The UGA RMI Intern Program provides students the opportunity to work in corporate environments with insurance agents, brokers and consultants.

Academic Year 2009–2010

• Amanda Vidal
• Ben Abernathy
• Michael Sapinski
• Kaitlyn Odell
• Ashley Mullins
• Kevin Chalpin

Amanda Vidal

Larry Baumwald Insurance Agency
Athens, Georgia
Summer 2010

This summer I interned with Larry Baumwald Insurance Agency in Athens, Georgia. This is an independent agency composed of three employees plus one intern. While the internship for RMIN 4800 credit only last for 300 hours over the summer, this experience continues through the fall and spring semesters. Our agency provides small town service in a modern day world. We offer auto, home, individual health and life, commercial liability, and workers compensation policies through several well-known carriers, such as Progressive, Metlife, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Famers Insurance.

Even though I was not sure I wanted a career in an agency, I am really thankful that I took this internship. I learned more than I ever thought possible in one summer. Not only did my day-to-day responsibilities teach me the ins and outs of the industry, but the other employees have been very supportive in helping me along the way.

My duties started when the phone rang in the morning. If it was a customer with a personal auto or home account, I was in charge of taking care of them. I spent most of my days writing up quotes, processing payments, completing endorsements, and answering any general coverage questions an insured may have. I also spent a good amount of time on the phone with insurance companies researching rate increases and cancellations.

As the stereotypical intern, I also had some administrative responsibilities. I filed all papers that went through the office into our cabinets and dealt with any returned mail. I was also in charge of most correspondence that left our office. If an Insurance company needed to discuss any issues arising from an inspection, they would alert us, and I would mail out a memo to our customer.

Most importantly, this internship helped bridge the gap between the vocabulary I learned in class and what an insurance company actually does. My experience has really helped me feel confident in my ability to enter the insurance industry when I graduate.

Top of Page

Michael Sapinksi

Sterling Risk Advisors
Marietta, Georgia
Summer 2010

My name is Michael Sapinski, and I served as a summer intern for Sterling Risk Advisors, an insurance brokerage firm located in Marietta, Georgia. I served as an intern for Sterling from May 19, 2010 to August 6, 2010. An insurance broker assists clients, such as doctors or small businesses, find insurance contracts that will cover all of the client’s needs at an affordable price. In addition to the role, a broker also helps their clients understand the policy language and provides assistance in reporting claims to insurers. While interning at Sterling, my primary responsibilities involved working with a variety of brokers and their teams of account executives on achieving the set of aforementioned goals of a broker. My primary responsibilities included organizing policies to be sent out to clients, filing both new and expired policies, communicating with clients and insurers over the phone and via email, and attending appointments with Sterling’s clients. I was also able to partake in a number of special projects, including closing claims, researching the background and financial information of perspective clients, and creating presentations and graphical representations that helped clients better understand their policies.

Sterling provided me with a varied experience, as I worked with a different "department" just about every day and was able to gain experience in the technical aspects of policies as well as the sales/client satisfaction side of the business. Some of Sterling’s departments are Medical (focuses mainly on malpractice insurance), Construction, and Employee Benefits. This variety provided me with a lot of opportunities to study many different types of insurance policies. As a Risk Management and Insurance major, I have also been exposed to numerous different types of insurance, including commercial property, liability, and employee benefits coverages, just to name a few. Keeping this in mind, I believe my experience with Sterling has allowed me to build on the knowledge I have gained in my courses, and will facilitate my learning experience in future classes.

Top of Page

Ashley Mullins

J. Smith Lanier & Company
Duluth, Georgia
Summer 2010

I worked as an intern for the J. Smith Lanier & Co. in Duluth, Georgia during the summer from May 17, 2010 through July 30, 2010. I recommend this company and position because I had such a valuable experience learning the industry and networking. Working as the only intern, my time was divided between executive liability and international business with an emphasis on the latter. Despite the label of interns only doing "busy work," between the two divisions, I was immediately thrown into the mix participating in corporate board meetings, attending the annual sales meeting, attending charity dinners, playing on the church softball league softball team, and working on presentations for clientele. I spent a lot of time out-office going on lunches with different carriers and attending meetings at the client’s offices, traveling both to North and South Georgia. This was great for networking and learning business etiquette. While in the office, I worked on multiple projects to present to clients including preparing meeting itineraries, comparison of services, and policy summaries. The major project of my internship was to prepare a policy book for a client located in multiple countries. This was a challenging and interesting project in the fact I had to communicate with brokers all across the world to obtain insurance policies in different languages and then compile an English version of all the policy summaries. At the end of my internship, I was able to travel to the client’s office and personally present my project. By the time I left J. Smith Lanier, I not only was walking away with exponentially more knowledge of the insurance industry but also a vast understanding of what it takes to be successful in the corporate world. J. Smith Lanier offers a great and fun opportunity for students entering the industry who are anxious to learn and start a career in insurance.

