Platinum Services, Inc. is celebrating our 15th anniversary this year! Our company began in 1995 with a desire to help create financial security for people in the Central United States. Today, Platinum Agents offer our products in 14 states, serving over 50,000 customers. We are strengthening our service and continuing to sharpen our products so that you can always look to Platinum Services for some of the most impressive supplemental insurance products on the market.

  

This year, Platinum Services, Inc. donated $5,000 to the American Cancer Society as a corporate sponsor of the Relay for Life event. In addition to that, our Relay for Life Team of Platinum employees, raised an incredible $10,181 throughout the course of the year! To everyone who helped us support this worthy cause — Thank you!

        

  

Spring of 2009, Platinum Services employees kicked off an internal fund raising drive with a goal to raise $10,000. With typical Platinum employee determination and in less than 3 months, employees and representatives raised $9,729. Platinum Services helped us exceed our goal by generously contributing a donation of $5,000.

Everyone went above & beyond by hosting lunches, 50/50 drawings, a silent auction, a quilt raffle and other fun events. This was not only an amazing way to have fun at work, but it bolstered camaraderie within us all.

    

  

The Dubuque Art Center makes it's new home in the Platinum
building on Historic Old Main.

What was once the Brick Oven Studio in the Historic Millwork District, and the creation of Dubuque native Jordan DeGree, the Dubuque Art Center has evolved into a not-for-profit school that supports education about the arts in Dubuque and surrounding communities.

DAC offers classes, facilities, and partnerships with local schools, groups, clubs, and organizations.

Matter design store will share the split-space in the Platinum Services Building at 137 Main Street. All proceeds from Matter will be used to support community art programming through the Dubuque Art Center.

Check their website for class listings, artist applications for upcoming projects, and for fun, creative volunteer opportunities.
www.dbqartcenter.org

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Posted with permission from the Telegraph Herald.

Have an idea. Figure out what it takes to get it done. Recruit a team of people who share your vision. Delegate what you cannot do yourself. Work hard. Stay focused. And keep your head down.

That's how Wayne Briggs said he managed to co-found an insurance company (Platinum Services Inc.), develop dozens of properties - including about 50 commercial buildings, form a real estate company and start a property management company - all by the time he turned 39.

The Dubuque native said he has always hunkered down and worked hard. "I have had a job ever since I was 12 years old, and before that I had paper routes and shoveled sidewalks," he said. "The day I graduated from high school I had a job working at the Dubuque Pack. It's always been important to work hard."

Shortly after, Briggs began selling insurance for another company. In 1995, he started Platinum Services.

Ideas seemed to come naturally to him. At age 24, he bought his first property. Located off West 32nd Street, it became the Tiffany Ridge residential subdivision.

Apparently, he didn't get all goose-bumpy about the idea. "I just crunched the numbers, and it looked like it would work," he said.

His developments also include Platinum Plaza, the Hilton Garden Inn, the Women's Wellness Center and a branch of Liberty Bank. He has rehabilitated the old Weber Paper Co. building on Main Street and the Star Brewery in the Port of Dubuque. He also owns property along the Northwest Arterial, which is waiting for his magic touch, plans a retail development at the site of the former meatpacking plant and will refurbish and develop the former Adams Co. property in the port.

Briggs said the most challenging part of his work lies in convincing partners and investors to get on board with his ideas. Without them, plus support from the city and his staff members, nothing would happen, he said. "This is not just me."

"To see all these things happen makes me feel good," he said. "I hope young kids in high school can get excited about Dubuque and be proud of their town."

"When I was in high school, most kids couldn't wait to get the heck out of town," he added. "I never felt that way."

Copyright Telegraph Herald 3/24/2008

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Posted with permission from the Telegraph Herald.

The prospects are frightening, but all too real. Income, assets, life savings all devoured in the wink of an eye, swallowed up by the high cost of long-term health care.

Wayne Briggs saw the nightmarish scenario play out during his early insurance days. "I ran into people that lost their farms, lost everything due to a parent or a grandparent going into a nursing home," Briggs said. Those encounters gnawed at the young salesman, and he could see the potential of scores of similar stories on the horizon.

But Briggs also saw opportunity.

He saw a rising marketplace - 78 million strong - eventually grappling with the thorny issue of long-term care. "We knew it was going to be a big-time future issue, knowing that the baby boomers are going to someday be in that age."

