Name: ‘It Was a Blessing That We Started in the Insurance Space.’
Uploaded: 2025-11-07T18:03:00Z
Duration: 3 min 9 s
Description: Scott Sparks, founder and CEO of Sparks Financial, explains why starting with insurance made it easier for him to incorporate investments later.

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Scott Sparks, founder and CEO of Sparks Financial, explains why starting with insurance made it easier for him to incorporate investments later.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20251107/6ab0f3f6-1333-42d0-853d-d80b6befa56c/1/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

‘It Was a Blessing That We Started in the Insurance Space.’

You've witnessed the impact of insurance firsthand and so many of the RIA community is now introducing more insurance products into their client relationships. Tell us a little bit about why you believe it's so crucial for client outcomes and how does it influence the way Sparks financial builds those lasting relationships with families?

You know, in all honesty, I think it was a blessing that we started in the insurance space 'cause I have always said that selling insurance will always be sold and investments are bought. And so many times in the insurance space, you're talking about things nobody wants to talk about. Death, disability, wills, trusts, those are things that are frankly not that fun. And so in the insurance space, we're always dealing with what could happen? And usually people don't wanna talk about that. So it's interesting. If you look at home foreclosures across the country, over 50% of them are due to disabilities. Whereas 3% of home foreclosures are due to deaths.

No kidding.

So that tells me that people think about life insurance a little bit more than they do disability. But yet younger in your career, when you don't really have a balance sheet, you don't have an asset. Your biggest asset is your income. And us talking about what we call human life value, that ability to protect that future income. Unfortunately, in 35 years, it's come firsthand. I've delivered lots of disability checks and kept people's financial futures afloat. And many of those people became our A plus clients in years in the future as they recovered from those situations. So insurance is a unique space. I think it's highly misunderstood. We use insurance in a lot of different aspects. There's some real tax aspects around insurance. We've been fortunate, our organization has access to some of the same tools and strategies that some of the Fortune 500 companies use for some of their non-qualified deferred compensation. And so it's just a unique area that I think as we think about doing holistic planning, it's critically important to have an understanding. We've got education in it. One of our values in our firm is something we call Kaizen, which is just constant continual improvement. And so we have an insurance group that really, the insurance industry is changing just as fast as the investment industry. And so staying abreast of all the different aspects of insurance, disability, life, long-term care. Unfortunately, some of these things are not fun to talk about, but it happens.

But they're really human.

They're really human.

Yeah, they definitely set the stage. I've observed early on that those that start with investments as their focus have a much more difficult time transitioning into talking about these difficult conversations, disability and death and where insurance fits in. And at the same time, I've witnessed those that start with the insurance have a much easier time to incorporate the investment side of the equation. And yet each of these are the pillars within the CFP.