Home and auto insurer
Allstate Corp. hasn’t expanded its workforce of agents since before the 2008 financial crisis. Now, the carrier has beefed up its US market share by 400 exclusive agencies.
There are now 11,600 Allstate agencies in the country, serving 9,300 locations, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filing submitted last Thursday.
The expansion is part of CEO Tom Wilson’s efforts to inflate Allstate’s influence beyond the East Coast and diversify risk. The insurer hopes to add even more agency owners this year, including 120 in Texas. Houston is a particular target for Allstate, where it hopes to add 240 people to its sales staff.
Utah and Nevada are also targets for Allstate’s growth.
“They see opportunities now where there’s really parts of the map, or areas within certain regions, where they feel like that’s a good underwriting environment,” analyst Mark Dwelle with RBC Capital Markets told Bloomberg.
Wilson stressed that the new agency locations will help build Allstate’s book of business by servicing people who prefer face-to-face interaction for all their insurance needs. Previously, the insurer fell flat by trying to compete with the likes of Progressive and Geico, who currently dominate the Internet sales scene.
“We’re more interested in selling everything we can sell to you,” Wilson told analysts during a conference call earlier in February. “So, if you thought of us as a retail store, we don’t just want to sell shirts, we want to sell shirts, pants, shoes, socks, whatever you need.”
At the end of last year, Allstate had 6.08mn homeowner policies in force, the SEC filing revealed. It was the first time the company did not experience a quarter-over-quarter decrease since 2010, and follows on the heels of a 15% gain in revenue in 2013.
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