Let's hear it for the young agents

Rough Notes, Jun 2000 by Morris, Barbara A

Chubb executive is strong advocate for young agent programs

While participating in a panel discussion during a Big "I" young agents convention in Orlando two years ago, Chubb & Son executive Wally Gardner asked the audience, "What do you need most?" The answer, he recalls, was unanimous: access to markets.

This overwhelming response set the wheels in motion for the creation of a program that was intent on addressing that specific need-a program conceived by Gardner, worldwide sales manager for Chubb & Son, and wholeheartedly embraced by his company, which happens to play a key role in its success.

Gardner has always been a strong advocate for the independent agent, having held a number of marketing posts throughout the Chubb branch network since joining the company in 1972 as a property underwriter. As Chubb's worldwide sales manager, he oversees the company's vast distribution mechanism, which includes some 3,500 independent agents and brokers in the United States and 7,000 independent sales professionals in locations around the world.

While Gardner ultimately made the decision to pursue an insurance career in an insurance company rather than an agency, many of his friends and colleagues from his early days in the business are now agency principals. He has watched their struggles as the marketplace has changed, as well as the struggles of young agents new to the business. It is these young agents, says Gardner, who are particularly vulnerable to growing threats by direct writers, alternative distribution approaches, and an undeniable decline in support of the independent agency system by many of the same companies that grew strong through that system.

"Companies used to support agents from the moment they got out of school and became licensed," says Gardner, who over the years has become an active company executive participant in IIAA's young agents events, as well as a strong supporter of the association's Project InVEST educational program. Gardner says he has become increasingly troubled by the declining numbers of independent agencies and by "how difficult it's become for agents to get appointments." He views it as his mission "to try and pick up where others have left off in a different century."

After returning to his corporate office from the young agents meeting in Orlando, Gardner began to consider ways in which his company could provide fledgling agents new to the business the help they needed. The result after a full year of planning? Introduction in early 1999 of the "Young Agent Access" program, which provides Chubb & Son products to IIAA young agents, even if they don't have a Chubb appointment.

As Gardner explains, Chubb created a special placement facility that is open to IIAA members who are formally affiliated with a Big "I" state young agents program, licensed and carry E&O insurance. Through this facility-the Young Agents Agency located in Bridgewater, New Jersey-young agents not already appointed with Chubb can access the company's personal lines products without being held to specific volume requirements. Additionally, Chubb will assist in risk placement, product marketing, underwriting risks and servicing insurance coverages. Gardner points out, however, that Chubb remains strongly committed to its appointed agents; and in offering access to its products through the new Young Agents Agency facility, "it is interested only in new business and discourages moving accounts from any of its existing agents."

"We are offering all of our personal lines products to young agents who will own the business and receive commissions standard with the product line sold. We'll use profit-sharing agreements to encourage growth," explains Gardner. Additionally, he says young agents who participate in the program also are offered sales training through Chubb, with training being "connected" to other Big "I" events such as their annual legislative conference or selected state conferences held at locations around the country.

According to Gardner, since its introduction on January 1, 1999, the Young Agent Access program has attracted approximately 300 participating agents who, combined, have met Chubb's premium production goals for the year through the program and are expected to exceed projected premium production in 2000. He also reports that Chubb is in the process of developing a similar program for the company's commercial lines products. This program is slated to be introduced to Big "I" young agents within the next year.

Looking ahead, Gardner is confident in the future of the independent agency system and in the young agents who will ultimately drive that future. He is certain that despite emerging sources of distribution which are attempting to bypass or have never included the independent agent, the majority of insurance buyers will still look to the independent agent for personalized service that other marketers of insurance simply can't provide. The key issue, he argues, is the importance of creating an option for agents who are new to the insurance industry that will enable them to access the products they need to build their client base and to become established distribution sources within the marketplace.