How insurance can help manage an uncontrollable year
When an insurance pro takes time to understand the exact nature of an insured's risk, they can help restore a sense of control to an otherwise unruly event.
As I sit down to write this column, mainstream news outlets are talking about COVID-19′s fall surge, and global leaders are at odds about how best to address the pandemic.
These headlines speak to a common theme that emerged in this month’s NU Property & Casualty cover stories: As much as we all might like to stop talking about and living with the coronavirus, there’s an element of this pandemic fight that seems beyond our control, as the enemy is one that we can’t see (without a microscope) nor smell or touch.
That lack of control couldn’t be less comfortable for a Type-A Taurus like me. Thank goodness NU’s annual Agency of the Year Awards season came around, because I’m perpetually inspired by the smarts and passion that independent agency owners bring to work that’s often challenging and misunderstood. I also can’t help but admire the solution-minded spirit that runs through the entire insurance industry.
Consider JAG Insurance Group in South Florida, where a trio of young insurance professionals decided in 2013 that there needed to be a way to address the lack of transparency that’s sometimes linked to this business. They wrapped that mission into their agency branding and culture, and it worked. JAG Insurance Group is one of three winners of this year’s Agency of the Year Award.
Similarly, the owners of C3 Risk & Insurance Services in California, which is the second of our three Agency of the Year Award winners, embraced the idea of industry disruption to build a tech-driven agency that has managed to thrive in spite of 2020’s many challenges.
And finally, Agency of the Year Award winner Insurance Express fuses old-school insurance-agency values such as relationship building with insights gleaned from data and analytics to bring its customers mindful, proactive coverage solutions.
You can hear more from each of these agencies by attending our Award Winner’s Roundtable webinar happening Oct. 28, 2020. There, I’ll get a chance to ask each agency owner more about what it takes to build and maintain a best-in-class insurance business in this age of social media, unforgiving natural disasters, and of course, COVID-19.
While assembling this year’s Agency of the Year Awards package with my colleagues, I was struck by the way insurance can help restore a sense of control over the world around us in the face of disasters that would otherwise be life-altering in all the wrong ways.
No one wants to live through an Act of God like the wildfires that ravaged much of the Western U.S. in recent weeks, or the increasingly destructive hurricanes that now seem to wash over some communities with regularity. But when an insurance agent or broker has taken the time to research and understand the exact nature of an insured’s risk, and then provides that individual or business with appropriate coverage, not only will these solutions enable people to get back on their feet as quickly as possible after a disaster, they also help restore a sense of control to an otherwise unruly event.
Of course, there are things each of us can do to control what happens with the pandemic. We can continue to hunker down and care for each other until scientists deliver a safe and effective vaccine for the virus. And when we go out, we can wear masks, which doctors say will dramatically reduce how fast the virus spreads.
And that’s what’s top of mind for me this month.
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