West Coast Farmers Brings New Jobs to East

Farmers Insurance is a household name on the West Coast. But on the East Coast? Not so much. The 85-year-old insurer wants to change that, with a big expansion plan east of the Mississippi.

“We are the third-largest P/C insurer in the U.S.,” said Dennis Lusk, the company’s director of Farmers AgencyPoint facility in Cherry Hill, N.J. The office opened its doors in October 2011.

“We achieved that even though we weren’t truly a nationwide company at the time. Now we have an assertive East Coast expansion program underway,” Lusk said.

The Cherry Hill, N.J., office plans to recruit, train and performance-manage 105 new agency owners every year for next few years, as exclusive Farmers agents.

“It’s my mission to appoint approximately 300 Farmers exclusive agents in central and southern Jersey in the next few years. I have a counterpart in Parsippany, N.J., that is doing the same thing in the northern half of the state as well.”

The new large-scale, recruiting-and-training platform plan is to get East Coast states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland up as quickly as possible to the size of the company’s traditional model states such as Missouri and Oklahoma.

“We are bringing jobs and opportunities to the East Coast,” said Lusk. “When our agents finish their 12-month program and go back out to their community, they are going to have staffing needs in their offices such as office managers and agency producers. This translates into hundreds of new job opportunities per year.”