Tower Street Insurance & Risk Management team members on the front steps of their office building, Providence Towers, a landmark facility in North Dallas. Scout, the floppy-eared team member down front, accompanies Chris to work from time to time and loves engaging with office humans, attending lunch meetings, and cold-calling dog food companies.
Texas agency brings enterprise risk
management to commercial and personal lines customers
By Dennis H. Pillsbury
Photography by Ben Johnson
The portents for Tower Street Insurance & Risk Management, Dallas, Texas, were not particularly auspicious when it opened its doors for business on May 15, 2020. “Our start coincided almost perfectly with the pandemic shutdown,” says Chris Peterie, agency founder.
Chris and his fellow founder, Ashleigh C. Trent, were on top of a range of factors around launching their new firm. “We were leaving the agency I had been with for a long time—me for 20-plus years and her for more than 10,” he explains. “We were moving our entire books, getting carrier contracts, and starting from scratch—those were things we had been diligently preparing to manage as a start-up. And we were on target.”
Plus, Ashleigh adds, with an ironic laugh: “I was about to go out on maternity leave just as the agency was launching. So, I was concerned about the effect that might have. And then the pandemic showed up,” and everything else paled by comparison.
“On the plus side,” Chris notes, “we were fortunate to leave the agency where I had served as president and bring with us all of our clients. That also meant that we were able to maintain relationships with many of the companies with whom we had written business, including Chubb. We’ve been a Chubb Cornerstone Agency almost from our start.”
Hyper-focused
“Our goal in starting Tower Street was to create an agency that provided the best experience for its employees, customers, and carriers,” Chris explains. “And that all starts with a culture of service.
“We have spent a ton of money on providing unbelievable service to our clients,” he adds. “However, we recognize that to truly succeed, we must have the right employees to provide that service and be teamed up with companies that respect us and our clients.
“That’s one of the reasons that we use Glassdoor to find out what our employees really think of us,” Chris notes. “And we consistently earn top grades. The agency was named by Dallas Business Journal in 2023 as the 7th Best Place to work and was just recognized by the Dallas Morning News as a best place to work.”
Despite the adverse climate in 2020, Tower Street was able to hit the ground running and start a growth spurt that saw revenues quadruple to reach an expected $15 million this year. At the same time, the number of employees grew to 70 from a starting point of 12. And much of this was accomplished during a pandemic.
“We actually found that the pandemic, as horrible as it was, helped us in some ways,” Ashleigh recalls. “People were definitely focused on risk—almost hyper-focused.”
She adds, “People were happy to spend time on the phone with us and, since our approach centers on partnering with clients rather than selling insurance, it played right into our strength. We wanted to spend the time with people to find out exactly what their risk management needs were.”
Risk management passion
Chris points out that “our goal is to bring our passion for providing unparalleled enterprise risk management services to support our clients’ passion, whether that includes the business that they run or the home where they live or any of those things in between that might result in a need for risk mitigation and loss control.
“Our primary goal is loss prevention and preparation,” he explains. “We work proactively with our clients to head off potential losses, leading with education, and we provide help with safety, continuity planning, and OSHA, DOT, and EPA regulations and requirements.
“All of this is based on an extensive enterprise risk management assessment that includes a full coverage gap analysis of a company’s current insurance coverage program, their internal risk management, and loss prevention program,” Chris adds. “In addition, our team works with our clients to understand their complete risk transfer strategy. We work with the client to understand the contracts the company has in place, and how their contracts impact their unique exposures presented by a company’s operations.”
On top of traditional insurance solutions, the agency offers a variety of alternative risk transfer solutions where such an approach is needed. “This allows us to be even more creative in bringing answers to clients’ concerns,” Chris explains.
“For example, a number of our home-builder clients expressed concerns about their liability arising from warranties they were required to provide buyers of new homes,” he says, “so we worked with them to set up a home warranty captive. This is only one example of the ways we can bring creativity to the risk management process.”
Jana Almejo, executive director of commercial lines, adds, “Our conversations always focus on how we partner rather than what insurance a client or prospect needs.
“We see insurance as a reactive tool that may be part of the overall risk management program,” she explains, “but we focus on all business areas in which a client is involved. This lets us determine just what risks need to be protected against, whether through insurance or some other risk transfer or risk mitigation technique.”
People priorities
To help ensure agency advisors are equipped with the latest and most effective risk management techniques, “we prioritize continuous learning and professional development through our once-a-week training classes we hold,” Jana explains. “We have taken the additional step of filing most of these classes with the Texas Department of Insurance, enabling all participants to earn continuing education credits.
