LAS VEGAS, Sept. 21 - Safeco Insurance and Travelers Property and Casualty are recipients of the 2003 Best Practices Awards of Excellence, an honor annually bestowed by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA) upon the companies that put forth the most outstanding efforts in promoting and marketing the tools, seminars and philosophies of the association’s Best Practices initiative.
Safeco and Travelers were presented the awards during the Young Agents Breakfast and President’s Panel taking place at IIABA’s Convention & InfoXchange in Las Vegas. The presenter was Dennis Hilton, chairman of IIABA’s Council for Best Practices and president and operations manager at Cheney Insurance Agency in Damariscotta, Maine.
“This award recognizes companies that have made imaginative, outstanding and unique contributions in advocating Best Practices products and ideas that enhance the independent agency system,” said Hilton.
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 Insurance is being honored with the award for the third consecutive year. “Safeco has used many of the Best Practices materials as a blueprint for success,” Hilton said. “Safeco integrates Best Practices into many of its programs, makes the materials readily available to its agents and company personnel, and provides corresponding Best Practices materials to agents while doing joint planning.”
Travelers Property Casualty likewise has won the award three years in a row. “Travelers has worked diligently to help its agents grow and flourish by using all of the Best Practices tools,” Hilton said. “Over the past year, Travelers has trained and benchmarked more than 250 staff employees on the benefits and value of Best Practices, aligned Best Practices tools with their company philosophies, and provided regional workshops to help improve the independent agency system.”
Recipients of the Best Practices Award of Excellence are determined through an evaluation of which companies most effectively use Best Practices products to educate and improve their agency force. They are evaluated on how extensively they 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 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.
“IIABA’s Council for Best Practices congratulates and thanks Safeco and Travelers for their dedication to educating independent agents and their commitment to Best Practices,” said Hilton.
The Convention & InfoXchange is IIABA’s showcase meeting taking place in Las Vegas from Sept. 21-24. The event features a compelling company CEO roundtable; several prominent guest speakers and panelists; a variety of innovative continuing-education (CE) classes and other cutting-edge workshops; the largest exhibit hall in the insurance industry; numerous networking opportunities; and many other exciting events.
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.
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