Cameron M. Harris (right), president of Cameron M. Harris & Co., meets with Jerry Richardson, owner/founder of the Carolina Panthers professional football team at Ericsson Stadium, home of the Panthers. The agency has a luxury box on the 50-yard line where it entertains clients.
In just 18 years, Cameron M. Harris & Co., Charlotte, North Carolina, has become the 52nd largest agency in the country with more than $130 million of property/casualty premium volume. That's a pretty astounding accomplishment and, naturally, we wanted to find out how it happened. We talked to the agency's president, Cameron (Cammie) Harris, and the chief financial officer, Billy Richard.
"We got where we are the old fashioned way," Cammie says proudly. "Some people have even called us a sweat shop. In the best sense of that phrase, we are. Our people have a strong work ethic and are constantly pushing to be the best. We started out wanting to be the best in our area and I think we've achieved that. Now we want to be the best in the business."
The approach used by Cameron Harris to become the best is a very aggressive, sales-oriented style. "We're in a war," Cammie declares, adding that "we remind our people of that every day. We have art work depicting Civil War battles all over the work area.
"We remind our sales force every day that we're in the retail business. We don't advertise much. This is a people business and we want our people out there in front of the businesses in our area. We give our producers a car allowance and send them out cold calling. And we back up our sales people with experts in every aspect of insurance. We provide them with all the tools to succeed."
"I'm an entrepreneur and surround myself with experts who can fill in the gaps...I believe in a committee structure. It allows for thorough and meaningful discussions. We really go at it tooth and nail. No one's afraid to express his point of view."
--Cammie Harris
Reaching clients
"We work hard every day to get new clients and retain current clients," Cammie points out. And that does not mean just insureds. "We have two sets of clients--one buys and one sells. You have to look out for both." When it comes to dealing with those clients who sell--the insurance companies--Cameron Harris bends over backwards to provide them with the best information about every account and to send them business that fits their marketing profile.
"We maintain an extensive database that allows us keep everyone honest," Billy Richard explains. Using that database, the agency can quickly ascertain what classes of business a company wrote and what they did not write. "We sit down with our top 10 companies every year and share that information with them," Cammie says. "It's been a real eye opener for both of us."
The agency also prides itself on hiring the best and brightest in the insurance industry. "We hire people with extensive knowledge about the business. We have a number of people on our staff who are retired from the company ranks, yet still want to contribute. We have one individual who spent 31 years with IRI and enjoys reading property insurance policies. Another employee was a large account underwriter for Aetna. We use their knowledge to both provide the best coverage to our insureds and to help us better understand the insurance company mentality."
Advocating for clients
One of the results of having people with such a depth of insurance knowledge, Billy says, is that "every submission we send to an insurance company is accurate and knowledgeable. Our companies know they get the best submissions from us and appreciate it. Hopefully, this prioritizes our submissions. That's especially important in today's marketplace where company personnel has shrunk due to 'right sizing.'"
This depth of knowledge certainly benefits the agency's other clients, the ones who pay the bills. "We constantly strive to outpace our competition," Billy says. "We're never afraid to try something new if it looks like it will be advantageous for our clients. Seven years ago we developed an attending physicians program providing 274 doctors with an innovative malpractice product that provided substantial premium savings through mandatory risk management and loss control. This was not only beneficial to our clients but, in theory, helped alleviate many health care costs. More recently, we began offering human resource consulting to our smaller, yet growing, clients. Also, we were the first privately held agency to write a construction wrap-up. That was for Ericsson Stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers.
Cammie also says that the agency developed a relationship with the London market for several large accounts that needed that expertise. "We're also a member of Assurex, which gives us access to local agencies throughout the world. And we've made certain that we know that these agents are people we want working with our clients. We've gone overseas and met with many of our Assurex partners, as well as visited those in other states. We look at them in their home territories. They're willing to put forth a lot more effort than we would probably get from a big broker. One example involved a client with a plant in Spain. It took the Assurex agent a day and a half to get to the plant."
"Another one of the secrets to our success," Cammie continues, "is that we have 14 certified claims representatives on staff working as advocates for our clients. They're there to back up our sales people. Each sales person has a team backing him or her up, people who have an intimate knowledge of every aspect of the insurance business. And we put that knowledge to work. We recently landed a large auto dealer in Texas who didn't realize that the coverage he had before we came on board excluded sexual harassment. He thought he was getting a good deal, but the cost of coverage was actually higher than our quote once we backed out the cost of the sexual harassment coverage. We were able to do that because we have people backing up our sales people who read and understand insurance policies. The auto dealer was very grateful for our help and quite surprised that an important coverage had been excluded without his being informed of the fact."
But getting the best coverage for clients is only part of the job. "We're relationship builders," Billy Richard notes, "and we strive to become real business partners with our clients. We go beyond just buying and selling insurance. We solve problems. We listen to our clients. We help them solve their problems."
He notes one example that involves a large brick layer contractor. "Every spring, he needs to hire 100 new brick layers. So we have a picnic in the spring and invite college students and high school seniors."
Management style
Cammie decided to establish the agency on October 1, 1979, after he became disillusioned with Marsh & McLennan. "They put too many chains on me. I'm a sales person and I wanted to build an organization for sales people--to create an atmosphere for successful sales."
The team approach is the direct result of his recognition of "my own shortcomings. I'm an entrepreneur and surround myself with experts who can fill in the gaps."
Billy Richard agrees, noting the Cammie doesn't use his position as majority stockholder to demand that things be done his way. "The company is managed by an executive committee of six people," Billy notes. "Five of them are stockholders, but Cammie has the majority. It's a very diverse committee. I've been here 13 years and can only remember one time where Cammie said 'this is the way we're going to do it.' He sticks by a decision once agreement has been reached. If we're wrong, that's okay. He allows the people at the agency to make mistakes and learn from them."
Cammie adds that "I believe in a committee structure. It allows for thorough and meaningful discussions. We really go at it tooth and nail. No one's afraid to express his point of view."
Recently, the committee had to make one of its toughest decisions--one that involved changing Cameron M. Harris & Co. from a family business to a business. "We sold a segment of our personal lines book of business," Cammie says. "We recognized that we needed to reallocate money to those areas that offered the best opportunity for growth. In this business, if you're not growing, you're dying. We felt the opportunity for the most profitable growth was not in personal lines. Nevertheless, the decision was painful. We knew most of those policyholders personally. They were members of our family. It was a business decision and, believe me, there was a lot of discussion before we made it."
Cammie continues that the decision was based on an effort to enhance those areas where Cameron Harris has a competitive advantage. "We're going up against the major brokers and the banks. They've bred personality out of the business. They've got the money to throw into technology and I think they'll succeed in getting business like annuities, lower-end personal lines and so on. But when it comes to commercial lines, I feel more comfortable today than I did five years ago. Our competitors have forgotten that it's the customers who pay the bills, not their stockholders."
Cameron Harris concludes that "we're picking out places to fight. We're good scrappers and believe we have the advantage of being more than just sellers of insurance. We might lose a battle or two, but we will win the war!" *
The author
Dennis Pillsbury has more than 20 years' experience in insurance journalism, both as an editor and freelance writer.
©COPYRIGHT: The Rough Notes Magazine, 1999