The people at J. Rolfe Davis Insurance believe in getting the most out of their resources, both for their clients and from their own people.

That attitude has fueled innovation and success for the Maitland, Fla.-based agency, while earning the firm an Honorable Mention in the sixth annual “National Underwriter Commercial Insurance Agency of the Year” award program.

Bottom line, J. Rolfe Davis does not simply want to provide their accounts with insurance coverage. Instead, they want to work with clients to make them better risks.

“Many times, there is a significant potential for long-term savings through risk management, loss control and a careful crafting of the treatment of risk,” said David McKinney, the firm's chief executive officer. “Too often, clients try to make it all about the premium. Our approach is to point out areas of immediate savings and project them over a protracted period of time.”

Effectively, Mr. McKinney noted, the main message JRD presents is that the firm does not want to quote business but instead asks to be brought in as a “strategic business partner” for clients.

“We focus on, 'If you spend a million dollars, do you want to understand why, or just spend a million dollars?'” said John Turner, president of the firm. Those clients who are only looking for a quote are not for JRD, which has some advice for those looking at multiple agencies for simply the lowest premium.

“If you want to create an auction, you should hire an auctioneer,” he said, noting JRD's agents will walk away from a potential client if the prospect is simply looking for a price for coverage rather than working to improve its risk profile.

That position, he said, has made some reconsider their thinking on insurance. “That's pretty powerful”–when prospects see the firm is willing to give up on potential business to stick by its risk management principles, he added.

Instead, JRD agents go into a prospect meeting with a risk management plan. The exact pitch depends on the particular client, but one service he said the agency always provides is to offer high-level recommendations to better limit the account's exposure while demonstrating what kinds of solutions JRD will offer down the road. “It's like a teaser,” he said.

Even before that initial meeting, JRD agents will have done their homework to understand the potential client's business. “If you don't go into the first meeting knowing something about them, you've got a problem,” according to Mr. Turner.

Once the account is landed, however, the learning process is ongoing, Mr. Turner emphasized. “We're going to learn more about them; they're going to learn about how we do business,” he said.

If the client decides JRD is the agency for them, the firm puts together a comprehensive plan, custom-designing not only an insurance program but risk management practices as well.

“The moment we begin working with a client, our team goes into action,” said Mr. McKinney. “Individual team members come to the table with a variety of skill sets, expertise, disciplines and ideas, which are all brought to bear for the purpose of assessing the financial risk of our clients, quantifying the issues, negotiating with various insurance markets and crafting appropriate risk treatment mechanisms.”

This involves a four-stage process, according to Mr. Turner, which consists of discovering areas to be improved, designing solutions, implementing them and continuously administering them. “It's an ongoing process once you become a client,” he said, adding that the entire program begins again as renewals come up.

In addition, JRD offers its clients a total package for their coverage, embracing what Mr. McKinney called a “collaborative approach” for all property and casualty coverage–as well as employee benefits.

In this system, producers from both the commercial lines and employee benefits sides of the agency will work together with a client from the very beginning to provide a synchronized insurance program.

“Producers from both disciplines work together to focus our intellectual capital on developing customized solutions that positively impact the profitability of our clients,' Mr. McKinney said.

“For too many years, employee benefits and commercial lines functioned autonomously,” he added. “Today, working together, the two departments enjoy a synergy that allows them to benefit from client relationships and effective departmental initiatives.”

Mr. McKinney also praised the approach as a means of combating the “tenant farmer” mentality in which agents only look out for their portion of the business.

He noted that serving as a “one-stop shop” for clients helps not only the viability of JRD's customers but the agency's as well. “It protects our business,” he said, because few, if any other firms are offering a similar system providing coverage in both areas. “No one else is creating a comprehensive plan.”

JRD also offers additional services to clients by entering into “strategic alliances” with companies in related areas–such as payroll, accounting and software.

As with its collaborative approach, JRD's alliances have been crafted to help not only clients but the agency itself. These alliances, Mr. McKinney noted, “improve our competitive position and expand our service offering into new spaces and regions.”

