This edition of our Teammate Spotlight focuses on Kevin Meehan, Senior Vice President, Director of Trust Services. We recently sat down with Kevin to discover more about his enthusiasm for teamwork in tackling challenges and achieving success!
What influenced your career path?
People and our Brown & Brown culture. I started in the public entity insurance business in late 1997 with Apex Insurance. I’ve been fortunate enough to work for and with some great leaders. People like Karl Snearer, Eric Homer and Jen Martin. Growing a network and forming meaningful relationships with teammates, markets, vendor partners and clients has been extremely rewarding.
What do you like most about working with Brown & Brown?
Our corporate and divisional leaders have vision, and they afford teammates the opportunity to achieve personal, professional and financial success. We are more customer and teammate focused. We care about each other, and we are not afraid to evolve and get better at serving both. When you have that mindset and culture, many of the other things take care of themselves. For those reasons, this company has a bright future and is built to last. I’m proud to be a part of that.
Tell us about your current role.
As Director of Trust Services my primary role is to find and deliver better ways to serve our members and agents. This means we are constantly striving to find new and innovative ways to add value and deliver exemplary customer service to our agents and members with the intent to keep our clients and gain new ones. In my role as Regional Director of Client Services, Brown & Brown Public Entity I get to help peer organizations do the same. The roles complement each other. I can see up close how other public entity pool administrators serve their clients. Both roles provide a great deal of opportunity for learning, networking, mentoring, relationship building and fun!
What is your favorite part about your job and why?
My favorite part of the job is collaborating with others to overcome challenges and achieve success. When you get the right people together there are very few problems that can’t be solved and no great ideas that can’t be brought to fruition. These groups present an effective way to network and to take advantage of the intellectual capital that is available to us. That’s very satisfying. To this end we have a Client Services Group and a Marketing Group that each meet monthly. Participants include teammates from three B&B divisions. Within those divisions participants can be in marketing, underwriting, claims, risk management, operations and PCLs. We discuss client service and engagement, market trends, and other applicable topics. Collectively, participants have learned how to become better at delivering exceptional client service.
What’s special about working with the PRU-Florida team?
We have great leadership at the top. Jen Martin, our team leader, sets the bar high for being both client and teammate driven. She cares and she provides opportunities for teammates to be successful. Helping and seeing teammates take advantage of those opportunities and achieving success is a key part of our culture. Jen has vision- she knows where she wants to go and how to get there. She sets a great example for having a strong work/home life balance. I work most with Sarah Fugate, Pan Hancock and Jeremy LaCorte. Each has unique talents, are incredibly good at what they do and are a lot of fun to work with.
Tell us about working with Preferred members.
Working with our Preferred members is very rewarding. As employees of public entities throughout the state of Florida they provide vital services to their respective communities. Often, they are underfunded and underappreciated. Providing them with resources and services that can assist them in their roles and help them save money and even save lives are motivating factors for our team at PRU Florida.
What emerging trends or challenges do you see in public entity insurance, and how is your team preparing for them?
It’s easy to say “technology.” Technology evolves rapidly, often outpacing our understanding. Our challenge is to harness new technologies to enhance customer service, experience, and retention, outperforming competitors and meeting those challenges better than our competitors is key to determining our success. Regardless of societal or technological changes we still must know our business and understand the challenges our clients and our future clients face Read what’s out there, be a forward thinker, be adaptable and most importantly expand your network and collaborate with others who are in the business. I work primarily in Marketing and Client Service but delivering next level service means collaborating with claims professionals, underwriters, operations, IT pros and other industry professionals. Meeting the challenges of the technological (r)evolution also means seeking out people who tend to adapt to technologies quicker and who think about the future as a world containing endless possibilities.
Tell us about your work with Preferred agents.
Our agents are our lifeblood. They do the most to help us gain and retain members. Their engagement with and support of our program is vital. We solicit their feedback, rely on their expertise and are constantly trying to come up with new and better ways to help them grow their books of business. When they are successful, we are successful. We are the only public entity trust in Florida that works exclusively with agents. We are proud of that.
What is a fun fact about you that may surprise people?
I don’t know how fun it is, but I really enjoy gardening and landscaping. That means it’s always easy for my wife to find me.
What’s your favorite food?
Is Tito’s a food? If not, then pizza. I could eat it every day.
What sets Preferred apart from other public entity insurance providers?
We are 100% client driven. We believe that delivering exceptional service and services to our clients results in better client engagement and retention. What’s beautiful about this is that the ability to deliver exceptional client service is within every one of our teammates. Being client driven and striving to deliver bacon wrapped customer service and services affords our clients the opportunity to feel that they are a part of something special. That feeling of belonging is very sticky. At Preferred we love our clients, but more important than that, we want our clients to feel that love with every interaction that they have with us.