Brothers share key to insuring success

When I came back in '72, things were a little slow for the city. About that time, one of the gals here in the office left, and so it was like, “Hey, get in here.” I helped out, so I was the new claims girl from about '72 for about five years. I just did nothing but the claims department. That was a good basis for learning what's covered and what isn't covered. I got my license and went on from there.

Seventy-five years is a long time for any business to survive. What does it take?

Brent: We're kind of generalists. We don't really specialize in one particular type of insurance, and I think that has really helped us over the years. The trends change, and the rates go up and down, fluctuate by class of business. If you don't have all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, it works better.

Greg: And just being halfway honest with people. We see a lot of that out there where it's not that way. One thing's said up front, but at the end of the year when the audit comes, it just didn't work.

How has the insurance industry changed since your dad's time?

Brent: Obviously there's been changes in technology, and everything now is computer-driven, e-mailed and issued on the computer.

The agents do a lot more of the work now than we used to do. We used to just call the underwriter, tell them what we got, get approval, send in the order. He'd issue the policy. Everything would come out to us.

Over the years, they've been able to schlep more of that work onto us, from policy-issuing within the office now and having to go online and put in the rating information into their computers, downloading policies. It's just gotten a lot more complicated in terms of our duties. Unfortunately, it gives us less time to respond to the client or get out of the office.

What are the most frequent claims filed?

Greg: For me, it's water damage, amazingly. Broken water pipes under the house. In these houses that are 30 or 40 years old, the pipes sit in that alkalized soil and get eaten away. Pretty soon, they break and flood the house. A little water loss can be $100,000.

That's our No. 1. It's not fire. Gee, we never have a good fire. And thefts, those are occurring more often now. We're seeing more theft with the economy.

Brent: (Following) these two recent wind storms, we filed a lot of claims with roofs and downed trees on people's houses. I'm sure our loss ratios with some of the companies are going to be affected without taking into (consideration) that Greg and I didn't have much to do with the 70-knot wind blowing. Our loss ratio won't reflect that we weren't the cause of the wind storm.

What do you advise customers looking into earthquake insurance?

Greg: It's a big deal for people that haven't lived here. These folks that move here from back East think we're all doomed and so they gotta have earthquake (insurance). For those of us that have lived here, we've never paid our first earthquake claim.

I mean, we have these big shakes and this and that. But there's a large deductible with earthquake.

On a million-dollar home, you have a $150,000 deductible. So you can have a few broken windows and the ceiling can fall in, but you're probably not going to exceed your deductible.

On the other hand, sure enough that million-dollar home now has a half a million dollars' worth of damage, maybe that $150,000 deductible doesn't sound so bad. You can't win, no matter what you tell them.

Brent: I look at it from a financial standpoint. If you have a $300,000 mortgage on a $400,000 house, and an earthquake does hit and does a significant amount of damage to the house, if you have the earthquake coverage, you've got something to respond with. Yeah, you might have to go out and borrow money to meet the deductible requirement, but you're only going to have to borrow $30,000 or $40,000. But if the house goes away, the mortgage won't.

How's the economy affecting your business?

Greg: On our side, the guys don't need that boat policy anymore or the toys that they play with on the weekend. Of course, that was happening when gas prices were high, too. With this, it's get rid of the boat, get rid of this and that.

And there's just been a real slowdown in escrows, so that requests for policies slowed down. Our policy count is way down, and what we have is thinned out a little bit.

Brent: Commercially, I do construction on the commercial side. There's a lot of contractors, subcontractors, general contractors who have absolutely no work. There's nothing being built.

They'll let their policy lapse, in some cases, and just won't renew it because they don't have any work and can't afford to keep it in place, even though there can be claims for prior work that come up and affect them.

What's your inspiration?

Greg: I guess it took a while, but it was that group of people that Dad had as customers. Dad was gone, but those customers were still there, and they would always say, “Oh, your dad used to do this. Your dad used to do that.” Do it for Dad.

Brent: Continuing the business for my father is a very important part of it. For Al Weingarten, too. He was a wonderful guy. It drives you to do it.

As an agent, you don't want to see a lot of claims because they can affect your bottom line. But on the other hand, it is rewarding when that product you sold is taking care of (customers).

When I came back in '72, things were a little slow for the city. About that time, one of the gals here in the office left, and so it was like, “Hey, get in here.” I helped out, so I was the new claims girl from about '72 for about five years. I just did nothing but the claims department. That was a good basis for learning what's covered and what isn't covered. I got my license and went on from there.

Seventy-five years is a long time for any business to survive. What does it take?

Brent: We're kind of generalists. We don't really specialize in one particular type of insurance, and I think that has really helped us over the years. The trends change, and the rates go up and down, fluctuate by class of business. If you don't have all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, it works better.

Greg: And just being halfway honest with people. We see a lot of that out there where it's not that way. One thing's said up front, but at the end of the year when the audit comes, it just didn't work.

How has the insurance industry changed since your dad's time?

Brent: Obviously there's been changes in technology, and everything now is computer-driven, e-mailed and issued on the computer.

The agents do a lot more of the work now than we used to do. We used to just call the underwriter, tell them what we got, get approval, send in the order. He'd issue the policy. Everything would come out to us.

Over the years, they've been able to schlep more of that work onto us, from policy-issuing within the office now and having to go online and put in the rating information into their computers, downloading policies. It's just gotten a lot more complicated in terms of our duties. Unfortunately, it gives us less time to respond to the client or get out of the office.

What are the most frequent claims filed?

