So for you interns in LA, congratulations.  For every other American citizen, no worries, Denver will stop the Lakers next year before they even have a chance to get to the ship.

But back to GBS…Todd and I had a very eventful first two weeks.  Our first week we met with multiple consultants in the office, went with one of our AVPs, Michelle Moreau, to Colorado Springs to discuss the new health care reform, had a sales force overview, underwriting and financial overview, and even sat-in on a finalist presentation between Standard and CIGNA on our very first day.

Our second week we primarily concentrated on the Kaplan Financial Education course so that we could complete it before leaving for Itasca.  We also had time to do a Bid Analysis overview, and introduction to RFP and Bid Spec, meet with a Sun Life Financial Rep, and have a company picnic.

As a New York native, I love to get out and play basketball and soccer for recreation.  But being that I spend almost all of my time living in Colorado these days, I ski every chance I get.

I’m looking forward to meeting everyone in Itasca on Sunday,

- Mike in Denver

…that’s referring to Gallagher (its pronounced juh juh juh jjjjeeee-UNIT)

To wrap things up from the internship could take a long time so here is the all-star list of events:

· Itasca- educational, fun, made new friends that I’m still in touch with.

· Prospect Meetings- got to add my input to the meetings and they were very helpful because there are things that we will be doing when trying to bring in new clients.

· Client Meetings- Now we got to see how consultants deal with existing clients and keep their relationships. Every client was different, I sat in meetings where the consultant and client were friends and others where it was strictly business.

· My favorite thing was just being in the office and doing the everyday activities. I enjoy being in this office and working with the people that are here. I’m not going to say I enjoy being inside all the time but I like the jokes, pranks, and help that is offered on a daily basis

I would come back if I got a full time offer. Because I graduated from school it wouldn’t make so much sense to wait until next summer for another internship!

My attitude going forward is hopefully I can work here in this office and do a great job at whatever I am doing. I will set some hard but achievable goals and want to reach them. This of course will only happen at Gallagher if I do work here full time.

-Mike

Our Day at Unum

We had the opportunity to tour Unum’s office in Glendale on Thursday July 31^st. This was arranged by John Reiter (a consultant in our office). The tour was led by Nadia and Brad Coons and lasted for about two hours. Nadia is in charge of administrative operations and Brad is in charge of the entire sales team. Unum had some of their sales trainees join us for the meeting as well.

The meeting started in their conference room where they explained exactly what Unum does and how they differentiate themselves from other companies. Unum is the largest disability insurance company in the Unites States. They have state of the art equipment and programs to help employees with disabilities get back to work and get things done with their injuries. Throughout the presentation they talked about the company and told us what makes them the best. Nadia explained the tools they have for various injuries. For example, if someone has a lower back injury and can’t sit down for long periods of time, he/she can use an adjustable desk that will rise up when he/she stands. With interesting products like these, Unum can provide the tools for injured employees so that they can work.

After the conference room presentation, we went to two other floors in the office and got to see some of the industry leading products. It was neat to actually see these things in person after hearing about them from Nadia. We also saw a project, though still in construction, that shows a prospect customer how Unum processes a live claim. Because Unum believes that their claim technology is the best, they want their prospects to see the technology instead of just hearing about it. Unum has also gone completely paperless, which has made them even more technical throughout the years.

Overall it was a very informational tour and I felt that we left knowing much more than when we came.

-GBS LA

The internship to this point has not made me regret any classes that I have taken in College. I graduated so I guess if I got a Masters I could maybe have an option of taking an insurance class but hopefully that would be an “easy A” after this summer! Like I said in week one, I went to the University of Arizona and studied business finance. I enjoyed some of the classes I took and didn’t like others but if my school would have offered an insurance class I would not have taken it. To be honest I don’t know how many people would want to take it unless it was between the hours of 11:00 am-3:00pm on Tuesday and Thursday or Monday and Wednesday (that way you can sleep in and have 3 day weekends) and it would have to be easy. Insurance wasn’t a topic brought up in to many conversations I had with friends and classmates unless it was like “hey I don’t have insurance and I broke my arm….can I have your ID and insurance card so it’s cheaper”. I of course wouldn’t do this but seriously none of my friends talked about insurance or showed much interest in it.

Right now if I had to go back to school and if they offered a great insurance course and a great finance course I think I would take the finance class. It is more interesting to me and I believe that it is more applicable in life. When taking a step back and looking at the big picture, insurance and finance are both used in all industries in the business world. So maybe it is a good thing to understand both of them. You have insurance on buildings and health and then finance to pay bills and people. I believe that insurance classes should not be mandatory in college because 99% of students aren’t going to need the knowledge except for choosing between PPO’s and HMO’s and so on… I also think that most general education classes were a waste of time and money because quite frankly, I don’t think being able to tell you about different clouds formations in the sky will help either of us in life. Compared to some gen-ed’s, an insurance class would more useful in life so maybe insurance 101 should be required to all! You could also teach things in the class like balancing a check book, creating monthly budgets and so on. Who knows…

Something that would be more interesting that I have learned about in this internship is consulting. I would have definitely showed interest in signing up for a consulting class and learning more about that. This is something that business schools could use and would benefit those who took it.

About six months ago I was thinking this very question but then I decided instead of picking what I want to be, it should be where I want to be. I thought that there are too many jobs out there and it’s too hard for a college student to pin point exactly what he/she wants to do. So here were my characteristics of what or where I want to be…

1. I want to work for a company in southern California
2. I want to be involved with people (not accounting)
3. I want to like the people in the office and others that I work with
4. I want to start off with a competitive salary and have an open end on how much I can make
5. I want a challenge (don’t want to do the same thing every day)
6. I want to work for a company that invests in employees and grows internally (didn’t want to be a starting analyst for 5 years…)

So pretty much those are most things that I look at when asking myself what I want to be. So far at Gallagher I can place a “check mark” next to every one of those. This is definitely not the company or industry that I thought I would like to work for but I would be happy working here. Before this internship I thought that a insurance broker was someone who just sells sells sells! After doing some time in the office I have realized that in this company a “broker” is also a consultant, a producer, can be a mentor (internally), and some are even managers. The possibilities are endless and that is attractive to me.

-Mike

Itasca…a city where the largest building is the Gallagher center and the population is probably around 9,000 max! Some how some way Gallagher did a great job keeping everyone busy and out of trouble. The trip was full of learning, beautiful weather, and networking with fellow employee’s. In fact some of the networking turned into friendships.

I believe that we did a good job of meeting each other and trying to meet everyone else in the company. This was a difficult task but fun at the same time. The days were full of presentations from “hey I reserved the back bar at alive one downtown” to Pat Gallagher himself. I felt like the company did a great job entertaining us and teaching us vital information in the insurance business.

Overall the trip was a success and I’m happy we went on it. It made it clear that we are a large investment for Gallagher and need to make that pay off. On a side note.. I’m going to make another post labelled “Brochure”. At the LA office we were assigned the task to write an article about Itasca in the Quarterly brochure that goes out. It may bring back some funny memories or be interesting to read for some of you.

-Mike