By Genevieve Ventiere, Brokerage Marketing Manager
You may have heard this from a PLM employee before – “We are not just interested in selling you a policy. We are interested in helping you build a full insurance program specific to your business and your needs.”
Coverage costs and availability are changing. You or your broker may have been told by any number of carriers that your delivery fleet is too large, your required Umbrella limits are now too high, or that there are very few workers’ comp carriers available to you based on your business activity. We’re well aware these phenomena are trending across the country and throughout the insurance industry. We’re also aware of how they’re specifically affecting our PLM customers and their brokers.
PLM has been a part of the wood niche for over 125 years and has spent those years getting to know your business, joining the trade groups in which you are a member, joining the agent and broker groups in which your representative is a member, and continuously following the wood industry and insurance market conditions. We do this so we are able to constantly hone our coverage offerings to best respond to your needs as your business changes, your coverage needs change, and the industry changes. This can sometimes require us to make significant shifts.
We understand that identifying a challenge means a solution needs to be identified as well. To that end, we have refreshed a long inactive, yet fully functional PLM-owned wholesale brokerage called ABM (Allied Building Material Agency). From your own interactions with your personal insurance agent or broker, you know that they are there to place your insurance coverage with one of “their” carriers to get you the best coverage at the best price. There are times when your broker may not have a contract or appointment with the best carrier for a specific insurance need. This shouldn’t mean that you need to seek out the services of an agent or broker other than your chosen trusted insurance advisor. In working with ABM, your broker is able to access the markets with which they are acquainted with and continue to work with their partners at PLM, receive commissions and continue their relationship with you. With the addition of ABM to the PLM family, we are able to assist you and your broker in getting you the right coverage even if PLM isn’t currently writing it themselves.
When ABM is looking to partner with another insurance carrier, they use the collective knowledge of our business development and loss control teams, our seasoned underwriting staff, our expert claims team, and all of senior management to make sure the carriers with whom we partner are as comfortable with our niche as we are. This allows ABM to work with these carriers to create specific programs to which we only have access to and allows them to negotiate higher workers’ comp dividends. And it grants us the comfort of knowing that even when PLM is not handling the Claims or Loss Control specific to the line of business we place elsewhere, our customers will continue to receive the kind of service we expect and provide them. ABM only partners with multi-state or national A-rated carriers and has had great success in cultivating these partnerships.
ABM has now been back up and running for over a year. To date, we have assisted our broker partners and our mutual customers in placing more than $3.4 Million in coverage with our carriers. For a single insured, we are generally placing only a line or two of coverage for which PLM is not currently the best solution due to market, guideline, or pricing challenges. PLM is committed to expanding and perfecting what ABM is able to offer our lumber niche customers. It is PLM’s expectation that with the addition of ABM and their carrier partners, with the support of your broker, and with PLM’s own coverage, service offerings and years of unparalleled expertise, we will grow to a place where we are always able to offer PLM customers a complete and unequaled insurance program.
