Simple Successful in a Complex World

Ask Charlie Rosson and Mary Sklarski of San Francisco-based Woodruff-Sawyer and Co. what keeps their company successful and they’ll give the same answer: simplicity. For Rosson, chief executive officer, and Sklarski, chief operating officer, the secrets of success are not all that complicated. Keep it simple by focusing on what’s right, both for the customer and the employee.

The customer could be a company with complex insurance needs — a real estate, construction or technology firm. Or a company going public for the first time and needing directors and officers liability coverage. The client could be located here in the U.S. or in a foreign land. In addition to staffing six offices in the U.S., Woodruff-Sawyer has a lot of people on airplanes meeting with clients around the world.

The employee could be someone Woodruff-Sawyer recruited or someone who came to the agency after hearing of its reputation as a business where people like to work. The agency boasts a core of employees with more than 10 years of service, a positive reflection of its people-centered culture.

Focus on customers and employees. It’s a simple formula but one that many businesses find difficult to execute. How does Woodruff-Sawyer do it?

Q: Your core purpose is “to enrich the lives and enhance the security of our employees and the customers we serve.” How do you go about doing that on a daily basis?
Rosson: A big part of it is sticking to our core values – integrity, professionalism, independence, innovation and community. We apply those principles in everything we do, and we end up doing the right thing for our clients and the right thing for our people. Certainly staying independent allows us the flexibility to make decisions that benefit the clients, and it allows us to look at things from a longer-term perspective. We can also focus on developing people over the long haul, and investing in their careers.

Sklarski: It just makes sense. I had someone who has worked here for 20 years tell me when I first started here that it’s just very simple here at Woodruff. You don’t have to think about what policies we have in place or how someone would respond. As she said, “You just go back to what’s the right thing? And you do it.” That makes the business simple.

Rosson: There’s not a lot of bureaucracy or politics. It’s not a top-down organization. All of our key people get involved with clients, get involved in business development, and are active in the marketplace.

Q: So is that the secret to your success?
Sklarski: Yes. From the start, we had such a solid base of people in the firm who were committed to the industry. That set the base for us and made it much easier for us to build on.

Doug Morton, Stan Loar and Susan Hunt (vice chairs of the board of directors) have been with the company 30 years. They have kept the culture of the company very focused on doing the right thing for clients, and making the business fairly simple in that manner.

Rosson: I’d reinforce that. To go back to our early days and Bob Sawyer, who built the firm from the ’50s onward. The business centered on our values and our culture, our respect for individuals, and in putting our clients first, having the highest ethical standards, and building a strong reputation. Those are the core values that have allowed us to grow like we have, and to sustain and perpetuate.

Q: You’re privately owned and independent. Has there ever been a time when the company considered going public?
Rosson: I don’t think so. Staying independent and remaining privately held is a big priority for us. We’re not looking for any big liquidity event, or any opportunity to go to the public market. It’s a very flat organization. If you look at our organizational chart, there are only three or four levels.

Sklarski: It gets back to the values. It makes the business very simple. A lot of us have worked for public firms prior to our time here, and it makes us feel stronger about remaining private. You have the flexibility to do what you need to do quickly for a client rather than running through a lot of bureaucracy.

Rosson: We’ve a lot of our key people who are owners in the business. They are active with clients and out in the marketplace in key roles within the organization. A big focus for us is to groom and mentor and attract individuals who will be the next generation to fill these roles.

Sklarski: An example would be Steven Gaitley, who runs our real estate practice. He’s very well known in the community. He’s built up a real estate practice for our firm. This year he assumed the role of the ESOP chairman. In addition to what he’s doing in real estate, he’s taken on a significant role for us that’s focused on representing the employees in their ownership of the firm, as well as working on the capital plan and our long-term strategy to remain private.

Q: Your ESOP program — when and why did you add it?
Rosson: About 15 years ago, there was an effort to expand the ownership of the company to a broader group of employees. It also gave us the opportunity to transition from Bob Sawyer’s ownership while keeping us privately held. We think it’s a great tool to attract and retain people. They own a piece of the organization and share in its success, plus they have a say in the direction of the company.

Q: How are you different from your competition?
Rosson: It goes back to the culture. We live our values. Plus, our independence and our ability to do what’s right for the client and taking the longer-term view and investing in both our clients and our people are things that publicly-traded competitors can’t enjoy. We have a very large and highly capable claims consulting department. It’s much bigger than that of our peers. It’s where the rubber meets the road from a client standpoint. When there’s a claim, we think it’s absolutely critical that we get involved and bring top-flight professionals to the equation to act as client advocates and help a client work through tricky claim issues. That’s an area where we’ve been able to make an investment that goes above and beyond what our competition can do.

