Rebecca Woan

CEO
Chartwell Insurance Services
Chicago

Why insurance?

My family was involved in the insurance industry and my father was thinking about retiring. I said I’d give it a try, and I liked it. About 16 years ago when I was pregnant with my daughter, I saw there was a need in the marketplace for an agency that would focus strictly on the high net-worth individual. That was the start of Chartwell.

Mentors?

My husband encouraged me to start Chartwell. He’s been a sounding block for understanding the industry, but not being necessarily involved in my business on a day-to-day basis. I do believe it is important to mentor everyone we have here. And also other women in the industry that I meet.

Leadership style?

You need a leader who has a vision, and the ability to communicate that to the rest of the team and create an environment through which the team can execute that vision. Priorities for men and women are different—as a woman, I wonder why women aren’t running more large businesses.

I’ve had this discussion with other women. I think quality control is important for women in ways that it may not be for men, who put growth ahead of quality control. Men might be willing to make bigger risks. With women, you see more consistency because their concern is not always being the biggest, but being the best. That’s been my anecdotal observation—certainly a lot of businesses run by women fail. But women scale differently and they start off running small businesses. When you look at large businesses on a trajectory of success, they don’t always make it. And there are a lot of midsize businesses that women run, and they do it successfully.

Challenges?

Finding good people. That’s a universal challenge in most businesses, if not all. As a business owner, your time constraints are challenged between what I call revenue- and nonrevenue-generating activities. We’ve had success finding people who don’t necessarily have insurance experience, but have good skills. It’s easier to teach outsiders insurance than it has been to teach people with insurance the writing skills, interpersonal skills, critical thinking skills that we feel we need in order to maintain our vision here at Chartwell.

Motivation?

The validation we receive from our clients and from our peers, and knowing that we’re supporting the livelihoods of people on our team. Those are very important accomplishments. And I think I can speak for myself and everybody here—we value the relationships we create with our clients and it’s really rewarding to be in the area of the business we’re in, which is a highly relationship-driven segment of the market.

Advice for women in insurance?

It’s very important to leave your desk and meet with people face to face—clients, other business owners, your peers, your company partners, your referral sources.

You also need to be very selective about your use of time and learn how to evaluate the need for meetings. While it’s important to have that face-to-face contact, make sure that you have an agenda and feel your meeting will be worth your time. Some people might say, ‘You never know, things can be surprising,’ but you also have to assign probabilities. You can meet with people morning, noon and night and feel like you’re spinning your wheels unless you judiciously determine the best ways to use your time. I won’t necessarily meet with just anybody who asks me for a meeting. I ask for meetings from people whom I believe it makes sense for me to meet. But very little will happen if you spend your life behind your desk.

Goals?

We want to continue to grow and continue to be recognized as both a thought leader within our industry and an agency that’s committed to doing the right thing for our clients. If agencies want consumers to value agents, it is our duty to respect the brand and ensure that we’re creating value for all of our clients.

One of the largest hurdles we face at Chartwell is low expectations from clients who have been underserved by agents. Our success at Chartwell depends on exceeding extremely low expectations. I believe if agents did a better job, there would be more demand for us. I think high net-worth personal lines is a segment that’s attractive to agents because it’s a higher premium, but people don’t realize you need to understand it and you need to have a team of people who are trained to serve this market segment. If you don’t do that, you’re doing yourself, your agency and your clients a disservice.

This article is the fourth in a series that profiles women leaders who are thriving in the independent insurance industry. Keep an eye on IAmagazine.com and upcoming editions of the News & Views e-newsletter for more.

Jordan Reabold is IA assistant editor.