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- Well, spring breaks and holiday vacations are behind us.

As we head into the warmer months, we get distracted by the seasonality of it all, and that's a good thing.

I'm Chris William, and welcome again to the most widely watched in the longest running program on Carolina business, policy and public affairs, seen across the Carolinas for more than 30 years now.

Thanks for supporting this dialogue.

We'll start to unpack some of those things that persist, like the economy, like lending, like banking, like jobs, and what does it mean for us here and now?

We begin right now.

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(energetic music) - [Announcer] On this edition of "Carolina Business Review," Brooks Raiford from the NC Tech Association, Antjuan Seawright of Blueprint Strategy, and special guest, Tim Arnold, president and CEO of Colonial Life.

- Welcome again to our program.

Happy spring.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

Antjuan, I'm gonna start with you.

You recently wrote a piece that was in "The Hill" out of DC, and you were reflecting on 13 years later of the Affordable Care Act, which is better known as Obamacare in some circles, as you wrote that piece, but really to bring you into a more regional debate, is you reflect on not just 13 years since, but when you see the headlines coming out of North Carolina, that they have finally after a decade accepted federal Medicaid dollars, how does that wash over you and does that embolden South Carolina to do the same?

- Well, Chris, the Affordable Care Act became a teenager.

(Chris laughs) The most consequential piece of legislation, healthcare legislation, perhaps in most of our lifetime has changed healthcare as we know it.

I am so proud, not just as a Carolinian, but I'm proud as an American citizen that North Carolina has put partisan politics aside and did what's best for the people of North Carolina.

They've put people over politics.

When you think about the business aspect and the economic impact that healthcare has had on the Carolinas, the region, it makes total sense.

And in South Carolina, in the Black church, we often say delayed, but not denied.

So this decision has been delayed for a long time, but certainly not denied, and as a result, you're gonna see the economics of healthcare change the landscape of North Carolina in a real authentic way, and healthcare is going to be even more accessible and affordable.

And I hope and pray that the good folks of my home state of South Carolina can take a bipartisan, nonpartisan lesson from North Carolina because truth be told, although we have not expanded Medicaid in the state, the Medicaid budget continues to grow.

And I'll remind people in my closing, Chris, is that nobody retires and moves up north, and so as more seasoned folks come to the south to retire and live, the Medicaid system is going to continue to extend and expand, and so we need the federal dollars in order to support that.

- Would you think that the State House though, would become more sympathetic to it now that their cousins in North Carolina did it?

- Well, I hope so.

And I say this because Governor Cooper is on his way out, so this is about his legacy, and the same with Governor McMaster.

So there's no political consequences to working together to come to some sort of resolve so we can open back up the rural hospitals that have closed, give healthcare a real opportunity, not only survive, but to thrive, but also mirror what our sister states, because it's going to open up economic development opportunities in North Carolina and we will be denied in South Carolina.

- Brooks, so let's bring you into it.

Let's focus on economic development, and the "Wall Street Journal," about three weeks ago released their annual report around strongest job markets in the US, of the top 10 biggest job markets, Charlotte, Raleigh, or the triangle were of the strongest job markets, of the smallest job markets, Charleston was numbered among those.

So clearly the Carolinas are a place to be for jobs, but how, you know, the tech postings I know is something you know something about.

And that is what do tech postings look like, especially given what we've seen the last few weeks in some of the major tech employers in the country?

- Sure, I'd be glad to speak to that.

But to pick up on something Antjuan was discussing with respect to the Medicaid expansion, it was interesting to hear, I believe it was the Speaker of the House or perhaps the president pro tempore of the Senate observed that one of the reasons for the delay, from their perspective, in passing reform on Medicaid expansion here, was the lack of the technological ability of the system to handle the hundreds of thousands of additional people that would be put into the system, and they have spent some time fixing that and improving the technology.

So technology, I guess guess does have a hand in some of this stuff.

I don't know what the South Carolina situation is.

But to your question about jobs, yes, the headlines are about large numbers of layoffs in some of the large-branded tech companies that we all know.