Sklarski: … [W]e tend to specialize in the areas we get involved in. For example, we’re not involved in personal lines or small commercial business. So the areas we focus in are some where we feel we can bring something different to bear. We’re not just selling insurance; we’re bringing an expertise and knowledge of an industry that allows us to provide better solutions.

Q: What are your market niches?
Sklarski: The technology and life sciences areas are strong markets for us. The construction business, real estate industry, as well. Also, I would add we have not just industry focus, but line of business expertise. What we’ve done in our directors and officers area, for example, was very unique and still has pieces to it that have not been duplicated. (D&O is one of Woodruff-Sawyer’s cornerstone products.)

We’re lucky working out of this industry because we tend to see things percolating sooner than they would in other places. Bill White, one of our partners, started working with venture capital clients early on. Now he has somewhere around 100 firms that he’s built. He’s been able to develop forms and coverages and approaches to that industry that someone who has not spent time in that industry would have the benefit of being able to do.

Q: What kinds of technology firms are you serving?
Sklarski: The definition keeps expanding. We got involved in the life science area mainly because we’re located where a lot of biotech firms are. Currently, we have about 300 firms in that space. We were already in the technology area, and this is an off-shoot of that. It’s one of our fastest growing segments. The new firms keep springing up. They have unique exposures that require specialized teams and coverages. We have people in the firm who work on nothing but life sciences and exposures that face those firms.

Q: You handle a lot of international risk. How strong is that business?
Rosson: International business is really something that sets us apart. It goes back to the early days of our technology focus. We realized early our clients had needs outside the U.S., so we invested through the Assurex relationship and through bringing people into the organization and training them to understand the client’s global needs. For a mid-sized firm, we really have a global reach. That makes us unique.

Q: What is the Assurex Global partnership?
Rosson: Assurex is a group of companies and brokers similar to Woodruff-Sawyer operating around the U.S. and globally. We leverage our collective strength to get local market knowledge, leverage best practices and market power, etc. There’s only one Assurex partner in each area. We’re the Assurex partner in northern California. Generally speaking, it represents the top regional firms globally pulling together to leverage resources and share best practices. We were one of the founding members.

It’s given us our global reach. It was the platform that allowed us to grow our contacts globally. It helps us get results for our clients and on a global scale, where we can really serve the client’s non-U.S. needs very effectively.

Q: Charlie, you’ve been with the company four years, and Mary, five years. How have you seen the business change?
Rosson: Obviously, we’re familiar with the soft market on the property/casualty side. We’ve seen a lot of growth in our employee benefits area where there hasn’t been a soft market, and where there’s been a rapid rate of price inflation from a premium standpoint. We’ve been able to grow both sides of it, and we’re looking for growth opportunities outside of what we consider to be our core geographic area.

Sklarski: You have to be in the mindset every year that no matter what happens in the market, you need to continue to grow your business. You’re always looking at what you need to do differently. Just to sit and say “We were flat this year because the rates were down or the economy was bad” isn’t enough. You can’t come to the business with that mentality. You need to approach it thinking you’re going to grow it every year, and look for ways to do that.

Q: You focus a lot on doing what’s right for the employee as well as the customer. That must include hiring the right person. How are you attracting top producer talent?
Sklarski: We’re not necessarily looking for people who are out in the market looking for a home. It’s more the people who aren’t looking. In the last couple of years, we’ve tended to get calls from people who know about us and have heard about our firm rather than us chasing them down. It’s interesting to watch.

Q: So what’s the perfect match for you?
Sklarski: Someone who can work in a team environment. We joke about it, but someone who says “I” and “me” versus someone who says “we did this” or “our team did this” is not the right fit. We’re focused on the team environment.

Sklarski: We have a really great tenured group of people who have been here 10 years or more. Over the last five years, we’ve added what I call the “new-to-insurance” group. These are people who have not worked in insurance before and have come in either at entry level or as sales trainees. That has really enhanced the performance of the entire team. It’s raised the bar. We have great mentoring from the tenured staff. It’s been a great combination.

Q: What have been some of the better decisions you’ve made?
Rosson: The geographic expansion. It’s been a great source of growth.

Sklarski: [T]he specialty approach, and having the wherewithal to understand that if we’re going to get into this, we want to be the best. Also, understanding what being the best requires and how we’re going to get there. D&O is the early example. We have two attorneys who are securities litigators who can partner with our firms and provide advice and counsel that no other firm can match. We were doing things that no one else was doing, like providing a database containing exposure information for similar firms. That allowed us to say we were different. The specialty focus drives a lot of the decisions we make.

Q: What are Woodruff-Sawyer’s plans for the future?
Rosson: We have an aggressive growth plan that involves all of the above. We plan to grow practice-by-practice in all the businesses we have – D&O, benefits, construction, real estate, property and casualty. We plan to hire people to drive business in those segments.

From a geographic perspective, we have a lot of people on airplanes writing business in other areas. Our global capabilities help us continue to gain global business.