On Point with Peter van Aartrijk and Rick Morgan is an audio conversation with insurance industry leaders who champion change and challenge all of us to think.
So, how does a large independent agency with multiple offices approach new marketing and communications opportunities on the social Web? They apply it first inside their own firm.
Peter and Rick spoke with two representatives in IT and communications at a forward-thinking independent agency, Holmes Murphy Insurance. Based in Des Moines, Holmes Murphy has 13 offices in 11 states, 500 employees, and 77 years in the market.
Cindy Adams and Lori Tapscott have taken the agency on a “very deliberate path” with social media. Lori and Cindy were part of a team that looked at social media and educated each other and established a policy.
The pair wanted Holmes Murphy to maintain a culture of collaboration on the agency’s Intranet. Each division in this large firm has specialty groups, and the key was to allow the communities to get together. The agency also uses an RSS feed and monthly newsletter, and keeps a presence on Facebook and Twitter. It also hosts video for testimonials and niche marketing.
Cindy was a contributor to the Agents Council for Technology policy guide for her fellow independent agencies as they go down the social media path.
John Norwood, principal of Norwood & Associates, has a career in political work dating back to the early 1980s, and he’s one of the state’s best known lobbyists in the insurance and financial services sectors. Norwood talked about workers’ compensation, and other legislation and regulation matters that the insurance industry will face in 2012, including [...]
John, principal of Norwood & Associates, has been an lobbyist for insurance and financial services sectors across several decades. Norwood offered a focused looking at the all-important workers’ compensation issue, and he gave his thoughts on health insurance exchanges. In fact, Norwood forecast that 2012 will rank as an important one when it comes to [...]
John Norwood is one of California’s best known legislative advocates for the insurance and financial services sectors. Norwood spoke to the Insurance Journal about legislation and regulation, including a proposal by a consumer advocacy group that would establish prior approval for healthcare insurance and would make major changes to auto insurance and homeowners insurance in [...]
This year the Entrepreneurial Insurance Alliance (EIA), sponsored by MarketScout, named Vertafore and Risk Metrics, as winners of it 2011 Entrepreneurial Award in technology. Vertafore’s WorkSmart and Risk Metrics’ Insurance 360 technology products received recognition from the EIA as being some of the industry’s most innovative concepts in technology. Each year, the EIA receives hundreds [...]
Retail and wholesale brokers face the challenge —and opportunity— of redefining their relationships and value proposition in today’s changing insurance distribution world, according to Glenn Hargrove, president, MarketScout Wholesale, Dallas, Tex. In this interview from the recent Western Insurance Agents Association’s Insurance Industry Roundtable in California, Hargrove outlines the value proposition of agents and brokers [...]
The medical liability market continues to perform well even as the nation struggles to implement health care reform. Robert Allen, senior vice presidents at Torus Insurance, says many health care institutions are implementing new strategies to be successful in today’s health care reform world. In this interview with Insurance Journal’s Andrea Ortega-Wells from the annual [...]
Mystic Capital Advisors is a mergers and acquisitions group. Donoghue was at Target Markets
Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) began when several veterans and friends, moved by stories of the first wounded service members returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq, took action to help others in need. What started as a program to provide comfort items to wounded service members has grown into a complete rehabilitative effort to assist warriors [...]
Swett & Crawford, one of the nation’s largest and oldest wholesale insurance brokerage firms, and London-based independent wholesale, reinsurance and specialist broker Cooper Gay, are in final negotiations to form a combined entity under a new unified holding company. Despite the revised ownership structure, Neal Abernathy, CEO of Swett & Crawford and Steve Sadler, chief [...]