Declaration of Independents

Barb Dale

Principal, Property-Casualty Operations Manager
SilverStone Group
Omaha, Nebraska

Family dinner conversations provided Barb Dale’s childhood education in insurance. At a time when most mothers stayed home, Dale’s mom worked for State Farm—and later for an independent agency. When Dale began helping her mom at the office on Saturdays, she continued learning “things I didn’t know I would need later in life.”

Much like her mother, Dale has spent a 37-year career forging a path for other women in insurance. She is immediate past president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Omaha and will become chair of the board of the Network of Vertafore Users at this month’s NetVU16 conference in San Antonio, Texas.

WHY INSURANCE?

Insurance is a career where a woman can be whatever she wants to be and strives to be. I’ve seen us emerge just by our make-up. Our caring, our mothering, our nurturing—whatever you want to call it—is really important to the insurance industry.

INDUSTRY MANDATE?

I love to work with young people. They forge forward with ideas and no fear of automation. They bring a different light to everything. But as an industry, we’ve failed in showing young people that insurance is an interesting career. We need to engage young people coming up into the workforce.

INDUSTRY SUCCESS?

I see us differentiating ourselves from our competitors who are commodity-driven online providers. When there is a catastrophe, we gain a lot of customers—even more so than normal— because people realize they don’t have a trusted relationship where they can call and have a discussion. They understand what is different about us: that we can be the trusted advisers of our customers. Independent agents who are holding strong, growing, doing the right things for their customers—those are the ones who are going to be here for a long time.

YOUR DEFINING MOMENT?

We had insured the home, auto and business of a family whose kids went to school with our kids. At 2 in the morning, I got a call. Their house had burned. We all know we’re selling and buying insurance for that catastrophe that could happen. What really resonated with me was the unbelievable devastation of that family, their hearts and souls, their fear of the unknown. You don’t realize the magnitude until you walk in their shoes and see the time it takes to return to something even nearing normal. I always wanted to help people, and this is helping people at possibly their lowest time in life. There was no other career I would ever consider after that. I was home. I was where I needed to be.

DID YOU PLAN ON INSURANCE?

It wasn’t my plan or dream to go into insurance as I was growing up. You might say I fell into the insurance industry through my husband within a few years of being married. The railroad he worked for went bankrupt, and a friend told him American Family was hiring. He applied and was hired as a salesperson. American Family’s mode of operation was to hire one person, allowing the family to participate. I took it upon myself to call prospects and set up appointments for my husband. I loved making the calls.