We held a private breakfast to announce the winner, followed by our first "NU State Of The Agent Roundtable," featuring our three finalists and past two winners. (Look for highlights of that informative panel--talking about how to cope with the softening market, the aftermath of the Spitzer probes into producer compensation and other critical issues--in our Oct. 10 edition.)

Haake stood out because of its commitment to be risk managers rather than price-based policy pushers--an example we urge all independent agents to follow.

"At the Haake Companies, we do believe in managing and mitigating risk," said Steven Schill, Haake's chief operating officer, in accepting the NU award. "We started this approach about five years ago as we realized that differentiation was the way to go in this business. You cannot continue to be a peddler of insurance."

He explained that "the modeling of risk is becoming much more complex, and we are seeing this in catastrophe, seeing this, unfortunately, through terrorism, and other areas that we had to be more than just a seller of insurance."

Mr. Schill said Haake "transformed into a consultative approach," in part by bringing in "a number of folks from a number of areas that really helped solidify the company with their solid [risk management] backgrounds to support our producers."

Haake producers "had to understand, what are loss costs? How do I benchmark these?" he concluded. "This is hard work. There is a lot of thought that has to go into risk management upfront, but the reward is very, very good on the backside."

If you believe you have a unique game plan and would like to serve as a role model for your peers, please enter your agency for consideration next year. We look forward to sharing your success stories.

NU's Commercial Insurance Agency of the Year award program honored three finalists at the IIABA conference in New York. Pictured (l-r) are: Timothy Nielsen, president of Fullerton & Company (Honorable Mention); Sam Friedman, editor-in-chief, National Underwriter; Steven Schill, chief operating officer at Haake Companies (Award Winner); and David Maki, president of the Insurance Office Of America (Honorable Mention).