Agent News
Second Quarter 2017
If you’re like me, when you eat an excellent meal at a nice restaurant, or shop for a car or new golf clubs and have a positive service experience, it sticks with you. I know I’m more inclined to return to those businesses again because I trust they’ll deliver on their promise and their value. Similarly for United Heartland, retention — and our ability to satisfy our customers’ needs through our high-touch service model — continues to be a key focus. With the support of agents like you, we’ve been extremely successful in this endeavor.
Through the end of May, our retention has been an impressive 92.8%! Achieving this type of retention level, particularly in a marketplace that’s as competitive as it is right now, isn’t easy to do. But we’ve been working hard to maintain our profitable book of business by offering competitive renewal pricing, which allows you to spend less time marketing renewals and more time hunting down new business opportunities — a true win-win for both of us. Our retention figure is likely to go even higher, as we’re estimating June retention to set a record of 97% on direct written premium of $22 million. This is an amazing feat that we couldn’t achieve without agents who are committed to our value proposition and who have confidence in our ability to handle distressed business with expertise and efficiency, so thank you.
With new business, we’re extremely opportunistic and know that when an account hits the market, United Heartland has an excellent chance of winning it over with our proven track record of superior claims handling, great customer service and expert loss control services. We want to continue to capitalize on this through the rest of the year. Through May, we’re up $2 million compared to last year’s record-setting new business results and we anticipate great things in July, one of our largest new business months.
Helping us achieve some of this new business success has been our recent entry into Oklahoma. (Read more on that here.) We’re off to a great start in the Sooner State and expect to write six accounts in our first 90 days. As we continue to appoint more agents there, we believe Oklahoma will be a great complement to our efforts in Texas. Part of the reason we entered the state is that we noticed many Oklahoma agents write business in Texas and vice versa, so this seemed a logical next step for us. Plus, for several years when I was working out of the Kansas City region, I heard from agents telling us they wanted UH to have more of a presence in Oklahoma. A number of multiline carriers had not fared well in the state and agents believed a monoline organization such as ours would be a great fit. Given some of the state’s recent work comp reforms, I feel confident this will be the case.
As mentioned earlier, July 1 is one of the most important dates of the year for United Heartland. I encourage you to keep the submissions coming on strong and send us accounts that can benefit from our customer-centered focus on workers’ compensation. Please contact me or one of our business development consultants to see how we can support you in identifying new business opportunities that will help bring you success for years to come.
Enjoy the upcoming Fourth of July holiday!
Sincerely,
Justin Bealhen
Vice President, Field Operations
United Heartland
United Heartland is proud to announce Senior Loss Control Specialist Diana Stegall was recently elected senior vice president of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE). With her election to this role, Stegall will serve for a year-long term beginning July 1, then will serve as president-elect beginning July 1, 2018, before becoming president of the organization for a year-long term on July 1, 2019. Stegall has been active for more than two decades in ASSE and currently serves as Region V Vice President, which includes most of United Heartland’s core states in the Midwest.
“My passion for ASSE was ignited when I attended my first leadership conference while I was still in Region VI,” she said in her platform statement. “The experience helped me to understand ASSE’s structure beyond chapter operations and the ways ASSE works together to protect people, property and the environment.”
Through her work with the ASSE conference planning committee, Stegall said she was fortunate to spend time with safety experts throughout the industry, such as Dr. David Michaels, former assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and Dr. John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). “It has been great to have contacts at that level,” she said. “To be able to get insight from them about the regulatory process is fascinating.”
Stegall would not have considered running for such a position within ASSE were it not for the support of United Heartland’s management team. “Loss Control Director Rick Bartelme, Loss Control Manager Steve Groth, Vice President of Insurance Operations Curt LeBeau and President Steve Cooper have all been enormously supportive of my continued and future involvement in ASSE,” she said, noting that the appeal of her continued ASSE involvement was the benefits it brings to our organization, our agents and our customers.
“Being affiliated with the United Heartland name and being in states or jurisdictions where we may be relatively new or have a limited presence will provide me the opportunity to promote United Heartland’s value on a more consistent and widespread basis,” Stegall said. “I will also have the ability to tap into ASSE’s network of safety professionals to get the latest industry news, research answers to challenging questions from our agents and ensure that we’re providing our customers with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.”
For more information about ASSE, visit www.asse.org.
