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Issues & Answers Special Advertising Section:
 March 2022

Issues & Answers: Solutions for College Sports

Dixon Gillis, Chief Executive Officer, A-G Administrators, said that he has noticed that mental health is becoming an important issue in college sports. “Mental health is a medical expense that colleges and universities are assuming financial liability for these days,” he said. Following are excerpts from an interview.

Dixon Gillis
Chief Executive Officer
A-G Administrators


“Our service is supreme, and our cost containment can only be described as innovative in this space.”



A-G Administrators recently conducted a survey for college sports. What did you find?

One of the main things we found was the fact that no program is created equal. We had a great response and accumulated a lot of data! We have found that within college sports there is money for a program to either assume financial liability, utilize a discounting strategy or have primary insurance take some liability off of their budgets. What we’re trying to ascertain is what that level of primary insurance is for each division within each conference. We’re seeing that is the No. 1 offset of expenses for a university’s athletic insurance program. We’ll be publishing the results of that survey very shortly.

How has innovation played a part in protecting student-athletes when it comes to risk management?

Just think about innovation in the sense of the medical community. Look how far the aspect of delivering care has come—to not only students and student-athletes but to everyone around us. It’s remarkable. With that innovation, the insurance and financial industries are a little bit behind the medical community as far as providing the innovative applications that’s appropriate for that niche. What we’ve done at A-G Administrators is have that nuance for each program to be innovative in the way that we’re managing a claim or to be innovative in the way that we’re delivering data. Data is obviously the king of all of these scenarios, but it doesn’t mean that much if you’re not using it appropriately.

Why do agents need to partner with accident specialists for college student-athletes?

Agents primarily have the responsibility of managing the relationship at the highest level within an institution. We feel the accident medical programs are such a niche and it’s so nuanced that you need to have a partner who understands it. We feel here at A-G, we understand it in a way that no other program is providing for within our offerings. That means that we’re hiring folks that are in athletic institutions and athletic training who understand the day-to-day operational aspects of a program and the medical expenses assumed by these institutions. That specialty, that nuanced sense of offering is important for a partner to then deliver to the agent to make their unique competitive advantage truly supreme.

Can you tell us about your state-of-the-art proprietary claims management application?

EGBAR is our proprietary claims management platform. EGBAR allows a user to have full transparency and visibility into the life of their program and the accident medical expenses that are running through their operation. By delivering that value to the end user, we’re hopeful that they can provide more value internally and have that transparency, whether it be from submitting a claim or working through the tracking of a claim or managing all the different components that could be associated with the life of a medical expense or an injury or an illness, for a student-athlete.