By George Berkheimer for the Bedford Gazette
Unexpected demands can weigh heavily on anybody’s mind, but for Randy Shaw, president and CEO of Everett Cash Mutual, they’ve been a big part of his career progression and success. What he’s learned, he says, is that overwhelming challenges sometimes conceal greater opportunity, if it can be recognized.
“I worked at Everett Cash Mutual one summer while I was in college, working in the mailroom, sending second requests to agents, filling in wherever they needed me,” he said. “I was brash enough to tell the president to call me if he ever needed an accountant. Well, I got that call seven years later. It came at a time when Shaw worked in public accounting, had just purchased a house outside of Washington, DC, and had no intention of returning to Bedford County. Shaw recalled that he had made a promise to his uncle on his deathbed to take over the family farm, however, and the family had been renting the farm in the interim. “In the back of my mind I knew I had to honor that commitment, and that provided the motivation to come back,” he said.
Learning experiences
Shaw began working as ECM’s treasurer, learning the ropes from Mary Dishong before she retired. “All of our purchases were handwritten, and I was a computer guy, so I suggested automating the process,” he said.
When the least expensive bid he received amounted to half of the company’s capital, Shaw took a deep breath and drew on his own acquired knowledge of database design to develop a system that only cost $30,000. Implementing it was an educational experience. “I interviewed every ECM employee to learn the processes that consume their time and was able to streamline operations and learn the ins and outs of insurance in the process,” he said. “Six months later our expense ratio dropped from 40% in our best days to 28%, which was a game changer.”
Another surprise came when ECM’s accountant suggested that other insurance clients might be interested in using the system. “That prompted a whole new revenue stream for the company and we were licensing it to 10 other operations at one point,” he said.
Tough decisions
After working his way up the ranks in the company, Shaw became president at a time when its financial condition was struggling. “I began to wonder why we focused on homeowners insurance and competed with giants like Allstate when we could be really good selling something that had less competition,” he said. Knowing that ECM started as a farming insurance company in 1913, he made the difficult decision to sell agents on returning to the company’s roots. “I knew we had to expand geographically and write premiums in three or four states to equal the homeowner business we had in Pennsylvania,” he said. “It was a tough sell, but we turned the company around and were one of only two insurance companies at the time that had managed to bounce back from a downgraded B credit rating back to an A rating.”
Incredible journey
Business has remained solid for Everett Cash Mutual in the intervening years. In the late 1990s, when he became president, the company had approximately $20 million in written premiums and $12 million in capital or surplus. Today, that has grown to nearly $240 million in written premiums and more than $140 million in capital and surplus, and ECM writes premiums in all 48 contiguous states.
Agricultural insurance accounts for about 95% of the company’s premiums, and from Shaw’s insider perspective, the local agriculture industry appears to be stable. “I would say a lot of farmers are sitting well financially, though they are tremendously concerned about what impact tariffs might have on corn and wheat prices,” he said. Even so, he said, farmers continue to buy new farm equipment and add it to their insurance policies. “I’ve had an incredible journey, and it’s one that happened because I realized that an opportunity to come back to my hometown area that I loved wouldn’t come along very often,” he said. “As a result of a brief encounter with the president of this company, I’m now the president and CEO. Whenever I talk to high school kids, I emphasize the importance of never burning a bridge, because you never know where that bridge might lead.”