In 1995, Briggs, with business partners Eric Lucy and Mike Muench, launched Dubuque-based long-term care insurance marketer Platinum Services Inc. A decade later, the firm is on pace to book $15 million in sales this year, by Briggs' figures.

And, Platinum's president and majority owner asserts his company has yet to hit the boom. "The baby boomers, by the thousands, are turning 50 today; that's our market," the entrepreneur said. "I think there's a lot of room to grow."

Building a foundation

Platinum Services didn't happen over night. Briggs said the company is just now beginning to show a profit after a decade of struggle and sacrifice.

Building the marketing firm took more than patience, perseverance and a constant infusion of cash; it took a concerted educational campaign. Briggs and crew had to crash through plenty of misconceptions about long-term care insurance.

When Platinum began, Briggs said the typical consumer viewed the insurance strictly as nursing home coverage. The policies, he said, are much more comprehensive, involving everything from in-home nursing help to assisted-living services on the continuum of long-term care coverage.

The benefit is designed to pay cash for care, and Platinum's policies range from $40 per day in coverage to $9,000 per month. The company, marketing insurance products from participating underwriters, employs care coordinators to help design appropriate packages of assistance.

The benefit kicks in when the claimant is unable to perform at least two basic activities of living - such as eating, bathing or dressing.

The goal, according to the industry, is to rehabilitate first and to keep people as independent as possible for as long as possible.

"It's about peace of mind, independence and preserving wealth," he said.

Long-term care is a pricey proposition, and many Americans don't have the means to pay the bill. AARP estimates the cost of a single year in a nursing home averages more than $61,000 per year. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found 65 percent of most elderly Americans don't have enough assets to pay for one year in a nursing home.

Meanwhile, 10 percent of Americans older than 65 own long-term care policies.

Tom Alger, spokesman for the Iowa Insurance Division, said the coverage isn't for everyone and the agency encourages consumers to investigate policies before purchasing. But Alger said the cost savings can be well worth the price of the premium.

It's about time

Briggs said the biggest misconception about long-term care insurance is that it is the domain of the elderly. Most people, he said, don't believe they need to worry about the coverage until their 60s, 70s or later.

"By that time, the policy is hard to afford, if you can even buy it at all," Briggs said. "At that age, most people can't get it because of health issues."

A November 2003 Consumer Reports study found a policy that costs a 50-year-old $1,625 per year would cost a 70-year-old five times as much.

Plenty of policies offer inflation controls, and some provide premium reimbursements for unused benefits. Platinum offers both.

Today, Platinum's average enrollee is 53. Briggs said his firm's decade-long campaign has been spreading the message about the importance of purchasing coverage earlier. And as that message begins to resonate, Briggs sees plenty of potential in the millions of baby boomers - the wealthiest generation in American history - seeking to preserve that wealth.

"Most of my business models, whether it's been real estate or insurance, have kept the baby boomers in mind," Briggs said. "Baby boomers drive the whole economics. If you are going to get into business, it is my belief you should do something that is going to service that population."

Long-term vision

That generational focus apparently is paying off. Platinum's principles invested a lot of money, time and sweat equity to build the business. Briggs speaks passionately, almost religiously, of the firm's journey.

"There were people that were part of our company early on that couldn't see that, and they did end up leaving our company. They couldn't understand the vision of what it takes," Briggs said. "Now, you see the fruits of all that long-term vision, the people that believed, are starting to see growth."

Today, Platinum Services is a growing Midwest concern, with its footprint expanding into a dozen states. A decade ago, the firm took in about 50 enrollments a week. That figure has swelled to as many as 400 per week, on pace to top 15,000 this year.

For much of the past decade, Platinum focused on the rural market. It is widening its scope to include supplemental insurance and a move into the urban marketplace.

The Dubuque-based company that help redefine Lower Main by transforming an old industrial building into its corporate headquarters is just beginning to take its product to the Dubuque area, Briggs said.

"It took us about seven years to educate a lot of the rural market," he said. "Now our goal in the Midwest is to educate the business market."

As Platinum moves into its next decade, Briggs isn't ready to say his company has arrived. He looks toward an aging boomer population and rapidly expanding health care and insurance market and projects explosive growth ahead.

"There is a point where baby boomers are going to recognize that this is something they have to take care of," he said. "That point is getting nearer and nearer."

Copyright Telegraph Herald 7/16/2006