Agents - A Key Relationship from Great American’s Beginnings

Agents have long been an integral part of the property and casualty insurance industry and throughout our history, they have represented key relationships. From Great American’s first days to today, we’ve relied on that relationship to grow our business and provide excellent service to our insureds.

In its first week of business in March 1872, German American Insurance Company sought agency appointments. Underwriting instructions to agents were detailed and explicit in the early days. Above are some of the instructions from a covering letter sent to an agent in Potsdam, New York on March 11, 1872.

Letter signed by President William Heins in March 1872 to agency in Potsdam, NY.

In addition, you can see a number of hazards that an agent was prohibited from writing in 1872, including woolen factories, furniture factories, paper mills and museums.

Left: Correspondence to agents concerning the organization of a Western Department of German American. Right: A page from the 1881 Agency book that listed agents’ names and locations. There were more than 800 agents at the time.

To drive growth, German American announced the organization of its Western Department. In 1873, the “Western Department” included the following states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin, and the Territories of Colorado and Dakota. Headquartered in Chicago, the Western Department worked to grow its agency force.

Advertisement for Tyson’s General Agency in San Francisco.

In 1876, the company began to explore the creation of a Pacific Department. Many companies of the time chose to write Pacific accounts from their Chicago or New York offices. German American’s primary agent in San Francisco by the turn of the century was George H. Tyson.

The July 1904 newsletter on the left leads with pictures from the Baltimore Fire. The October 1906 newsletter shares a picture of the ruins of San Francisco Financial District. Publication moved to Oakland because Tyson’s agency was destroyed in San Francisco during the earthquake.

Because communication to agents was so important, Tyson launched The American newsletter in 1901 and published it for nearly 20 years. The newsletter collection provides a detailed view into the concerns of both agents and carriers at the turn of the 20th Century.

Advertisements running in the 1930s. The last image shows our headquarters building at 1 Liberty in New York being put into an agent’s office.

Insurance agents moved beyond fire insurance to also help customers navigate an increasingly complex insurance world. This change is apparent in this series of advertisements from the 1930s. Note not only the geographic reach of our agency force, but the variety of insurance coverages that they now sold.

Throughout Great American’s history, communication with our agents has always been a top priority. Within our Corporate Archive, we have a wide range of agent newsletters that have been published over the years. In the 1920s and 1930s, the company published Great Americanisms to share news about Great American agents and industry trends. In the 1970s and 1980s, Perspective was written to update agents on company products, services and strategy. Perspective was published quarterly for agents and had a circulation of 10,000.

Advertisement for Great American’s Comprehensive Mercantile Policy.

In 1960, Great American held its first agency-company advisory conference to further develop front-line sales knowledge. Agents were selected from across the country. The agent counsel was used to develop products. Company newsletters at the time wrote that products would have the "salesmen's ideas built in" before they were released. One example is Great American's Comprehensive Mercantile Policy.

Great American Agents on the Agents Advisory Council in 1981.

In 1979, Great American launched an Agent Advisory Council. Like the agency conferences before it, the Advisory Council was used to foster communication between the company and its agents. The Council helped form a “competitive business owner product called Safepak,” provided input on claims handling and helped revise procedures to streamline the ease of doing business with Great American.

Long-standing relationships with agents are fundamental to our success. Today we have a relationship with close to 3,700 different agencies and around 15,000 individual agents who continue to help make Great American successful.

Interested in seeing how Great American grew into the company it is today? Visit our Company Story to see why our yesterdays tell an important story about our tomorrow.