Risky Business · Renters Legal Liability

Falling Failing and Learning With Todd Smith From Moreton & Company

·25 min·2 clips

Todd reveals why his father-in-law believed not falling while skiing meant you weren't learning anything.

Host Gary Miller welcomes Todd Smith of Morton and Company to the Risky Business Podcast for a conversation about his 26-year journey in the risk management and insurance space. Todd grew up adjacent to the industry — his father started a property and casualty agency in 1969 before it was acquired by a health benefits and TPA firm — but did not go directly into insurance after his finance degree from the University of Utah. Graduating during the October 1987 market crash made jobs scarce, and Todd spent eight years in manufacturing and recognition before eventually finding his way back to insurance and risk management. A professor named Fikri Gaheen introduced him to risk management as a concept during college, an influence Todd credits for planting the idea. He describes his career development philosophy as falling, failing, and learning — a deliberate embrace of setbacks as the primary mechanism for real professional growth rather than a linear progression of successes. Networking is presented as a master key, not just for finding jobs but for accessing expertise, deal flow, and support structures unavailable through formal channels alone. The conversation turns to captive insurance arrangements, which Todd describes as a growing option being considered by many companies seeking better control over their risk financing, particularly in volatile market conditions. He also discusses the broader challenges facing the risk management industry, including capacity constraints, rising claims frequency, and the difficulty of communicating complex risk concepts to boards and executive teams who may not have deep insurance literacy. The tone is candid and experience-driven, making the episode valuable to both insurance professionals and business leaders interested in strategic risk management.

As heard by us

A steady insurance conversation about networking, resilience, and practical risk management.

Todd Smith and Gary Miller spend most of the conversation on what risk management looks like after 26 years in the field. Networking comes up as more than a nice extra, and the talk around falling, failing, and learning keeps the focus on plain lessons that come from doing the…

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Todd Smith turns 26 years in risk management into a lesson in learning the hard way.

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