Top of Page

Ben Abernathy

Swett & Crawford
Atlanta, Georgia
Summer 2010

My name is Ben Abernathy and I did my internship at an insurance wholesale brokerage firm named Swett & Crawford. I started my internship on May 10, 2010 and finished on July 30, 2010. Swett & Crawford has 31 offices across the country, but I worked at the headquarters based in Atlanta, Georgia. The internship at Swett far exceeded my expectations of what I thought this summer would be like. From day one, my boss and the people that worked for him had me involved in every aspect of the business. I was doing account summaries that we send off to carriers as well as the quotes and binders that come back in from the carriers. Swett had me calling on clients and actually trying to "broker" deals throughout the entire summer. The main thing that surprised me during my internship was when I was given my own account to work from start to finish. Even though this account was small, it was still my responsibility to try and do the best job that I could on it to make money for the company. This was a great experience to really get to know how to deal with people and how to get the job done no matter what obstacles you have to overcome in the process. In the end I did bind the deal and really felt like I accomplished something this summer, more than just sitting and writing down information. I really enjoyed my time at Swett and felt as if I learned a ton about the insurance industry. The part however that I liked the most was meeting all of the people that I worked with. They helped me out with every question that I could ever think of. If I had to make one suggestion to people doing internships in the future I would have to say ask questions and be pushy sometimes. Sometimes you have to ask a question more than once to get an answer, and that isn’t always a bad thing. Overall, it was a great experience.

Top of Page

Kaitlyn Odell

New York Life Insurance Company
New York City, New York
Summer 2010

This Summer, I chose to accept an opportunity to intern for New York Life Insurance Company, currently number 64 in the Fortune 100, in New York, NY. In an effort to capitalize on the opportunity that I had been given, I chose to center my internship in an environment drastically different from the one in which I was raised. By removing myself from my "comfort zone", I was able to create far more opportunity than I could have ever imagined. Living in New York City allowed me to experience a high level of diversity and taught me to further appreciate the culture of those from different socioeconomic sectors, different religious backgrounds, and different areas of the globe.

The New York Life corporate intern program is a 12-week program held during the summer months. Interns are placed in Westchester, Clinton, or Manhattan offices based on need and are placed in each department based on qualifications. The first day of the program serves as an orientation; interns are welcomed, given identification badges, required to attend seminars on company history and values, security, the payroll process, diversity, team building, and action learning introduced to managers, and assigned to an "Action Learning Project" team. After the initial orientation, interns spend each remaining week working for the department they were assigned; however, Friday afternoons are dedicated to Intern Development sessions, such as Professionalism, Innovation, the Business Plan Process, and Marketing and Action Learning Project development and progress. At the end of the program, each Action Learning Project team is expected to present final ideas in front of peers and a panel of Vice Presidents, who serve as judges.

I fulfilled many responsibilities during my 12-week program. I served as secretary, "delivery boy," innovation officer, team member, and friend and enjoyed every task that I was assigned. Due to the magnitude of the workload I encountered, my primary responsibilities were best separated into three categories: recruiting, technology, and administrative.

Throughout my experience as an intern for New York Life, I was exposed to a very diverse learning environment that stressed the importance of teamwork and initiative. My teammates and fellow interns allowed me the opportunity to absorb boundless amounts of new, exciting information and understand the contribution that every individual is capable of bestowing. Meetings, conference calls, lunches, presentations, and group projects all helped to magnify the most important principle of corporate success: leadership is not the work of a single individual, but the work of a team. Though hesitant to allow my success as both an intern and an individual to be dependent on the work of others, I am not much more confident in my strengths and absolutely more capable of allowing those with different strengths to help create an environment in which weakness is minimized.

Top of Page

Kevin Chalpin

Hanover Insurance Group
Atlanta, Georgia
Summer 2010

My name is Kevin Chalpin, and my internship with Hanover Insurance Group took place in the summer of 2010 after my third year at Georgia. In its second year, the Future Leaders internship Program (FLiP) provides rising juniors and seniors across the country with an excellent opportunity to gain invaluable workplace experience prior to graduation.

Hanover has three main office hubs that participate in the FLiP. The main office is located in Worcester, MA, with other large offices located in Howell, MI, and Atlanta, Georgia, which is where I worked. The program lasted from June 1st until August 13th, for a total of 11 weeks.

Hanover’s internship program is made up of several different tracks, which loosely determine what kind of exposure the intern receives through his work assignments. I was assigned to the Personal Lines Operations division, and spent most of my time working on analytical assignments dealing with Hanover’s call center.

I worked three main projects throughout the summer. To complete the first two, I worked on teams with other interns. One of these teams consisted of interns from all three cities, which obviously presented communication and participation challenges. The team projects focused on the current utilization of programs used by the call center, and what could be done to improve these programs in terms of service levels. One of them was presented to the COO of the company and other important stakeholders at the end of the internship program.

The third primary project I was involved in was creating an agency scorecard to display important financial data for each agent enrolled in Hanover’s call center. This involved obtaining, consolidating, and manipulating data from many different sources on order to summarize metrics like loss ratio, written premium, and retention rates in a dynamic report. The report allowed the user to simply select the appropriate agent, and then automatically populates with the needed information.

Overall, the FLiP program was a very rewarding and enlightening experience. I would recommend it to any business major looking for an accurate representation of what the workplace is like.

Top of Page