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Todd Argall, Executive Vice President and CEO, recently announced organizational changes to "ensure the company is structured in the best possible way, with experienced and knowledgeable people positioned to successfully deliver projects and initiatives, effectively resolve issues, and significantly improve the customer experience.”

 

One change was the promotion of Tom Lyons to Vice President of Claims and Legal Affairs. Another was that Dana May had accepted a new position as the Director of Customer Experience. Both changes went into effect February 10, 2020.

 

We asked Tom and Dana to tell us a little bit about their new assignments.

 

TOM LYONS, VICE PRESIDENT OF CLAIMS AND LEGAL AFFAIRS

I am very excited about my new role as the vice president of claims and legal. I have spent most of my legal career working for or in the insurance industry.

 

Prior to joining Farm Bureau in December 2011, I worked as a litigation attorney for 15 years focusing mostly on insurance related issues. My first jury trial was in Paris, Idaho, in the winter of 1996 when I defended a Farm Bureau insured that was sued.

 

I learned early in my career the stress that our customers feel when they are involved in an accident or have other problems where they rely on their insurance coverage to deal with difficult circumstances.

 

Since I joined Farm Bureau in 2011, I have witnessed many examples in the claims and legal departments of people working hard to accomplish the mission of the company.

 

For example, during my early time at Farm Bureau when we had the terrible Charlotte fire in Pocatello, I saw a visibly emotional vice president of claims hold an emergency meeting of his department and challenge his adjusters to promptly help the victims of this devastating fire.

 

More recently, I have witnessed the tireless work on the part of the claims department employees during the terrible snow storm of 2017 and the hail storm of 2018.

 

I also watched the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) employees establish a new department and develop training and practices for providing support to the company in an effort to protect our company and its customers from the effects of insurance fraud.

 

We also have an in-house claims litigation department that puts in long hours to defend our insureds when they have been sued. They provide a great service to our insureds as they vigorously defend them in what can be a stressful and foreign situation for the insureds.

 

We have great people that work very hard in the claims and legal departments taking care of our clients by promptly and accurately adjusting claims according to the terms of the contract, providing investigation support, and helping with any other legal issues that often arise. This will not change.

 

As the vice president of claims and legal, my role is to provide our employees with the tools, training, and support to allow them to complete their work, making sure that they understand the mission of our company and their part in accomplishing that mission.

 

The future structure of the claims and legal departments will be rolled out over the coming weeks. However, it is my vision that our claims and legal departments will continue to provide timely and accurate claims handling and legal assistance to our agents, employees, and customers.

 

I believe that we are part of a noble profession. We all play a vital role in assisting our customers to protect themselves from what can be overwhelming results of catastrophic loss. As the claims adjusters adjust and pay claims according to the terms of the insurance contract, the SIU employees assist in the investigation of claims, and the legal department defends our insureds and provides other legal support, they are fulfilling some of the most important purposes of the insurance policy.

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DANA MAY, DIRECTOR OF CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Dana has been with the company for three years and has been instrumental in implementing project management discipline in the organization. For the past year, he has served as the Vice President of Underwriting.

 

In his new role, Dana has responsibility for the accounts receivable team, the policy administration team, and Home Office and field customer service teams. He will lead the effort to ensure customers get the most value from our services and products.

 

Dana describes his new role as "being involved in setting the customer experience strategy and managing projects around that strategy.”

 

Managing the projects, he says, "will involve collaborating with the teams and roles involved with the customer journey to define and create our shared vision of customer experience.”

 

Dana says the teams he will work with will be “highly collaborative, and will aim to make decisions about our output with the customer in mind first.”

 

Dana’s vision for his role and the teams he will work with is to “create brand loyalty by providing excellent customer experiences with our products and services.”

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