Agent News

I never appreciated the concept of Christmas in July until this year. That’s because United Heartland had one of its strongest months ever this past July, which brought plenty of cheer to our team. We could not have had such a successful month without the continued support of our valued agent partners, so thanks to all of you for continuing to tell your customers about our high-touch, high-service model and its many benefits.

Highlights for the month include:

• $54 million in premium, the best month we’ve ever had in regard to this metric
• $8.4 million in new business, 16% better than plan
• 87% retention
• 25% drop in indemnity claims, which puts us down 6% for the year

Though submission activity has been lower than we’d prefer, we are quoting more policies (50 more than we did last year) and writing more than 40% of those. We are building on this momentum we’ve gained in July to end with a strong finish to the year.

Adding to this momentum and one of the other bright spots during the third quarter has been the launch of our Risk Management Services (RMS) program. It’s an exciting new Enterprise-wide program geared for your customers who are seeking alternatives to guaranteed cost workers’ compensation plans, specifically retrospective rating and large deductibles. You can learn more about this new initiative and its new director here.

Finally, as some of you may have already heard, I am retiring from United Heartland, effective at the end of this year. I feel fortunate to have been in this business for 40 years and while I will be stepping away from a day-to-day role, I plan to remain involved with the Enterprise and am eager to maintain the relationships and friendships that I’ve developed with so many of you. We are nearing the end of a nationwide search for my replacement and I will be actively involved in helping my successor transition into the role smoothly. We look forward to sharing this news with you very soon.

Thank you for trusting us with your workers’ compensation business as we remain committed to delivering the highest quality loss control and claim service available.

Sincerely,

Greg Donovan
Vice President, Field Operations
United Heartland

As was announced via an Accident Fund Holdings Agent Alert earlier this week, Risk Management Services (RMS) is a new program for customers seeking alternatives to guaranteed cost workers’ compensation plans. RMS offers you, and your customers, an opportunity to work with an experienced partner in risk management to more effectively manage the overall cost of risk.

Risk Management Services, an Accident Fund Holdings initiative, is based at United Heartland’s headquarters in New Berlin, Wis., and led by Tim Greifenkamp. (Read more about Tim here.)

The RMS unit is utilizing United Heartland’s extensive large account experience for the core of its underwriting staff and is currently hiring sales and marketing teams.

Risk Management Services satisfies a need in the marketplace. It provides you, our agents, with a comprehensive product that specifically targets retrospective and large deductible buyers. For additional information, please refer to this downloadable flier. If you have an account that may benefit from Risk Management Services, call 262-787-7900 or email RMS@UnitedHeartland.com.

Class Successes: United Heartland has been seeking growth of our health care and education segment in the Kansas City region. As a result, our business footprint has expanded greatly. We’ve written approximately $5 million in new health care business and have seen an overall increase of 15% year-to-date. Additionally, we have written $2.5 million in new education business year-to-date and have seen an overall increase of 76% year-to-date on this class of business.

Strengthening Our Team: We are excited to have Regional Underwriting Manager Adam Gildemeister join our Kansas City office. He brings an excellent blend of carrier and agency experience and will be instrumental in further developing our agency plant and sharpening our focus on new business.

Working Hard at Keeping Our Customers Happy: By fostering strong relationships at every level — claims, loss control and underwriting, we are committed to keeping our customers happy and engaged. Our retention rate of 85.47% reflects just how well we outperform our competition in this area.

Thriving in 2014: New business growth has been a highlight for the region this year with 50 new accounts bound totaling $10.8 million. We anticipate continuing this trend and ending the year strong!

Spreading news about United Heartland is now even easier as we recently updated our social media presence on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. We plan to use these social media channels to provide a greater connection to our value-added services, training, industry news and much more. Here’s a quick review of where we’re at:

While these sites won’t replace any of the ways we currently communicate with you (i.e. The UH Pulse, Agent Alerts, email), social media is just another way to conveniently learn more about and connect with United Heartland.

Accident Fund Holdings, Inc., is honored to announce it was recently named a Best Place to Work in Insurance for 2014 by Business Insurance. The recognition extends to Accident Fund Holdings and its four subsidiaries — United Heartland, Accident Fund Insurance Company of America, CompWest Insurance and Third Coast Underwriters. It is the first year we applied and won as an Enterprise and marks the fifth consecutive year United Heartland has received the recognition.

“We are excited to have our Enterprise recognized by Business Insurance as one of the best places to work in insurance,” said Liz Haar, president and CEO of Accident Fund Holdings. “As we celebrate another year on the best places list, I believe our strategies have positioned us to provide a customer experience that is the gold standard in the industry, and I am proud of our outstanding team that makes this happen every day.”

Business Insurance launched the Best Places to Work in Insurance program in 2009 to identify and recognize high-quality workplaces in the commercial insurance industry and honor them for creating workplaces that do a superior job of encouraging employees to thrive in a workplace they can love. The program, and subsequent recognition by Business Insurance and Best Companies Group, an independent workplace excellence research firm, is very prestigious within the insurance industry.

Nine of United Heartland’s valued partners also received the recognition:

• Assurance Agency Ltd., Schaumburg, Ill.
• HNI Risk Services LLC, New Berlin, Wis.
• Holmes, Murphy & Associates, West Des Moines, Iowa
• J. Smith Lanier & Co., West Point, Ga.
• Kapnick Insurance Group, Adrian, Mich.
• Lockton Cos. L.L.C., Kansas City, Mo.
• MJ Insurance Inc., Indianapolis
• SilverStone Group, Omaha, Neb.
• Wine Sergi & Co. LLC, West Bend, Wis.

We are extremely proud to be considered among the top Best Places to Work in Insurance and pleased to share this recognition with the selected agency partners as well.