NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 21—SAFECO, Travelers and Harleysville were recognized today by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA) for their outstanding efforts in promoting and marketing the tools, seminars and philosophies of the Association’s Best Practices initiative.
The three insurance companies each received a Best Practices Award of Excellence during the Young Agents Breakfast and President’s Panel with IIABA Leadership at the New Orleans InfoXchange. The annual award was presented by Reg Davis, chairman of IIABA’s Council for Best Practices and Regional Agency Manager at BB&T/Huffines Russell Insurance in Alpharetta, Ga.
IIABA’s Best Practices program provides independent agents and brokers with an abundance of useful information and valuable products to help improve agency performance and encourage dialogue and interaction with carriers on a variety of vital agency-management issues.
“SAFECO, Travelers and Harleysville have exceptionally demonstrated their dedication to the complete family of Best Practices tools, workshops and services,” Davis said. “Through their participation in and promotion of Best Practices, these companies have helped independent agents better understand the past, analyze the present and formulate a strategy for future success.”
The criteria used to determine recipients of the Best Practices Award of Excellence include an evaluation of which companies most effectively use Best Practices products to educate and improve their agency force. Criteria also is based on how companies use the services internally to train their sales and marketing managers.
Award recipients are the most committed to offering or sponsoring Best Practices seminars for their independent agents; ensuring that their marketing staff and/or field representatives distributed and used the Best Practices products during agency visits; promoting Best Practices products through internal communication; purchasing and distributing Best Practices materials internally or to their independent agents; and including Best Practices information or links on their Web sites.
The New Orleans InfoXchange, IIABA’s showcase meeting, features an exclusive reception and lunch for Trusted ChoiceSM agencies and company/strategic partners; a compelling company CEO panel; a wide variety of innovative continuing-education (CE) classes offering 19 CE credits; several prominent guest speakers; one of the largest exhibit halls in the insurance industry; numerous networking opportunities; and many other exciting events. The event runs through Tuesday.
Founded in 1896, IIABA is the nation’s oldest and largest national association of independent insurance agents and brokers, representing a network of more than 300,000 agents, brokers and their employees nationally. Its members are businesses that offer customers a choice of policies from a variety of insurance companies. Independent agents and brokers offer all lines of insurance—property, casualty, life and health—as well as employee benefit plans and retirement products. Web address: www.independentagent.com.
###