Welcome to The Association News Network Association News Network, Inc. Communications Bringing Claims Professionals Together Throughout Northern California Michael Shepherd, Mike Bentz, Geoff Jolliff & Iain Wallace Association News Network Personality Profile: Sacramento Claims 2010 Elected Board Members by Joan Barrett, Market Share February 2010 LThe general membership of the Sacramento Claims Association elected four new members to the Executive   Staff Board of Directors at the January 14, 2010 luncheon meeting. Claims people won out over vendor members - at least when you include one former claims person in the mix. Geoff Jolliff has a perspective from both sides of the claims business, having an introduction to the insurance business as an adjuster before his current position representing a vendor. It was the latter he gives credit for the support and encouragement for volunteering his time on the Board of Directors for the Sacramento Claims Association. Geoff has lived in a great many of the states in the U.S., among them Florida, Tennessee, Ohio, Michigan, West Virginia and New Mexico (and probably more that I didn’t write fast enough to include) with his family following his father’s career to new opportunities before Geoff went to college in Indiana and New Mexico. He noted with some wonder that he has lived the longest in Sacramento, having arrived in 2001 as a vendor manager for Farmers Insurance from Petaluma. He met his wife Kathy at the Farmers claims office in Sacramento and, like her, became an adjuster for Farmers. He was a resident adjuster for AAA for some years before deciding to try the other side of the aisle. He now works for JM Environmental where he can utilize his training in property claims. Geoff’s goal as a board member is to assist wherever he can to improve the communication between the association and the membership. He and his wife Kathy head to the coast (any part of the coast, Geoff notes) whenever possible, and love to participate in wine tastings. Mike Shepherd’s father, James, was a veteran of claims handling from the early days of the Sacramento Claims Manager Association, and was part of the organization in the earliest days of the evolution to the Sacramento Claims Association with Bill Tobin, John Ford and other legendary claims men. Mike worked for his father at Shepherd Independent Adjusting in Auburn before he joined the Navy and was a helicopter rescue crew member in Viet Nam. When Mike returned from the war in Viet Nam, he worked for Transamerica where he and all the adjusters that worked for him belonged to the Sacramento Claims Association. Mike remembers that all of the insurance carriers at the time supported the Association including Cigna, where he worked next as a manager of the Catastrophe Unit. He was an SCA board member off and on for 8 years in those days and was Claims Person of the Year 1993 for the Sacramento Claims Association. His goal as a board member is to increase carrier participation in the association. Nowadays Mike does most of his work for self-insureds like Public Entities, oil companies and school districts- contacts he made while doing catastrophe work. He enjoys working the large losses that comprise his workload. Mike and his wife Sherry have 11 year old twins that keep them busy with athletic activities, and Mike loves to play golf whenever possible. He also has 2 daughters that he is very proud of, the eldest has a public relations firm for people seeking political office, and the younger is an Assistant Vice President for Bank of America in Santa Barbara working in the Personal Banking area. Mike Bentz is an accidental claims person who was working as a journeyman printer when one of his clients, who was an Independent Adjuster, encouraged him to come to work at GAB and be trained as an IA. He worked for Transamerica where he encountered Mike Shepherd during his stint as a Branch Manager and then worked at Cigna for 15 years as a Property and Liability claims manager. The Sacramento Claims Association was a big part of working life for carriers in those days. Mike was on the board for years, served as president, and was Claims Person of the Year in 1984. Mike was promoted to Regional Claims Vice President for Cigna and moved with his family to Denver where he remained for five happy years. When that office was shuttered, the Bentz family returned to California where Mike covered 22 states handling casualty claims that exceeded $100,000.00. Needless to say, he was seldom home. Remaining with Cigna after the sale to ACE would have meant that the family would move to Philadelphia and the Bentz’s were reluctant to remove their teenaged children from high school to make the move. Mike went to CalFarm and, along with other alumni in California, found it to be a wonderful place to work. The employees enjoyed open communication in the close-knit company and life was good in the profitable and well-run agricultural business. When the company was profitable enough to be purchased by Nationwide/Allied, CalFarm disappeared and so did Mike Bentz. He went to The Hartford and worked himself out of a job by working the run-off in Construction Defect for Pacific Insurance. Before moving to York, Mike was handling major claims as the Manager of Global Corporate Claims for Zurich. Mike’s wife is a Litigation Manager at Encompass, so she understood of the hours, the travel and the uncertainty of the insurance industry. Two of their three children are married- the youngest has a June wedding planned- and the 19 month old Tyler Craig is Mike’s pride and joy, his grandson whom he sees regularly. Motorcycles are another passion as well as music- all kinds; classic Rock ‘n Roll, Blues, 30’s and 40’s big band. He especially loves the history of music. Iain Wallace was vacationing in Maui after the January meeting of the SCA and celebrating a second honeymoon with his wife on their first visit to the Islands since 1981. His brother also came over for part of the trip from Vancouver, BC to visit and reconnect with the Wallaces. It was this same brother that encouraged Iain to attend the Western Washington University at Bellingham because they had a reciprocal agreement with Canada to waive out of state fees for attendance. Iain loved the small college town and met his future wife there. After he graduated with a degree in Architectural Studies, they married in Seattle and returned to Canada where he worked for a huge architectural firm. While there, he was accepted into a Masters Program in Architecture in British Colombia, but he and his wife decided to return to the states instead and moved to San Francisco. There he worked for a small architectural firm that employed only three people. “It was a roller-coaster ride,” Iain recalls. “Some weeks I would work 80 hours and the next only 20 hours. With a baby on the way, I needed a job with some stability and benefits, so I hired on with Aetna in San Francisco to get those things.” After five years in the field as an adjuster, Iain was looking at two offers: to work for Transamerica with Mike Shepherd or to go with USAA. He did opt for USAA and spent 20 years there, working mainly from home, on his own, which he feels was good training for the next phase of his life as an Independent Adjuster. Iain has his adjusting license and is signed up for with work with a catastrophe company. Iain’s plans for the SCA were formulated on a beach in Hawaii’; (I know!!!) he would like to concentrate on increasing the SCA involvement by carriers and IA’s through outreach and work on providing meaningful CE credits for the members. Welcome to all of these new board members.   About the Author Joan Barrett is responsible for customer relations at Sams & Associates. She is a past president of the Sacramento Claims Association, past president of the Claims Conference of Northern California and a free-lance writer. contact Joan at: joan.barrett@sams-assoc.com or by calling 800-566-7267 Ext.101. Articles Index | ANN Home | Articles by Joan Barrett webmaster: bryan@AssociationNewsNetwork.com copyright ©2010 Association News Network, Inc., all rights reserved