Hanover Fire & Casualty “Rising Star” Interview: Patrick McCarthy

Hanover Fire & Casualty “Rising Star” Interview: Patrick McCarthy

At Hanover Fire & Casualty, we love agents. This summer, to show our agents we believe in them, we decided to run a series that spotlights folks who are simply awesome! These Rising Stars all have stories to tell about how they found the insurance industry, what they love about it, and why they’re achieving success. Today’s star, Patrick McCarthy, works for McCarthy & Company in Illinois. He founded an independent agency that empowers its agents to make a great career for themselves, so we’ve interviewed Patrick and one of his top agents Jasmine to give them a chance to make you all as proud of them as we are. Check out what they had to say below!

Q: Tell us about yourself! How did you get into insurance sales? How long have you been in the business, and what’s your favorite part?

PM: My dad was an Allstate agent for about 40 years, and I was gonna buy out his book of business. I was a teacher before that. He also wanted me to buy out three other books of business and open a huge storefront, back in 2009. The way the industry was going, people weren’t going into the office as much, so I didn’t want to have a $5000 storefront. I decided to go independent and open up my own agency! Then I got a little office at a Remax center to try and have some connections with realtors, and there was actually a guy there who was a former Remax agent who had started doing flipping and rentals. Meanwhile, he was asking me the whole time, “Can you get me this product? And this product?” I was only Home and Commercial at the time, so it was my first time delving into vacants and specialty. Then I started going to conferences and meeting people he’d connected with. Went to three other conferences and got a booth. It just took off from there! Now, we don’t even actually market. We still have the phone ringing. We have 2-5 vacants or rentals that we’re quoting per day. At that point, I started trying to get direct contracts with Hanover and American Modern, but had to go through SUG Group, where I met Josh Slocomb. From there, we’ve taken off!?

J: I started with life insurance only. I got licensed at the age of 18, so I started pretty young. I had a team of about twenty people, and the agency we were with, we didn’t really like. So we went to another agency, and thanks to that agency, someone I worked with knew Patrick, and I was able to start working with him and got my license and have been learning from there.

PM: She knows insurance probably better than me now. She took the reins and actively looks for stuff. She’s always looking out for the best interests of our clients. Always. She’s at the point where we’re talking about her going out on her own or giving her ownership of a satellite office!?

Q: How did you get connected with Hanover, and why do you continue to work with us?

PM: What we do, day in and day out, is get the collection info from the client, look at the properties… Jasmine does Google Earth and checks out everything. With Hanover it’s just a simple, easy process on that first page, for us to be able to get it. Time is money! As an agency, you need to be able to have a quoting system that will get something out in a relatively quick manner, or it’s not going to be used. It’s gotta be connected to a management system, and Hanover has both of those. They give us a quick price. Sometimes it’s not the best price, but that’s not always what we need. We can overcome price a lot of times by talking about the product and stuff like that. Their ease of access for getting the quote is one of the best out there. I think it’s the best, to be honest. This is the truth. It’s a one page thing! On that one page, you can get a quote, and none of the other carriers have something like that.

J: It’s so easy to fill out the quote. You can do it in two minutes, so that’s convenient.

PM: It’s important, with people calling in the meantime wanting to bind another policy. A lot of these clients wait til the last minute or wait until after. That’s another thing that Hanover is good for. People wait until after they’ve purchased it, and it’s like, “Oh wait, I forgot to get insurance on it.” Hanover is unique in that they will fit different needs for some clients that maybe forget, or have a lapse, or have some other issues. It’s a nice product that fits in our portfolio to help fill the gaps for specialty need clients.

Q: What are some of your career goals for the next couple of years? What are you looking forward to? How can Hanover support you in that?

J: For the agency, being able to provide the best products for people and having the convenience of the premiums being low. I love when people ask us to quote and we find them a better price. That’s my favorite thing! Saving them money. For sure, being contracted with carriers that provide good prices.

For me, I want to be able to open up an office, so we can have more people insured with our agency!

PM: I love hearing that! That’s where I want her to go. For me, the agency is really good in the specialty lines, but I think we should be shoring up the specialty lines and cross-selling on vacants, then converting these into rentals so they’re longterm holds. Vacants are, a lot of times, flips, so if we’re not insuring the rental later, we’ve lost a lot of revenue there. Our goal in the next year, with specialty line products, as an agency, is to collect more information and cross-sell the other products that they for sure have. We’re already getting in the door with these clients, so it’s just about going the extra step.

For myself, I want to be able to reduce the amount of time I’m working and focus on higher level stuff, not so much customer service-based stuff. Make sure that this agency has the process down, so that we can easily take that and branch over to a new agency and have a scaffolding template that’s already successful.

Patrick and Jasmine’s commitment to providing the very best service to their customers is inspiring, and we love to see how the agency is committed to empowering younger agents toward a successful future! Congratulations to both Patrick and Jasmine on a strong journey so far, and we wish all the success in the world to everyone at McCarthy & Company Insurance. As always, thank you so much for your support of Hanover Fire & Casualty.