Insurance Client Services Team Lead

Position Title : TEAM LEAD

Classification : Exempt

Reports To : COO

Hours : Full Time (40 hours / week)

Location : Salt Lake City (Cottonwood Heights), UT

Compensation : $75k to $90k DOE with benefits

Who We Are + What We Do

Founded in 1936, The Buckner Company is a family-owned, full-service independent Insurance brokerage headquartered in Salt Lake City.

What started as a team of three people has grown into one of the largest and fastest growing agencies in the western region with over 200 employees in seven offices.

Although much has changed, one thing remains constant : Buckner’s dedication to providing phenomenal service to its clients.

In helping customers navigate a stable, competitive, and complex industry, Buckner’s knowledgeable and experienced professionals live by these core values :

• Placing the customer at the heart of every decision
• Discovering better solutions and making things happen
• Acting with openness and clarity
• Collaborating and trusting each other

Position Summary

This is a hybrid role that serves as a front-line manager for a team of direct reports and also has the primary responsibility to service a book of business.

Time split between servicing your book and managing your team should be around 50 / 50. This may not be possible on any given day or week, but in the aggregate, this is the target.

Team leader has the ultimate responsibility for the onboarding, training and development of all direct reports. The team leader is not necessarily expected to complete the training and developmental work on their own, but to manage the process and ensure it is done in a timely manner.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities :

Service and manage a book of business :

• Provide phenomenal service to your clients
• Service your book in accordance with company standards
• Build and maintain an excellent working relationship with the producer(s) whose book(s) you manage
• Build and maintain an excellent working relationship with your clients
• Build and maintain an excellent working relationship with your underwriters

Training and Development :

• Ensure that every new hire has a training plan
• Training plan for new hires with no experience should encompass the first 4 weeks of employment and should be completed before the employee’s start date
• Training plan for new hires with experience should be tailored to meet the needs of the team and the skills of the new hire
• Execute on training plan and modify as needed during the training period
• Meet with each direct report at least semi-annually to discuss training, development and performance
• Ensure every direct report has an actionable training or development plan that is appropriate to their knowledge, skill set and tenure

Management :

• Establish and maintain rapport with direct reports
• Have an ownership stake in the morale of your team and work to reduce employee turnover
• Collaborate with other team leads to streamline and improve workflows, increase efficiency or to share / gain beneficial knowledge and insights
• Recognize and reward direct reports for exception work, service or results
• Handle employee performance issues as needed (warnings, write ups, PIPs, etc.)
• Support your direct reports as they seek to increase their industry knowledge via CE, designations, licensing or certifications
• Ensure direct reports perform in accordance with company standards
• Professionalism
• Workflow compliance
• Provide actionable feedback to your direct reports on a regular basis

Administrative :

• Attend and participate in team leader meetings
• Attend in-office carrier meetings as often as possible
• Manage workloads of direct reports, rebalance as needed
• Ensure team is appropriately staffed
• Have final say on new hires that will report to you
• Manage PTO requests
• Load share with other team when excess capacity exists
• Request new openings from HR once the need has been established
• Seek to improve the Buckner culture and work environment by the example you set, the people you hire and the behaviors you support

Qualifications :

Education and Experience :

• 5+ years of insurance industry experience
• CISR, CIC and other industry specific designations
• Active P&C producer’s license
• Demonstrated ability to think critically and lead effectively

Required Job Skills :

• Excellent communication skills, including listening, speaking and writing
• Exceptional interpersonal skills : professional, personable and able to interact effectively with others and to respond appropriately in stressful situation and under deadlines.
• Ability to work well with others in a team environment
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Computer literacy for correspondence, data entry, e-mail, Internet, spreadsheets and accessing data from company systems.
• Dependability and promptness
• Good organizational and time-management skills

Physical :

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to communicate verbally and to listen for instructions and information.

The employee is also required to sit for long periods of time often in front of a computer monitor and operate a computer keyboard.

The employee must occasionally lift and / or move up to 25 pounds. Specific vision abilities required include close vision, distance vision, color vision, depth perception, and ability to adjust focus.