What's interesting, if you read below the headlines of course, is often those very same companies are still hiring in areas where they have business growth.

They expanded mightily during COVID and are having to sort of moderate from that.

That's a common refrain you're hearing from some of the larger tech companies that had to expand quickly to accommodate consumer demand, both for workplace technology and also, you know, ordering things on Amazon online, what have you.

(Antjuan laughs) But what we are seeing too is there is a slowdown in hiring generally.

The tech association that I lead in North Carolina does put out a monthly IT job trends report, and the February numbers, which were released in March.

So the March numbers will be released here soon, saw quite a dip in openings.

However, what's interesting is we also show the top 10 hires of tech talent.

Eight of the 10 were not tech companies.

Most tech hiring happens outside of tech companies, because every organization has a need for tech and has tech workforce, and that's really where the increase in jobs and job postings are happening.

- Antjuan, what are you seeing for tech jobs, or what are you seeing in jobs in general?

As Brooks just kind of outlined the tech business, are you encouraged that if there is a softening in the need for workers, but yet you talk about the economic development of a state that's very healthy, like South Carolina, still looking for those jobs.

Are are you optimistic that they're gonna be filled easier?

- Well, the recent jobs report show how strong and vital this economy continues to grow under leadership, I think, of some of the folks in Washington, DC.

I also think that when you see the recent economic development announcements, like in South Carolina with Scout Motors as a result of some of the legislative policy proposals that have been put forth in DC, I think that's only going to trickle down to the south because of we are, I think, pregnant when it comes to possibilities for workers and for industry to relocate.

And going to my dear friend Brooks here talking about the tech sector and we are talking about healthcare, you think about telemedicine, and what that's going to mean for North Carolina.

You think about the fact that in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, billions of dollars for internet access to be accessible all around the Carolinas, you add that with a growing tech sector, you add that on top of a healthcare sector that's now going to grow in the Carolinas because I think North Carolina is going to help the Carolinas in general grow, when it comes to that sector, I think we're gonna be primed for growth and opportunity for a very, very long time.

And I think broadband is to the 20th century as what electricity was to the 21st century, and that's gonna open up opportunity.

- Brooks, there was a, and I'm not saying this just to you, Antjuan as well, but, you know, at this point, I wouldn't say it's more than at least when it comes to consumable news, that ChatGBT and AI that's available web-based is not much more than a novelty now, but there seems to be an arms race and folks that want to be first out of the gate, strongest out of the gate.

Is it is an overstatement to say that this is going to be a broad disruptor, this AI idea of application?

- Well, I'm in no position to say with authority, but people who I trust in who are knowledgeable about this sort of thing seem to think so.

Generative AI, which is what we're talking about.

- Yeah.

- ChatGBT is one example.

There's others out there.

All the big companies are trying to incorporate it into their platforms that exist already, so that when you're working in Excel or you're working in Word or you're working in any communication platform, you're going to have this integrated right into it.

You know, Bill Gates thinks it's the biggest thing since the creation of the internet, and I guess he would be in a position to have (laughs) a pretty, pretty strong credibility on the question.

I will say it's in his infancy.

Academics are worried about it because of students being able to use it maybe to generate papers and so forth.

I believe if I read that ChatGBT aced the bar exam, it's pretty good at pulling information and data.

It gets a little dicey when it comes to sort of the conversational opining, and that's really what it's known for, is that it's a remarkably conversational in its ability to create text.

I did put it to a bit of a test.

I asked it about me, and I did it three times over two weeks, and it had had me, every time, it had different answers as to where I went to college, what my degrees were in, what boards I'm on, what companies I co-founded, none of which were accurate.

(laughs) But it had a few nuggets of truth in there.

So there's- - But it sounded authentic?

- It sounded great.

(laughs) - Yeah.

- My MBA from Duke was apparently free and I missed it, but anyway.

(Chris and Antjuan laugh) - Well, Brooks, I can tell you this, any time we've seen big technological advances or change, it sometimes causes the system to overheat, but it also forces the industry to make adjustments, as we say in yoga, (Chris laughs) and be more intentional about how we operate.

