healthcare facilities, but we didn’t write any physician medical malpractice,” Mike explained. “Being in New York—a unique insurance market—a lot of physicians went to a direct carrier. So, I spent a ton of time researching and understanding the market and developing relationships with the carriers because we didn’t have any appointments with medical professional liability insurers. I just saw an opportunity to create a whole new segment within Lawley. I developed a business plan and told my higher ups, ‘Hey, this is an untapped market where we can grow our business.’ And that’s when I started producing and building out that segment for Lawley.”

His initiative led to medical malpractice insurance clients being a solid portion of Lawley’s book. The privately owned independent brokerage of more than 60 years now has a Healthcare Practice Group dedicated solely to medical malpractice insurance clients, which Mike leads. And when Mike talks about his clients, he describes them as if they are friends and family.

“You know, a lot of what inspires me and keeps me going is I’ve seen how passionate my brother and sister are, and how hard they work, and that’s where I feel I’m extremely empathetic to our clients. I know when you spend all that time truly doing what you’re doing to help people, and then you’re sued or have a claim, it puts personal doubt on your ability to care for your patients. It’s difficult to see what some of my clients are put through. I think that’s one of the very rewarding things for me is having that empathy, and if a physician has a claim, helping them in those moments where they need a friend and an advisor to give them perspective and guide them through it. I tell them, ‘Alright, here’s what we need to do,’ and I try to create comfort for them. That means so much to me because for any of those physicians, any of my clients, I always think as if this was happening to my brother or sister—like how tough it would be. So I want to make sure that I’m there for them because that’s exactly what I would do for my siblings.”

This article originally appeared in the July 2023 issue of The Agent’s Advocate, a publication of The Doctors Company.