Sarah Cooke

Director of Personal Lines

WalkerHughes Insurance

Indianapolis, Indiana

Named as the Outstanding Large Agency in the 2023 Liberty Mutual and Safeco Agent for the Future Awards, WalkerHughes began developing “Violet,” a proprietary software that acts as the agency’s personal lines management system, in 2016. Cooke began her insurance career in 1997 as an administrative assistant and now leads the WalkerHughes Insurance personal lines team.

“We have so many pressures now, especially with the kind of market that we’re in, and we want our employees to be able to function efficiently on a daily basis,” Cooke says. “By building what others won’t from a technology perspective, we feel uniquely positioned to best support our growing team in the future.”

Experience as a woman in leadership?

Mentorship has been key to my career path for sure. I’ve had some amazing female leader role models and learned a lot from all of them. I try to encourage all of my team members that there’s always opportunity for advancement and they should continue to work toward their goals. 

Plans for Violet?

In the short term, our development team is hard at work increasing the automation to our personal lines renewal processes by monitoring renewal increases and automatically remarketing those policies that meet a certain threshold of premium increase. Other plans include incorporating direct API connections with carriers to streamline the download process, creating our own client portal with a mobile app, and supporting automated call routing that would connect our clients directly to their agent without having to be forwarded by another team member. 

Advantages of designing agency software?

Our development team incorporates a great deal of input from our agents on features that they would like to see in their management system, so the most important plan from my perspective is to keep that user group active to continue building solutions that support our agency’s best practices and empower our team. 

What led you to insurance and WalkerHughes?

Like most people in the insurance industry, I didn't intend to get into it. I attended business college and was recruited into an insurance agency right out of college. I started out working in an administrative assistant role, answering phone calls, ordering supplies for the agency, and preparing commercial lines insurance proposals for the producers. Within a year, there was an opening in personal lines and I was able to advance into that position and become licensed.

I'm still continuing to learn things every single day. Even in a leadership role that does not end. Being patient and learning everything I can about the industry has really helped me get to where I'm at.

What's your favorite part of the job?

I love working with our personal lines team of account managers and support specialists. I love to be able to help guide them as they're working on their career paths. I love working with newer agents that come into our agency, training them and giving advice as they go through struggles and try to find markets.

Biggest challenge?

Of course, I have to talk about the hard market. In my career, I have not seen a market like this. We have tried to focus more on educating our clients about the hard market and what's going on, rather than just letting them know, 'Okay, we'll rate shop for you and see if we can find you a lower rate.' It isn't always about the lowest rate—it's about the type of coverage they have.

Now more than ever, we're telling people, 'Even though you had a 20% rate increase, it's probably still a good idea to stay where you're at and not try to switch, because even if we do try to switch you, we won't save you much money.'

What are your goals for the next five years?

One of my goals for the personal lines team is to come up with a more proactive process for handling renewals. It has been difficult to do that when just about everybody wants to be shopped in this market. And then personally, one of my goals is earning my CIC designation, so this year I'll start studying and taking the courses.

AnneMarie McPherson Spears is IA news editor.