And I think this is going to be no different, the same way the internet caused the world to make adjustments, the same way that the access of broadband and speed and everything else that we've seen integrated into our world when it comes to technology and advances has forced us to make adjustments.

And I don't think this will be different now.

The question will be how will we respond both economically, politically, socially, and how we will respond as a community to the necessary adjustments in order to keep things moving towards progress, not necessarily perfection.

- Joining us now is the CEO of Colonial Life out of Columbia, and it's important to note, a program note, Colonial Life is an underwriter of this program, but one of the things about our guest is he shares a very personal story of his own health on their website, and why I say that is because not just our guest, but also the company seems to have some deep roots in the Midlands of South Carolina, but also the communities that they're a part of in South Carolina.

So without further ado, we welcome president and CEO of Colonial Life, Tim Arnold.

Tim, welcome to the program.

- Chris, thanks for having me back on.

I really appreciate it.

- Always nice to see you, sir.

Medicaid expansion, Tim, and I know it's not a complete impact on your industry, but in North Carolina obviously it is history now that it took about a decade for them to accept the federal Medicaid dollars.

They did, in fact, vote to do it.

How does that change the dialogue now in a couple of ways?

Would you expect the South Carolina General Assembly to be sympathetic to it and accept it?

And how does it change from a payer as an insurer?

How does it change your calculus, if you will?

- Yeah, so maybe we'll take those in reverse order, Chris.

So as you think about the places where Medicaid expansion has occurred in the past, it really hasn't had a significant impact on the private payer market, in my view.

We see a robust insurance marketplace in all of the states where we've seen this happen in the past, and that's largely because there's so much unmet need in virtually every place in the United States.

So even when Medicaid is a part of the process in a particular state, private insurance companies still have a very robust marketplace.

And then for the second part of the question, as you know, the political dynamics are pretty different between North Carolina and South Carolina.

So although I think it will cause some to reflect on whether that's something that should be considered in South Carolina, I don't expect it to happen in the near term.

- Yeah, okay.

Antjuan?

- Well, Tim, first of all, thanks for what you do.

It's so important for what you and your organization does, but I do have a question.

I wrote a piece a few days ago in the "Well News," and I talked about the decision of a 57-year-old federal judge, Reed O'Connor, who basically says now in his ruling that insurance companies that, by way the Affordable Care Act, were required to pray to pay for screenings and preventive measures are no longer required, that goes out of the window.

That's 3.6 million women every year, not to mention as a Black man, you think about the issues in our community when it comes to colon cancer, prostate cancer, you have breast cancer, you have depression because of the pandemic.

What do you think this will mean for the healthcare system?

Because I know the consequences or I can see the consequences, it will mean for communities that look like mine.

What do you see that decision meaning overall?

- Yeah, thank you Antjuan.

I appreciate the question and I was not aware of that ruling until just now.

I think on the, you know, based on the facts you've shared with me, that's a really unfortunate ruling.

We believe strongly in wellness care.

We believe strongly that people should have screenings.

Chris and I are both a part of the American Heart Association.

We want people to know their numbers and understand their condition.

And so I think that's a bit unfortunate.

You know, in our company we offer a wellness benefit along with almost all of our products, so when people do go get those screenings and have that healthcare, we have a benefit that pays for that.

So I hope that is not something that we see as a trend across the country.

- Mm-hmm.

Brooks?

- Tim, earlier in the program, I mentioned that one of the reasons given by the Republican leadership in North Carolina for delaying what now has been approved in terms of Medicaid expansion was that the technology behind the system was not robust enough to accommodate successfully hundreds of thousands of new enrollees.

And that's been fixed, updates have been made, and that now that's no longer a concern.

So I'll sort of flip the question.

You as an insurance company, when we read about the reduction in IT jobs, which we talked about earlier today, we also see conversely most hiring of tech is outside of tech companies.

Eight of the 10 top hires of tech talent last month in North Carolina were not tech companies.

You must have a lot of technology in your organization.

