Today we’d like to introduce you to Bruce Hart.
Bruce, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Back when I was in my early 20’s, living in Evergreen, Colorado where I grew up, I received a call from my Uncle in Texas asking if I would like an opportunity working for his company. This was, of course, a starting position with a Texas MGA in their mail and supply department.
One would think that working in a mail room would not be all that inspiring, actually, this is the heartbeat of most all companies. Everything that starts and stop flows through the US postal service and, of course, this department. In addition, to opening the morning mail and sending it all out at the end of the day – I would fill supply orders for our contracted independent agents across Texas. Application – envelopes – we even had at that time for personal property – policy typing agents which we had to send boxes of policies to.
This MGA would provide markets to our contracted agents for mobile homes, motors homes, personal property, and auto. We also had markets for commercial lines products for contractors general liability, commercial property, and package. An MGA would fill a market need that the admitted standard markets were unable to take care of for the independent agents. Some refer to this market as Excess and Surplus lines – markets that would think out of the box and had freedom of forms and rates to provide coverage for otherwise difficult risks.
My career path led me down the standard lines company path – went to work for a company downtown Dallas in their commercial rating department. This was my first job outside of the mail and supply department I started in. But in an effort to grow within this industry, took multiple classes in the evening learning all I could to properly rate products for insurance. The company I went to work for was Texas Employers Insurance Company. This was a great training company which provided a solid insight into the standard side of this business. I would rate not only Texas but all over the US commercial auto fleets and General Liability. Back then, we did not use computers to rate. We would use manuals and microfilm.
Continued down the standard company path and landed a job with Mission Insurance Company as an Underwriting Assistant. Worked with very large accounts that were experience rated for their work comp. We worked with retro plans and dividends. Learned a lot about pricing and exposures.
Received a call once again from my Uncle that had started another MGA and they were in need of someone with my commercial experience. They wanted me to come and run their operations and commercial division. I had a pretty good handle on the commercial products and had to self-teach my self on the personal auto sector. Computers had just started to make an impact our how our operation would run – out with the teletype machine and in with the fax machine – wow. Now, moving information around the world could be done in seconds not hours or days. The computer allowed us to start placing some of our personal automobile on raters for our underwriter teams use. We were able to have our it contact create for what we know now as the first comparative rater – which we would provide all of our contracted agents with rating disks to run our product on. This rater would take the information and runs it through our three markets for substandard personal automobile and return the best quote.
In addition, we would provide an electronic application on this rater. Think we were a little early on this front, but soon the rest of our competition would follow suit. We would soon start writing our own personal auto products with a front company and reinsurance behind it. I would write the rates, rules, and underwriting guides for this product and soon would have 4 personal automobile products to offer our agency base. We had to hire claims professionals and handle all of the claims for our products for which we place with reinsurance companies.
I would not trade the many aspects of this industry I had learned through the years working in this business. This is what prepared me for starting this business today. Fortunately, I had a great support network and mentor from the prior MGA for which I was a minority owner in with Jeff Watters.
Jeff was very instrumental in loaning me the capital to start this MGA back in 2009 and came on as a marketing rep for this business. he is very well known throughout the state which provided the foundation for our continued growth today. Jeff and I have another company for which he is the majority owner of which is our premium finance company “PIE Finance Co, Inc.” I own the MGA 100% – one company feed the other and so we have sustained excellent growth. We ended the 2017 year writing a net written premium volume of just under $10,000,000. We plan on continuing our growth at a slow and steady pace.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Always have had obstacles and challenges – some have to do with finding the right people. As there is no company out there with any success at all without having a dedicated staff that carries the heavy loads for the company. Not talking about people that are just there for a paycheck but people that truly want the best for a company.
Keeping good markets – always a challenge – more so in the personal lines arena than the commercial side. Reason being is that this is an area of public view and political pressures. Always pushing for rate equality and competition always pushing pricing downward. Making it very difficult to make an underwriting profit.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the PROFESSIONAL INSURANCE EXECUTIVES story. Tell us more about the business.
Professional Insurance Executives – is an Excess and Surplus lines MGA. We have about 500 contracted independent agents across the state of Texas.
We are for the most part a commercial lines MGA. We are known for proving our agents with excellent service and the ability to rate a large number of our products on our web rater. We not only provide over 100 classes of General liability on our rater – but we also provide property – package – inland marine and Follow Form XS over GL, auto and Comp up to 5 million limits. on the rater in seconds.
We continue to enhance what we bring to the table for our agents and this sets us apart from our competition. We continue to spend money on promoting our contracted companies products and doing our best to underwrite the provided products to return a profitable return with favorable loss ratio’s.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
Everything – luck placed me within this business at the right time.
Matched me up with those that gave me support and direction when I needed it.
Allowed us to flourish with our contracted markets today!
Contact Info:
- Address: 310 E I-30 ste m109
Garland, TX 75043 - Website: www.pieins.com www.pieins.com/pierater
- Phone: 214-556-3598
- Email: bhart@pieins.com
Image Credit:
Gene Ender, Jeff Watters
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