Family Ties: Meet the New Big ‘I’ Chairman

“We treat everyone like family.”

That’s how new Big “I” Chairman Randy Lanoix, president and founder of Lanoix Insurance in Lutcher and Brusly, Louisiana, responded to a recent Facebook post praising his agency for its fast, efficient and high-quality service.

The small-town motto has marked Lanoix’s career with close personal relationships—a priority he says has contributed significantly to his success on the road to Big “I” chairmanship. IA talked to him about how growing up in rural Louisiana has shaped his approach to insurance and how he plans to leverage his people skills during his term as Big “I” chairman.

Where are you from originally? How does your personal background affect your approach to insurance?

I’m from Donaldsonville, Louisiana. It’s a town on the Mississippi River of about 6,000 people. It’s a close-knit community. Everybody knows everybody. Those personal relationships growing up have helped me form closer relationships with my clients today. At our agency, one of the things we say is we treat people how we like to be treated.

Tell us about your career path. Why did you enter the insurance field?

I went to college and studied chemistry/pre-med. My last semester as an undergraduate, I got married in January and my wife worked for an insurance agent in a small town. I knew him and his family well. He suggested since I was in my last semester of school, maybe I should get an insurance license and sell insurance part-time to make a few bucks since I had just gotten married.

That was in 1978, and here I am. I opened a branch office for Toby Bourg and Jim Carmouche in Lutcher, Louisiana in 1978. I acquired Carmouche’s share in 1988 and Bourg’s in 2005. My wife still works for the Bourg agency today.

What do you like about the industry that has kept you at it all these years?

If you like people, you’ll like insurance. It’s a people business. You get to help people every day and participate in the community. You’re providing coverage today in case something happens tomorrow, and when tomorrow comes, you need to be there. As devastating as Hurricane Katrina was, we got a lot of gratification from helping people put their lives back together with the insurance we had provided for them.

Tell us a little about your agency.

Our original agency was in Lutcher, Louisiana and our branch agency is in Brusly, Louisiana. I work with my two sons: My oldest came into the business in 2005 and my youngest joined in 2009. The boys manage the Brusly agency. We’re seven people total. We do 75% personal lines. Until the boys came into the business, we were probably 85% personal lines. They are on their way to helping us diversify. But my boys are a lot like me: They like personal lines because they get to deal with people every day. We do a lot of business in rural areas. On the commercial side, it’s BOPs, contractors, small manufacturing—those sort of things. We do a little bit of everything and concentrate on rounding out accounts.

What’s the biggest challenge of running an agency today?

Finding new talent and developing good talent. We recruit locally. The one good thing about being a small agent in a small town is you know everybody, so you have a good idea of who might fit into an open spot. You know a person’s yolk by being in a small town. Since joining the business in 1978, the turnover at my agency has been minimal. In fact, the only two people that ever left both retired.

Tips on running a family business?

Those lines get blurred sometimes. I certainly don’t have the magic bullet. Sometimes we don’t always agree, but we don’t take it home with us. I think the key to me being successful with the boys is realizing that the one thing that’s constant in this business is change. They are not going to do things the way I did, which is a good thing. You’ve just got to give them some space to do things the way they do them and be a referee on the outside making sure they don’t step over the line. Give them advice when they make the same mistakes you might have made.

What has made your agency successful?

Service. I grew up in the retail business. My mom ran a shoe store and my uncle ran a department store, so I’ve been waiting on people and selling to people since I was probably 10–11 years old when I started working in the shoe store. We are in a service industry. We’re in a business where we want our customers to come back. So we want the experience that our customers have with us to be such that they don’t want to go shopping because they’re satisfied, where a couple of bucks one way or another on a premium is not going to cause them to go shopping. They know they can pick up the phone and call us at any time of the day or night and we’re going to answer. We live in a rural area where people like the personal touch we provide.

What do you think are the most important issues facing the industry today?

Perpetuation. You see more and more merger & acquisition activity. You see people selling to the bigger boys that you never thought would have done that. It’s not just a challenge—it’s also an opportunity, because a lot of people are getting a lot of money for their agencies now with all the private equity income they have.

Independent agents have to be willing to change. Understand that the next generations operate a little differently than we do. They’re looking for different things. Realize they’re going to shop on the Internet, they may buy on the Internet and you need to have a digital presence in the digital marketing age.

What are your goals for your term as chairman?

Continuing to improve the relationship between national and the state associations and implementing the 2015–2017 strategic plan in a way that is beneficial to our members. I think the bottom line is to continue to make us the best association in the p-c industry and make sure we continue to give our members a sustainable competitive advantage.

What are you most looking forward to during your term?