Since the beginning of my insurance career, I have worked intently to have positive, supportive relationships with company underwriters. They are a part of the back-bone of how insurance policies are issued. Their eyes and subsequent judgement on the information we as agents submit can make or break a policy being issued. Underwriters in my world are common everyday people who are trained to follow the stringent guidelines issued by an insurance company that leads to an insurance policy getting issued. I have tried over the years to spend time getting to know them, understand what they deal with both in and out of the office and do as much as I can as an agent to pre-underwrite our applications before we submit them to the underwriting department. I’m not a fan of surprises! So if I can pre-qualify an applicant and what they bring to the table first before my companies ever see the application, I can pretty much insure (pardon the pun!) that a policy will be issued with very little objection from an underwriter or their department. As a result, the customer gets a policy we promised and we get a policy issued much quicker! That’s why 99.5% of every application we submit get’s issued without fail!

This past Friday, I had the opportunity of spending some time with some dear people – a couple of which I have worked with for 30+ years. I was invited by Bill Cook, Underwriting Manager for the Brentwood Regional Office of Auto-Owners Insurance Company (one of my primary companies) to speak to their personal lines underwriters. He asked that I give them an agent’s perspective of what we deal with daily, how they can help us to be more efficient and how we can help them do a better job in their day-to-day underwriting. Auto-Owners was my FIRST property-casualty company in my agency many years ago and is still one of the most “fair to the customer” companies I work with. We’ve had a wonderful relationship through the years mainly because of the consistent operation they have and the people, like these folks, they hire and keep!

I spoke about our agency history and the 7 R’s of an insurance agency. 3 of the R’s were RELATIONSHIP! I’m a big believer in the relationship aspect of my work and have been since the idea was taught to me when I started in 1978. It’s not a new premise: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you!” Familiar? I promote relationship with my customers, my staff. my companies and their underwriters. Without it, I could not do what I do. Certainly, my customers have reciprocated by being loyal to what we do, some of which have been with me for more than 30 years! My mentor years ago said …”Don’t ever forget, we are in the people business! You take your eyes off of that and you have no business to write!” I haven’t forgotten it!

I care about these people in the photo shown here. I have worked with them on hundreds of applications, I have gotten to know their families and learned what their world is like outside of the underwriting bubble. One of my longest underwriting relationships is with Joyce Cauthen. She brought her newborn, Justin, to my agency for us to meet him and now, he’s a college graduate with a CPA degree! WOW! I have other stories of many I have worked with and still do. What a joy it has been to create relationship with these folks.