Talk about the job landscape, the talent landscape when it comes to how a company like yours functions and provides its technology support.

- Okay.

Yeah, we have a very significant technology shop here in Columbia, South Carolina.

We do have some third parties that we work with for certain parts of our technology needs and landscape.

However, the majority of the work that we do is done here in Columbia.

We have, as a part of our organization, a small shop in Ireland and may also help us, but they're actually employees of our organization, not employees of a third party.

So, you know, if you're a young person thinking about a career, technology is a great place to be.

Those jobs are very high paying and great demand, and we're very pleased with our ability to attract and retain the kinds of technology talent we need here in Columbia, but it's a great point Brooks, regarding the value of these roles.

There are questions inside companies about, to what extent do you keep them internal versus outsourcing them?

At this point, we still believe that that's a job that works best when they are employees of our company.

- President Arnold, during COVID, it was not, it surprised many people, but we saw this emergence of attention to mental health.

The stressors obviously because of COVID, the stressors because of working from home, and no one had, you know, the sea legs to figure that out quite in the early days of it.

But now we're past COVID, for the most part, at least past the emergence part of that, and mental health now is not talked about as much.

Mental health clearly still is squarely on the, you know, the top hit list for many employers.

Is it for you and do you feel like the healthcare marketplace is still trying to find solutions to help companies address mental health challenges?

- Yeah, I do, Chris.

Behavioral health as a need has really exploded during the pandemic and beyond.

I saw statistic in late 2020 that said the percentage of American citizens who acknowledged that they had some sort of behavioral health issue, whether that was a mental health issue or addiction issue, that percentage prior to COVID was 8%, and in the middle of 2020, that percentage had risen to 42%.

So behavioral health is clearly something that we see as a significant need.

We have a solution for it, we see it in our claims data, we see a significant increase in claims that are related to mental and behavioral health.

- Tim, can I ask you one question?

- Go ahead, Antjuan, yeah.

- Like, you know, Chris mentioned mental health, my friend Brooks mentioned the tech sector.

I think it's important for you to try to explain the role the business community plays, 'cause you're a business, right?

You're a capitalist like me.

End of the day, that's the goal.

But the business community plays a tremendous role in shaping policy, pushing back when necessary, because it benefits the overall, I would say bill of health, economic bill of health for the local economy and the regional economy.

Can you talk about the role the business plays, the business community plays in shaping policy decisions?

'Cause I think it's important that people should know the business community plays a tremendous role in weighing in on some of these issues and prioritizing them.

- Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great point, Antjuan, and we partner with the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce to try to make sure we're influencing policy at the state level.

We also have representatives in Washington, DC.

Chris's comment about mental health is one that does need more attention, I think, and certainly the business community can not only support it through the legislative approaches that we use, but also as we think about work environment, as we think about the way our policies are designed and written to make sure that we're taking care of people who have mental or behavioral health issues, and that those are included.

There's so many ways as a business community we can work together to help address growing issues like this one.

- Mm-hmm.

Brooks?

- Well, you know, to pick up on that in North Carolina, when you lead an association like I do, or a chamber, you've got a lot of companies, a lot of members, sometimes not in unison on a topic, but there are times when we're asked to weigh in as an association that represents a sector, in our case, on issues, sometimes even something like Medicaid expansion, which is not our wheelhouse, sometimes it's broadband expansion, which Antjuan talked about earlier, a major initiative in North Carolina and lots of places right now.

But what I always say is a legislator or a policymaker is going to listen a lot more closely to an employer who's a taxpayer, has lots of employees who live in that state and pay taxes in that state than in many cases an association that may be itself quite small and not necessarily have a direct impact.

And so I always encourage our member companies to give voice.

- Right.

- Letters from them, op-eds from them, phone calls from them are far more impactful than any lobbyists out there, and I'm sure Tim, you have experienced that yourself.

- Yeah, Brooks, it's a great point.

And we try to maintain a presence both here in South Carolina through Colonial Life brand, and then our parent company is a company named Unum.

We have a small, but I would say mighty presence in Washington DC, and we make sure that our business executives are in the State House and in the federal halls and government as well to try to influence policy where we can.

