From The President

FROM THE PRESIDENT

We stand at the ready to help you navigate a myriad of challenges that pop up in your operations.

STEVE CLEMENTS, CPIA President, PIA of Wisconsin

STAYING CALM IN A STORM – PART I

During what was to be a very routine flight, I was one of the pilots operating a private jet transporting the aircraft’s owner and his family from Colorado back to their Midwest home. Our onboard weather radar was currently deactivated by the maintenance crew and was due to be repaired in a few days. Not a big deal given the benign weather forecasted along our route. All was well as we cruised along in the flight levels while the family enjoyed their meal together in the passenger compartment. Then things got interesting. After being in a high-level cloud layer for some time, we experienced a sudden onset of turbulence indicative of convective (thunderstorm) activity which was not in our departure forecast.

Pop-up thunderstorms are common in summertime and normally we would simply use our onboard radar to pick our way around the storms. But our radar was… well, see above. That wasn’t our only issue. Air traffic control (ATC) typically hands a flight off to the next controller as that plane progresses along its flight path. Since ATC is equipped with ground-based radar, we could simply ask them for vectors around the weather. However, our controller did not hand us off to the next controller before we flew out of his radio frequency range, leaving us without contact with ATC. And then the ice pellets and hail started which, by the way, makes an awful commotion on a metal plane flying at over 500 mph. I glanced back to our white-faced and wide-eyed passengers and assured them that we are trained for all of this and that everything would be ok. After scrambling to manually find the next ATC frequency we were supposed to be assigned, we contacted them, got vectors out of the convective activity, and enjoyed a smooth, clear, and uneventful remainder of the flight to our destination. The owner’s wife hugged both of us pilots after we landed.

It is possible (and dare I say even probable) that today’s insurance climate has some agents and carriers feeling much the same way – unsettled, alone, and unable to see what is to come amidst stormy circumstances. To be honest, nobody would blame you for feeling such. After all, we are seeing an unprecedented combination of several simultaneous factors: hurricanes, wildfires, hailstorms, inflation, lossratio concerns and rate instability, just to name a few. But, our industry has weathered severe storms in the past – and has always come through them intact and well-positioned for the future. I strongly believe that that this current climate will resolve into smooth air and clear skies as well.

On the positive side, increasing rates translate to higher commissions and industry unrest often leads to increased quoting activity – especially within the independent insurance channel. Unfortunately, increasing rates also tend to correlate to lower overall levels of client satisfaction and retention.

So, what is the savvy insurance professional to do? What action steps should we be focused on? At the risk of oversimplifying, let me suggest boiling down our “next best steps” into a three-part mantra that works just as well in an agency as it does in a cockpit: Stay calm, stay focused, and stay optimistic. In the next issue of Wisconsin Professional Agent, I will write a dedicated column to more closely examine each of these components to help us understand why they are so important and how they can be practically applied to our professional (and personal!) circumstances.

In closing, if you find yourself needing a little help from your “Agency ATC” (aka PIA), just let us know. We stand at the ready to help you navigate a myriad of challenges that pop up in your operations. And be assured, we will not forget to hand you off to the plethora of resources that are yours as a PIA member. And after all our efforts, who knows? We might find a line of clients eager to hug us for our determination to stay the course and serve people well.

promise

Since 1896 ROCKFORD MUTUAL

INSURANCE COMPANY