STAR Matrix

PacificComp, a $65M California workers' comp carrier under Alleghany Corporation, was running a combined ratio north of 200%. Distribution was scattered across 45 agencies and 300 branches. Underwriters were spending 60% of their day clearing email. No data was feeding rate decisions.

Joining as VP Distribution & BD, I had a mandate from the Regional President to fix the operating model so the carrier could reach underwriting profitability — not just grow.

Decomposed the result into operating moves: shut down the submission email box (March 2016) and forced portal adoption with vertical-specific intake; built a verticalized BDM organization across Small Business, Agriculture/Grocers, and Hospitality/Auto Dealers/Healthcare; implemented Salesforce CRM with same-day automated scorecards; concentrated capacity on franchise agencies; ran joint venture point-of-sale on middle-market and large accounts.

$65M to $311M in-force in six years. Combined ratio moved to operational profit by 2016 and underwriting profit by 2017 — 32 months. Middle-market hit ratio moved from below 15% to over 20%. Clearance team shrank from 5 to 2.

Atlas General Insurance Services, a California workers' comp MGA processing 100% through wholesale and retail channels, had set the strategic goal of multiplying written premium from $20M to over $100M in two years. They had no distribution leader and no operating infrastructure to support the goal.

As the first distribution leader hired, I owned translating "grow 5x" into the specific structural moves that would produce it without breaking the underwriting team.

Decomposed the strategy into four interlocking workstreams: (1) expand distribution selectively from 200 to 400+ agencies with quality-over-quantity recruitment; (2) build agency scorecards with 100 agencies on structured success plans and 50+ terminated for concentration; (3) design an offshore BPO model in India for overnight account setup in Duck Creek, eliminating intake burden on 10–12 underwriters; (4) build an inside marketing team for outbound follow-up and competitive intel feeding carrier rating.

$20M to $150M post-audit in two years. Underwriters walked into ready-to-work queues daily. Inside marketing intel fed carrier rate filings. Average premium per account moved from $28K to $45K. Franchise agencies drove 60% of written premium.

Joined Kinetic Insurance, a venture-backed InsurTech MGU pairing wearable injury-prevention technology with high-hazard workers' compensation, as employee #2. No distribution team. No infrastructure. A novel product most brokers didn't understand.

Build a distribution organization capable of writing $7M in Year 1 — the venture target — without me being the only person who could sell the program.

Recruited a lean team of tenured operators rather than juniors: VP California, Territory Directors in Alabama and Colorado, Inside Sales in Kentucky. Every hire came with existing broker relationships and consultative joint-selling expertise. Coached against three questions: What does the business need from your function this quarter? Where is your team underperforming and what are you doing about it? What's one thing I should be doing differently to set you up?

$0 to $45M written premium in 18 months — Year 1 actual $25M vs. $7M target (357% of plan). 30 of the Top 100 commercial brokerages recruited within 90 days, all writing by Jan 1, 2022. The team operated independently within the first quarter because every hire was already senior enough to own outcomes.

PacificComp had no centralized view of broker performance, no competitive intelligence flowing into pricing, and the Chief Actuary was building rate studies from incomplete data. Decisions were being made on instinct because the data didn't exist.

Build the data infrastructure that would let the operating system make decisions based on what was actually happening in the field, not what was assumed.

Implemented Salesforce CRM with same-day automated monthly scorecards distributed to branch and agency leaders. Built a competitive intelligence capture loop: BDMs and inside sales logged competitor pricing, terms, and decline reasons on ~90% of large accounts ($150K+). The capture feed went to the Chief Actuary by class code, premium band, and ZIP — feeding rate studies and filings.

Rate filings became data-grounded rather than assumption-grounded. Branch and agency leaders saw their numbers the same day, every month — accountability rhythm became visible. The Chief Actuary's filings were a contributing factor in the combined ratio turnaround.

PacificComp's submission portal had been live for months but adoption was minimal. Brokers and BDMs continued to email submissions to a shared mailbox; the clearance team of five was drowning. Soft launches and gentle prompts weren't working. Underwriter capacity was the constraint, and the constraint wasn't moving.

Either force portal adoption or accept the operating model would not scale to the strategic targets.

In March 2016 I shut down the submission email box. Single decision, single day, no soft phase. Brokers and BDMs were notified the prior week. Portal had vertical-specific intake questions designed to be faster than email anyway. The change made resistance an explicit choice, not a default.

Portal adoption became universal within two weeks. Clearance team shrank from 5 to 2; the two redeployed to higher-value work. Turnaround time improved measurably. Renewals cleared in minutes. The decision compounded across every metric the unit ran on for the next four years.

Late 2017, Alleghany Corporation sold PacificComp to CopperPoint Insurance. Distribution organizations are routinely gutted through ownership changes; broker relationships scatter, customers churn, the operating culture that produced the result evaporates. I sat in the line of fire on all of it.

Protect producer relationships, customer continuity, and the operating discipline through the ownership transition — and then, post-close, lead the acquirer-side integration as CopperPoint expanded the platform.

Target side: retained as a strategic asset under a stay agreement; the distribution organization, broker book, and operating cadence were specifically identified by CopperPoint as worth keeping intact. Coached the team through the uncertainty without losing momentum on production. Acquirer side: led the rollover of the Alaska National California workers' comp book onto PacificComp paper — re-papering, broker communication, claims continuity, and retention through the transition. Separately, when our Chief Underwriting Officer was released, I covered Underwriting for 120 days through the leadership gap — running distribution and underwriting in parallel.

Stay agreement renewed for three years. Distribution org retained. Alaska National book successfully papered onto PacificComp without producer or customer loss. The unit continued operating through three discrete transitions — ownership change, book integration, and CUO gap — without losing its operating cadence.

Joined Pride Risk Solutions as employee #3 to launch "alternative risk" workers' compensation — high-hazard workers' comp bundled with payroll under a PEO co-employment agreement. Most California commercial brokers didn't understand the product. Volume of submissions was high; win rate was 10%. Brokers defaulted to traditional WC at 20–30% higher prices because they couldn't sell the PEO structure.

Solve the broker-education problem without scaling internal headcount linearly with broker count — and build a market that didn't yet exist.

Originated the joint venture point-of-sale model: co-presented with the agent on every complex account, by phone or in person — "no one could sell our program better than we could." Then built the full broker-enablement infrastructure so the model could scale beyond personal co-selling: audio, video, and PDF training assets; presentation guides; FAQ; objection handling; PEO contract walk-throughs. Ran in-person regional trainings at community conference centers filling rooms of 50–100 agents at a time.

Trained agents became proficient enough to sell independently — and started training others. Closing ratio moved from 10% (Year 1) to 20%+ (Year 2). Grew from 0 to 200+ appointed retailers in California. The market I built became the market my competitors later sold into when they entered the space — they found a base of agents already trained on the product. The cultural pattern — co-sell, codify, train, scale — has been re-applied at PacificComp, Kinetic, and Berkley.