Greg: For me, it's water damage, amazingly. Broken water pipes under the house. In these houses that are 30 or 40 years old, the pipes sit in that alkalized soil and get eaten away. Pretty soon, they break and flood the house. A little water loss can be $100,000.

(3 of 4)

That's our No. 1. It's not fire. Gee, we never have a good fire. And thefts, those are occurring more often now. We're seeing more theft with the economy.

 

Brent: (Following) these two recent wind storms, we filed a lot of claims with roofs and downed trees on people's houses. I'm sure our loss ratios with some of the companies are going to be affected without taking into (consideration) that Greg and I didn't have much to do with the 70-knot wind blowing. Our loss ratio won't reflect that we weren't the cause of the wind storm.

What do you advise customers looking into earthquake insurance?

Greg: It's a big deal for people that haven't lived here. These folks that move here from back East think we're all doomed and so they gotta have earthquake (insurance). For those of us that have lived here, we've never paid our first earthquake claim.

I mean, we have these big shakes and this and that. But there's a large deductible with earthquake.

On a million-dollar home, you have a $150,000 deductible. So you can have a few broken windows and the ceiling can fall in, but you're probably not going to exceed your deductible.

On the other hand, sure enough that million-dollar home now has a half a million dollars' worth of damage, maybe that $150,000 deductible doesn't sound so bad. You can't win, no matter what you tell them.

Brent: I look at it from a financial standpoint. If you have a $300,000 mortgage on a $400,000 house, and an earthquake does hit and does a significant amount of damage to the house, if you have the earthquake coverage, you've got something to respond with. Yeah, you might have to go out and borrow money to meet the deductible requirement, but you're only going to have to borrow $30,000 or $40,000. But if the house goes away, the mortgage won't.

How's the economy affecting your business?

Greg: On our side, the guys don't need that boat policy anymore or the toys that they play with on the weekend. Of course, that was happening when gas prices were high, too. With this, it's get rid of the boat, get rid of this and that.

(4 of 4)

And there's just been a real slowdown in escrows, so that requests for policies slowed down. Our policy count is way down, and what we have is thinned out a little bit.

 

Brent: Commercially, I do construction on the commercial side. There's a lot of contractors, subcontractors, general contractors who have absolutely no work. There's nothing being built.

They'll let their policy lapse, in some cases, and just won't renew it because they don't have any work and can't afford to keep it in place, even though there can be claims for prior work that come up and affect them.

What's your inspiration?

Greg: I guess it took a while, but it was that group of people that Dad had as customers. Dad was gone, but those customers were still there, and they would always say, “Oh, your dad used to do this. Your dad used to do that.” Do it for Dad.

Brent: Continuing the business for my father is a very important part of it. For Al Weingarten, too. He was a wonderful guy. It drives you to do it.

As an agent, you don't want to see a lot of claims because they can affect your bottom line. But on the other hand, it is rewarding when that product you sold is taking care of (customers).

That's our No. 1. It's not fire. Gee, we never have a good fire. And thefts, those are occurring more often now. We're seeing more theft with the economy.

Brent: (Following) these two recent wind storms, we filed a lot of claims with roofs and downed trees on people's houses. I'm sure our loss ratios with some of the companies are going to be affected without taking into (consideration) that Greg and I didn't have much to do with the 70-knot wind blowing. Our loss ratio won't reflect that we weren't the cause of the wind storm.

What do you advise customers looking into earthquake insurance?

Greg: It's a big deal for people that haven't lived here. These folks that move here from back East think we're all doomed and so they gotta have earthquake (insurance). For those of us that have lived here, we've never paid our first earthquake claim.

I mean, we have these big shakes and this and that. But there's a large deductible with earthquake.

On a million-dollar home, you have a $150,000 deductible. So you can have a few broken windows and the ceiling can fall in, but you're probably not going to exceed your deductible.

On the other hand, sure enough that million-dollar home now has a half a million dollars' worth of damage, maybe that $150,000 deductible doesn't sound so bad. You can't win, no matter what you tell them.

Brent: I look at it from a financial standpoint. If you have a $300,000 mortgage on a $400,000 house, and an earthquake does hit and does a significant amount of damage to the house, if you have the earthquake coverage, you've got something to respond with. Yeah, you might have to go out and borrow money to meet the deductible requirement, but you're only going to have to borrow $30,000 or $40,000. But if the house goes away, the mortgage won't.

How's the economy affecting your business?

Greg: On our side, the guys don't need that boat policy anymore or the toys that they play with on the weekend. Of course, that was happening when gas prices were high, too. With th

And there's just been a real slowdown in escrows, so that requests for policies slowed down. Our policy count is way down, and what we have is thinned out a little bit.

Brent: Commercially, I do construction on the commercial side. There's a lot of contractors, subcontractors, general contractors who have absolutely no work. There's nothing being built.

They'll let their policy lapse, in some cases, and just won't renew it because they don't have any work and can't afford to keep it in place, even though there can be claims for prior work that come up and affect them.

What's your inspiration?

Greg: I guess it took a while, but it was that group of people that Dad had as customers. Dad was gone, but those customers were still there, and they would always say, “Oh, your dad used to do this. Your dad used to do that.” Do it for Dad.

Brent: Continuing the business for my father is a very important part of it. For Al Weingarten, too. He was a wonderful guy. It drives you to do it.

As an agent, you don't want to see a lot of claims because they can affect your bottom line. But on the other hand, it is rewarding when that product you sold is taking care of (customers).