Chris Burand is the Owner/Founder of Burand & Associates, LLC (established in 1992). Chris combines education, experience, and knowledge from multiple perspectives at proven levels few other consultants or educators can provide. Chris takes great care to learn his client’s goals and understand their needs while developing a holistic solution for their specific situation.
Chris’s services help agencies, individuals, and carriers identify strengths and opportunities, optimize productivity and profits, implement real-world strategies, leverage resources, and develop realistic plans of action in order to maximize profitable growth. With more than 35 years of experience in the insurance industry, Chris has consulted with hundreds of agencies, brokerages, and many major insurance carriers.
Chris also developed the original, and the first approved by a major E&O carrier, loss control/E&O auditing program specifically for small agencies and clusters/aggregators.
Specific to business income expertise, Chris has developed a proprietary Business Income/Lost Profits education program for insurance agents. He has completed the entire NACVA business income program which addresses damages from the business litigator’s perspective creating additional unique skills in being the only one to complete this program, teach it in the insurance space, and hold a CBA. His CBA credentials require the proven ability to analyze and calculate the income on a go forward basis and his deep understanding of insurance agency/broker financials and operations enables him to calculate how different scenarios affect agency revenues, expenses, productivity, risks and profits. He also developed a proprietary business income analysis for the cost of agency book rolls. He built and facilitates insurance agency networking associations.
Chris is acknowledged as a leading consultant and is a nationally recognized speaker and author. To date, he has presented more than 400 seminars and educational programs, and his articles have also been published more than 500 times. He is a monthly columnist for The Insurance Journal, a past columnist for American Agent & Broker for eleven years, and his articles have appeared in Rough Notes, The National Underwriter, A.M. Best, many regional insurance publications, and many other trade publications. He also publishes Burand’s Insurance Agency Adviser for independent insurance agents and hosts the Insurance Banter podcast.
Areas of Expertise
Insurance Agency Appraisals: Chris holds one of the rare CBA designations which is recognized by courts and the IRS. His professional services include appraisals for Acquisitions and Sales, Buy/Sell Agreements, Mergers, Dissolutions, and Perpetuation Planning.
Contingency Contract Analysis: Contingency contracts offer opportunities to increase compensation through negotiations and strategically placing business. Chris Burand’s Contingency Contract Analysis® service provides the information agents need to take advantage of those opportunities.
Note: Chris Burand and Burand & Associates, LLC are advocates of agencies which constructively manage and improve their contingency contracts by learning how to negotiate and use their contingency contracts more effectively. We maintain that agents can achieve considerably better results without ever taking actions that are detrimental or disadvantageous to the insureds. We have never and would not ever recommend that an agent and/or agency implement a policy of, or otherwise advocate, increasing its contingency income ahead of the insureds’ interests.
Errors & Omissions Audits: Chris is an E&O Carrier Approved E&O Procedures Review Consultant for the two largest agency E&O writers, other E&O carriers, and is a certified E&O instructor. He is the author of an E&O book and has provided expert consulting advice for E&O litigation.
Expert Witness: Chris has provided select expert witness services. Most of that work has involved agency valuation issues.
Coverage Education: Chris had developed a proprietary comprehensive coverage education program designed to increase sales, decrease E&O exposures, and enhance the customer experience. This program uses unique to the insurance industry teaching methodology that is far more effective than most coverage education.
Productivity Enhancement: Chris’s innovative statistical algorithm method for identifying procedural consistency, compliance, activity cost, and opportunity cost savings.
Carrier Stability Analysis: A unique analytical method for creating opportunities to learn negotiating points and insurance carrier stability from an agency’s perspective.
Producer Report Card: Chris’s analytical method for scoring producers in a completely unbiased and purely objective manner creating a tool for management to better manage future sales.
Agency Operations Review: Chris’s comprehensive review services help agencies identify opportunities, fix weaknesses, and succeed.
Cost of Sales Analysis: Most agencies often spend more than $1 for every $1 in commissions. A Cost of Sales Analysis helps agencies make more than they spend. With Chris’s background in analyzing insurance agency financials and operations, combined with his proprietary analytics, Chris can assist in identifying factors creating unnecessary frictional expense and productivity loss whether the situation be related to poor procedures, compliance issues, or agency management system, to name a few applications.
Producer Compensation Plans: Chris develops plans that increase profits and motivate producers.
Mergers, Acquisitions & Clustering Agreements: 60%-90% of acquisitions lose money. Chris’s comprehensive services include the keys required for a successful transaction.
Speeches and Seminars: Chris makes individualized presentations based on the above areas of expertise.
Agency Specific Education Classes: Chris regularly teaches agency management, E&O, and coverage classes directly to clients. To date he estimates he has completed around 200 of these agency specific classes.
Last Updated: April 2026
