Awkward Insurance

Send us topics that you want to hear discussed in future episodes, and stay tuned for Season 2! Cat Ferris, CIC, CRM, CPCU, CLCS, AU  is the Commercial Lines Academic Director with the National Alliance. In her twenty years of experience within the industry, Cat has focused most of her career in commercial underwriting, and independent agency training. Based out of Gainesville, Florida her hobbies...

Need more tips on how to handle tough convos with clients?   Check out episode #2, I’m Your Agent. Let’s Talk about Sex. Focusing exclusively on risk management and insurance professional development, the Risk & Insurance Education Alliance provides a practical advantage at every career stage, positioning our participants and their clients for confidence and success.  

Aaron Gordon, CAPI, CCIC , is a second-generation insurance professional working to merge his parent’s “boutique-style” insurance agency with modern insurance technology for the first time. He’s finding success everywhere he turns but has found recently that the hiring pool of available qualified insurance professionals is quite murky. Aaron discusses the difficulty he has had with hiring while Du...

We want to hear from you ! Send us your questions, comments, and praises to podcasts@scic.com ! About our guests: Cat Ferris, CIC, CRM, CPCU, CLCS, AU-  is the Commercial Lines Academic Director with the National Alliance. In her twenty years of experience within the industry, Cat has focused most of her career in commercial underwriting, and independent agency training. Based out of Gainesville,...

Tracy Cotton has been an underwriter, CSR, consultant, producer, marketer, and instructor in her 25+ year career in insurance. Now she is putting it all to work in a new role as Executive Client Manager for Starr-Mathews Agency in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She didn’t create this job but feels as if it were created just for her. She gets to work closely with middle market to large commercial clients...

Tune in to hear their discussion about confidence, embarrassment, the struggle to be taken seriously in the workplace, and how to take control of you own education. Need more inspiration? Find your own path to success with a National Alliance Learning Path !   About Our Guest:  Cat Ferris, CIC, CRM, CPCU, CLCS, AU  is the Commercial Lines Academic Director with the National Alliance. In her twenty...

Nominate or Enter the Competition Here!  Tracy Cotton, CIC, CISR has been an underwriter, CSR, consultant, producer, marketer, and instructor in her more than 25-year career in insurance. Now she is putting it all to work in a new role as Executive Client Manager for Starr-Mathews Agency in Chattanooga, Tennessee. While she didn’t create this job, she feels as if it were created just for her. She...

In this episode of Awkward Insurance host, Dustyne Bryant, speaks with 2020 Outstanding CSR of the Year, Judy Vaughn, about the misinformation that insurance professionals battle daily. Account managers and agents often receive emotionally charged calls or urgent messages from clients about something they read on social media, heard on the news, or talked with their neighbor about. Misinformation...

Want to take a deeper dive? Build your selling and service skills with our Dynamics of Selling Course and see how your agency measures up with The Pulse of Customer Service publication! Focusing exclusively on risk management and insurance professional development, the Risk & Insurance Education Alliance provides a practical advantage at every career stage, positioning our participants and the...

Dustyne’s Final Thoughts: Working with Wes has been one of the highlights of my career. I learned so much about the practice of communication while working with him. The honesty and openness between the two of us were always on point. I never feared letting him know if something was wrong with one of his accounts because I knew he’d jump in to help. Often, we are successful not because of what we...

In this Episode of Awkward Insurance, guest and Team Lead for Claims at Penn National Insurance, Nikki Wyatt , joins host Dustyne Bryant, MBA, CIC, CISR , to discuss one corner of the gig economy: Transportation Network Companies (TNC) . Nikki shares with us her intimate knowledge of TNC coverage and exposures from a claims perspective. Listen in as they share both their personal and professional...

For account managers, communicating their needs and expectations to carriers can be frustrating. Carriers have specific ideas on what preferred business looks like, but what comes across the desk may not always fit the mold. What clients are looking for, may not match what a carrier is offering. Carrier marketing representatives, territory managers, and the likes are there to bridge the gap betwee...

So, why is this so awkward? No one likes hard conversations. Especially ones about breaking up with your insurance provider. When cancellation requests come across your desk, you may ask yourself “ why didn’t they call? ” Maybe, there was no hint. They just up and went with somebody else. Why is it so hard for some clients to let us know they aren’t happy? Are they embarrassed? What other conversa...

Wildfires happen every year but have been astonishingly frequent recently. This past September, one of the most destructive wildfires to date was started by a gender reveal party in California. This particular wildfire has destroyed over 10,000 acres, displaced over 21,000 people, and resulted in the death of a firefighter. How can insurance help situations like these? Insurance professionals help...