“This dual benefit not only keeps our team up to date with industry advancements but also enhances their ability to serve our clients more effectively,” she says. “We also use this time to find out if any of our team members may have run across a situation where he or she needs help in determining the best risk management approach.
“We are committed to continuous learning about risk management,” she notes. “This is exemplified by the fact that we have 25 team members currently working together to earn their ARM designation.”
Jana, who is also responsible for bringing in new team members, points out that “we have learned a lot about how to find the right people. We look for hungry, humble, and smart people with a solid insurance background. While we use the résumés to find people, we don’t depend on them (the résumés); we look beyond the detail they provide.”
“We don’t want self-centered people,” Jana adds. “There’s no room for that in the team environment we have achieved. I can honestly say that we have the strongest team that I have ever seen in the industry. Our people enjoy working together and have a commitment to excellence.
“Our goal in starting Tower Street was to create an agency that provided the best experience for its employees, customers, and carriers. And that all starts with a culture of service.”
—Chris Peterie
Founder
“[T]he pandemic, as horrible as it was, helped us in some ways. People were definitely focused on risk—almost hyper-focused. (They) were happy to spend time on the phone with us and, since our approach centers on partnering with clients rather than selling insurance, it
played right into our strength.”
—Ashleigh C. Trent
Founder
“At the same time,” she says, “we have a lot of fun. We have a very young staff that keeps things lively and keeps us on our toes.”
Chris points out that the agency has a former teacher on staff who is “facilitating our efforts to keep our agency on pace to continue to be the best in class. She uses the lessons from the book, Excellence Wins by Horst Schulze, a co-founder and former president of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, in which he discusses the ways companies have achieved best-in-class status in their fields of endeavor.”
Beyond commercial
Ashleigh, who runs the agency’s High Net Worth business, says the agency’s broader focus on enterprise risk management “also is used for the HNW clients.” Ashleigh was honored as one of 39 agents to earn the inaugural Certified Advisor of Personal Insurance (CAPI) designation created by the Wharton School and Chubb Insurance, and she earned the Chartered Private Risk and Insurance Advisor (CPRIA) certification from St. John’s University School of Risk Management.
She explains that she works with a number of “financial advisors and other centers of influence to explain how Tower Street differs from other agencies by delivering strong risk management services that were developed from the start to respond to client pain points.
“One of those was claims management,” she adds, “so we have a claims adjuster on staff who works on the client’s behalf to ensure our clients have exceptional claims experience—to see that claims are handled quickly and fairly. Because he speaks the language, he is able to deal with the claims people at the insurance companies on a collegial basis and able to explain to the client what is happening.”
The agency conducts regular claims calls with clients to maintain its high standard of service. “We have a dedicated claims team that is committed to providing the best claims experience possible,” Ashleigh explains. “Our primary focus is to ensure that our clients receive the absolute best support during the often-challenging process, whether it’s for their family or their business.
“During the current hard market,” she continues, “we have been sending out information about claims costs and catastrophe losses, letting clients know what the average rate filings have been, and so on. This helps prepare them for any increases they may face.
“At the same time, we offer ways to curb costs, we provide risk mitigation tips, and we explain what we are continually doing to make them bulletproof,” Ashleigh says.
Recently, Tower Street entered the employee benefits field and did it with the same passion and approach it uses for commercial and personal lines. “We wanted to provide service that covered all aspects of the employee benefits spectrum,” Chris explains. “So, we brought in a professional with both human resources and insurance experience.”
Heather Guarnera is that person. She serves as the agency’s director of employee benefits and HR consulting. “We are different,” Heather says, “because we offer an HR component in addition to being able to provide all types of employee benefits—everything from health insurance, vision, group life and AD&D, to short- and long-term disability, HSAs, FSAs, and supplemental insurance.
“My background helps me to better understand the challenges faced by both the employer and the employees and provide cost-effective solutions,” she adds. “I also have done a lot of M&A work, so I can provide help to clients concerning due diligence and merging of employee benefits programs.
“Our goal is to get them through any challenges they may face and bring peace and harmony at the end,” Heather notes.
Chris concludes by pointing out the importance of community. “We are privileged to serve the community in which we live and work,” he says. “That is why we set up a foundation that provides support to community organizations and charities. We set aside a certain percentage of our revenues to support those community efforts.”
Rough Notes is proud to recognize Tower Street Insurance & Risk Management as our Agency of the Month. They deserve the honor. And they deserve to have a name that harkens back to the early days of our industry: Tower Street in London is where Edward Lloyd opened a coffee house in 1686 that became the place to secure marine insurance.
The author
Dennis Pillsbury is a Virginia-based freelance insurance writer.