Mr. Turner also pointed to the alliances as a means of expanding JRD's influence without having to physically expand the firm. In addition, he said, working together with other service firms–which might have the same customer–”makes it harder to unravel” their relationship with a client.

However, Mr. Turner said JRD is careful with the use of these alliances and won't overload a client with add-ons. “It's not a cookie-cutter approach,” he noted. “We might have a whole toolkit available, but that doesn't mean we'll use all of them.”

The attitude of constantly looking to improve not only focuses on clients but inwardly as well. Mr. Turner said JRD brings in a third-party consultant annually to evaluate its business and look for weak points that can be shored up. In addition, the firm has explored other ways to grow its business without having to simply pay out more for additional employees or space.

Among the more significant growth opportunities JRD has seized upon is the establishment of its Business Development Center, at a point when the agency realized it would have to change its prospecting method if it hoped to continue expanding at a target rate of 25 percent.

“From a production point of view, the downside to having successful producers is having successful producers,” Mr. McKinney explained. “At some point they reach saturation. The first sign is usually a disappearing pipeline.”

Mr. Turner said JRD asks producers to develop “centers of influence” within an area and build their expertise. The Business Development Center, he added, was designed to answer the question: “How do we create institutionalized centers of influence and delegate-down referrals to the right producers?”

The problem, said Mr. McKinney, is that those with books generating $1 million or more in revenue annually “simply do not have time to qualify prospects.”

The establishment of the Business Development Center created a place where prospects can be evaluated and accounts matched with the producer best suited to their expertise. As a result, Mr. McKinney noted that after a little more than a year in operation, the center has generated close to $1 million in new revenue for the agency.

“We attribute the sales success of the center to matching the 'super-qualified' prospect to the appropriate producer and team,” he said. “Matching the prospect with a producer who has expertise in their industry, a personality or approach that is compatible, and the technical expertise required to craft an appropriate and effective risk management program accounts for the tremendous early success of the BDC.”

Another move JRD took to streamline its operations was one more often seen in other industries, such as customer service–not just outsourcing but offshoring.

“To manage the agency's resources with efficiency and elevate our revenue-per-employee, we determined that outsourcing was the best way to accomplish many of the mundane but critical elements of our policy servicing,” according to Mr. McKinney.

“Pure economics” dictated the decision to outsource, Mr. Turner said, adding that it also allowed for a significantly more efficient operation.

Once the decision was made to outsource some policy-servicing operations, Mr. Turner said JRD reached an agreement with a firm in New York that had set up an “entire back-office operation” in China for an insurer that went under as the center was being set up.

The workers are closely supervised, are all college-educated and hold CPCU-level designations, he noted. Initially, the agency ran a “test” of the Chinese operation, sending some nonessential administrative work, and then continued to expand upon that as it proved to be a successful system.

In addition, being on the other side of the world means JRD can “play the time-zone game,” as Mr. Turner put it, sending work for the Chinese company at the end of the work day in Florida and having it completed when everyone at the agency returns to the office the following morning.

One big event that impacted JRD was the sale of the agency to Huntington Bank in 2000. Within two years, however, Mr. McKinney said a “fortunate series of events” prompted the agency's original owners to repurchase the firm in 2002.

Mr. Turner explained that Huntington had decided to pull out of Florida, and added that JRD had not quite been a perfect match culturally. “We're a little more entrepreneurial than a large corporate bank,” he said.

Since the repurchase, Mr. McKinney said the agency has a “renewed sense of purpose that has translated nicely to our bottom line.” At the time the agency's original owners repurchased it, JRD had revenue of about $14 million. Since then the firm's approach has led to significant growth, with results from the first quarter of 2007 showing revenues of nearly $25 million.

“Having just emerged from the most successful quarter in our history, we are very invigorated and ready to take on and conquer the challenges that lie ahead,” Mr. McKinney said.

Special Reports /

J. Rolfe Davis Agency Avoids Quotes, Seeks To Be Strategic Business Partner

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