Idaho is officially in stage four of the Idaho Rebound plan. This is exciting news as the state moves to fully re-open after the damaging effects of the COVID-19 shutdown. Our company also fully opened for business after a couple of months of restricted access to our offices and the vast majority of our employees working from home. Although the risk of COVID-19 has not been eliminated, and we continue to actively monitor the risk, it is a welcome return to the ‘new normal’. A heart felt ‘Thank you!’ to all employees and agents as we navigated our way through this unprecedented situation. Your cooperation, understanding, openness, hard work and commitment to our customers was and continues to be tremendous.

 

As we move forward, we do face a ‘new normal’ in our company. Because virtual claims adjusting was so successful, our claim adjusters will be fully equipped to continue to work from their homes. The level of service and responsiveness to our customers provided by our claims team is outstanding, and this cost effective approach will make the team even more efficient. We have adopted a telecommuting policy that will enable more employees to productively work from their home. We have also created flexible work week options for employees to accommodate their personal situations, while still ensuring outstanding customer service. In addition, we continue to create additional service options for our customers with the imminent general release of the Farm Bureau Customer Self-Service Hub. These are a few examples of how a ‘new normal’ is impacting our organization and propelling us forward in a very positive way.

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As we have responded to COVID-19 and the ‘new normal’, the management team has not taken our eye off of our near term goals and the initiatives that are supporting those goals. Please see the goals and strategic initiatives graphics included below.  (article continues below)

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Since my last update, we have welcomed John Dunlop to the company as VP of Underwriting. John has hit the ground running and has already reorganized the underwriting department to be more responsive to the needs of our customers and agents, and to ensure that we have a team of people focused on improving our products. Over the next couple of months John will also be leading the effort to identify what approach the company will take to grow our commercial lines of business as we focus on the strategy to improve our spread of risk.

 

Lastly, the initiative to have a new agent contract by January 1st of 2021 is moving along nicely. The team is performing a financial analysis to ensure that the new contract rewards those agents the most, that are both selling new business and servicing existing business, and that the contract is aligned with the direction of the company. More information about the contract will be shared by Chuck McDaniel at the July District Meetings. 

 

All of this progress is being made because of the great team that we have in this organization. We have people and projects aligned with our near term strategy and it is our employees and agents that make a difference in our progress each and every day. We are striving to get better because good is not good enough if we can be better and better is not good enough if we can be the best.

 

Good, better, best . . . let’s make this happen!

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Todd Argall, Executive Vice President and CEO

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