The highlight of Parke Ellis’s career in insurance is still what it was 10 years ago: guiding his brokerage through Hurricane Katrina and the effects of its ongoing aftermath.
The 2005 storm kept the employees of New Orleans-based Gillis, Ellis & Baker from accessing their office for several months. Along with other leadership, Ellis helped find a site for the office to temporarily relocate in Baton Rouge. Working out of a double-wide trailer through November, the brokerage employees worked to process claims, assist their clients and get back in the game, despite their own personal losses.
“There was no rank. Everyone was suddenly a claims person, even the top executives. We just worked through it,” recalled Ellis, who is now chairman with the brokerage his grandfather helped found in 1933. “Then the phone started ringing again and people said, ‘We read your story. We heard about you from a friend.’
“Suddenly, there was just this growth. We wrote a lot of business after the storm.”
Eleven years later, the effects of Katrina continue to reverberate throughout New Orleans and the surrounding area. While Ellis still assists Gillis, Ellis & Baker in addressing them, he’s also working on a number of new projects – including a program that’s already brought on 29 newly trained people to the insurance space.
Ellis, who has always been a helper, joined the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of Louisiana soon after beginning his career in 1981. Though he says he never “wanted to be a chief,” he eventually served in many leadership positions within the organization, including as president.
During his term, he organized a survey of IIABL’s then 407 members to root out the group’s top concerns. Other than attracting new carriers to the market, the biggest issue on the minds of members was attracting and retaining quality staff.
Along with recognizing that he was working in an aging industry with a limited talent pool, the survey led Ellis to action.
“I came to a board meeting and said, ‘We need to create an insurance academy.’ You could hear crickets chirping,” Ellis said. “We needed a budget, we needed staffing, we needed to know who would teach. So, I brought it back home.”
Ellis approached Delgado Community College, which he knew by reputation only, and asked for space on the class register and a little publicity on the school’s website. Over the next few months, he raised money from IIABL members, organized course instructors and spoke to students. He even did a short television spot.
In October 2014, he had a class and the Louisiana Insurance Academy was born.
“Every Tuesday and Thursday, for six hours a week, we used the CRS curriculum to teach our class of 15,” said Ellis, who also taught on the course. “The ACSR test is really tough, but by the time we finished, he had some folks who knew insurance pretty well.”
Out of the first graduating class, seven students found positions within insurance agencies throughout the city. Four others went on to work in other areas of insurance. Nearly all told friends about the class, and a second quickly filled up.
With some changes to the course, the Louisiana Insurance Academy taught a second group of 14, with a similar number of students going on to work in independent agencies.
For his work, Ellis was recently presented with IIABL’s Lou Daniel Award, an honor that is not given out yearly, but on a purely merit-based system. Named for a Baton Rouge agent who served the area and the industry for many years, the Lou Daniel Award has been given to 27 people – including Ellis – since 1965.
And if Katrina is Ellis’ career highlight, founding and teaching in the Louisiana Insurance Academy is his personal highlight, he says.
“The first year’s class all sent me congratulatory emails and many of them used the term ‘life-changing.’ They say they had no direction before and now feel they can stand on their own two feet and make a good living,” he said. “In my 35 years [in the business], this is the most gratifying thing I’ve done.”
Always busy, Ellis is now working on expanding the Louisiana Insurance Academy to other areas of the state, including Baton Rouge and the North Shore.
“I’m hoping the model we’ve used here will help us get 20, 30, 40 graduates a year,” he said.