- Tim, in this stating the obvious to you, but obviously Colonial Life is a substantial subsidiary of Unum.

You are technically a insurance and financial services business.

So when you watched some, over the past few weeks, when you watched not just the testimonies before Congress, but some of the headlines around the SVB bank collapse, the Signature Bank, New Republic, et cetera, et cetera.

How does that impact your business?

Its financial services.

Does it create more scrutiny?

Will it create more regulatory oversight, or will it just bring more needed application of what laws are already written on the books?

- Yeah, it's a great question, Chris.

As it relates to the way that our company, I believe, most insurance co companies operate on a day-to-day basis, I don't believe it'll change.

You know, the insurance industry is extremely well-capitalized, and unlike banks, the insurance company does not have a risk of having policy holders create a run on the bank, so to speak.

For the most part, we don't have products that would cause a policy order to want to demand a payment.

You know, they're all claim-oriented counts of policies, for the most part.

And then from an insurance industry perspective, the industry's regulated by all 50 states individually, and also there's some federal government regulation involved as well.

With respect to banks, and you're certainly more of an expert than I am, Chris, but my sense is that there could potentially be more regulation as a result of this.

You know, it is an anxiety kind of producing moment when one regional bank in California can create so much concern across not only the United States, but you look at European markets as well.

There's been a lot of concern about the banking industry there.

So I would not be surprised to see more regulation coming, and that might be a good thing.

I think finding the sweet spot with regulation is appropriate so that banks are not burdened and can't perform the function they need to perform to continue to provide loans to small businesses and to individuals, so hopefully we'll find that sweet spot and create a nice soft landing with all of this turmoil we've experienced over the last few weeks.

- You know, we've literally got two minutes left, so I'm gonna ask you a final question here, Tim.

Early on in, not just COVID but the disruption of whatever the new working model is, you are flexible enough to allow everyone to work from home.

But now we're getting to a different place now.

We've all read the stories about how many people are coming back in because they want to, but also because, competitively, they need to.

So where do you find yourself and some of your contemporary CEOs and companies from in person to work from home?

Where are you in that continuum?

- Yeah, we've seen every kind of model work from continuing to have a full remote workforce to, you know, we see some businesses out there now really encouraging people to be back five days a week.

We landed in a hybrid model where we are asking people to be back in the office two to three days a week, depending on the kind of role that they have.

We still do have a pretty significant part of our workforce that is completely remote.

They were before COVID, they continue to be.

But for people who were in the office before, we are seeing people come back at a more pronounced rate now, again, two to three days a week, and what we see is greater collaboration.

One employee recently told me that she was not required to come back, but she wanted to for her mental health, sort of tying back to a conversation we were having.

I remember she said, "You know, I was not feeling well at home.

I wanted to come back, I wanted to be with people again, with adult people again."

So we think the hybrid solution is what's gonna work best for us.

And we see a lot of employers across the state adopting something similar.

- In about a minute, and I know you kind of answered this question a little bit before, but with the tech layoffs being as substantial as they have been, are you finding it easier to get the talent you need now?

- Yeah, we are, Chris, and you know, through the pandemic we were still able to recruit well.

We've got great relationships with all the universities in the state and obviously we're a sponsor for the University of South Carolina's athletics program and we stay in touch with them on the education side and then the business side.

So we've always been able to attract the talent we've wanted, for the most part.

During COVID we did see some turnover with remote work, making it easier for people to work other places, but we've seen that calm down now, so we are pleased with our ability to attract and retain the people we need now.

I appreciate the question.

- Yeah, well, Tim, I appreciate you joining us here.

Thank you again, thanks for your support, but also mostly thanks for your leadership.

Nice to see you.

Stay well.

Brooks, glad you could join us.

Please come back.

And Antjuan always good to have you on the program, gentlemen.

- Thank you.

- Happy holiday week to you all and have a good spring.

Until next week, I'm Chris William.

Goodnight.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina, Sunoco, High Point University, Colonial Life, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

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