Market Watch Summit Offers Optimism for 2025

The blue skies over Daytona Beach matched the sunny outlook for business across Volusia County at the 7^th annual Market Watch Business Summit held this year at One Daytona.

The event, co-sponsored by the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce and Team Volusia EDC featured a panel discussion on the local economic outlook with Andy Watts, executive vice president, CFO and treasurer at Brown & Brown; Marci Murphy, executive director at CareerSource Brevard Flagler Volusia; and Bill Navarra, broker and co-owner of Realty Pros Assured.

The panelists discussed the state of the finance and insurance industry, workforce development issues and housing and real estate in Volusia County.

Mike Sibley, the Chamber’s 2024 board chairman, kicked off the breakfast event, saying the annual business summit offered local business leaders information on where the economy is heading to help them make better decisions in the coming year.

Watts led off the morning program with an overview of the employment situation in the finance and insurance sectors.

“This is a topic near and dear to my heart, which is creating new jobs in our community,” he said.

Watts said the area has seen strong growth in finance and insurance jobs with  a growth rate of 17% over the past five years.

“We’ve got a great marketplace for growth of jibs in insurance and finance,” he said. “There is a very, very bright future we have as a community.”

Watts said with a company as large as Brown & Brown, the job opportunities extend beyond selling insurance and include call center positions, technology related jobs and other back office roles.

“We need more and more talent,” he said. “There’s a lot of jobs in this community.”

Workforce development and providing assistance for businesses needing workers was the centerpiece of Murphy’s presentation, which began with a review of the top industries in Volusia County. The industries include healthcare, retail, accommodation and food service, government, construction and manufacturing as the six largest in the area.

Murphy then offered several short-term and long-term strategies for businesses looking to expand workforce levels. The short-term solutions include rethinking overlooked talent pools, offering non-wage incentives, providing onboarding and upskilling opportunities quickly, thinking of the best trainable potential employees rather than a perfect match and ensuring that job descriptions are clear and open-minded rather than too specific.

For the long term, Murphy said workforce planning should be an execurtive level conversation and companies should identify their best workeres and create career paths for them. Other long-term strategies Murphy discussed include upskilling longtime employees, ensuring pay scales are at a market rates and reviewing applicant tracking systems to ensure they are letting as many differently qualified people through as possible.

Navarra wrapped up the local panel with an overview of the real estate market in Volusia County.

“A lot of what’s affecting our market is interest rates,” he said, noting the Federal Reserve Board has recently moved rates lower. Overall, he said the real estate market in the county is solid.

“The grat think about our market today is that the stability of our market is tremendous,” he said.

Navarra said as interest rates continue to decline, it will have a positive impact on local real estate.

“When that happens, our market is really going to open up,” he said. “Overall, I am very optimistic about where our market is going.”