GEICO announced today they are laying off 2000 associates or 11% of its workforce. This follows Farmers announcement in August that they are laying off 2400 employees or 11% of its workforce. American Family has announced “significant layoffs coming” but declined to share specific numbers.
37 replies (most recent on top)
They need to layoff their substance abusers.
Its good to lay off some of the fat 6 digit types.
Liberty Mutual just announced they are laying off 2% of their workforce approximately 850 people…
Boy am I glad I got out and got the benefits I did compared to what they have now.
Prior to the AA97, agents had “term pay”, which was essentially a pension based on the size of their book of business. They also continued to receive group health. One agent I know has received $3800/mo for nearly 30 years now. AA97 get a very very limited term pay based on life insurance alone.
@3slu+1pbG0qUi- agents got a pension and SF sponsored health coverage? I'll have to call my agent to see what he says as an independent contractor.
Id be for dr-g testing everyone. Creates a productive, healthy, and safer work environment
Dr-g test em all from the board down. That would cut expenses big time!
Customers still want an agent. They'll almost ALL say they want an actual person. They just prefer to text or call rather than coming into the office now.
Hmmm. The vast majority of customers prefer the phone and e-mail/text rather than driving and meeting personally. They always have that option and I love seeing them but they have busy lives and I will always accommodate their preference.
They all need to quit hiding behind their cell phones and laptops so they can service the customer. Personal service is quality service.
agents are silly
Yup, State Farm sold the hub buildings several years ago and now lease those back. For all their missteps that was a strategy that has served them well. They cut their commercial real estate exposure just before the values tanked.
And in Bloomington they sold the downtown building, and Oakland Ave. Bldg is a potential target of the local school district. It seems like they are on the verge of divesting themselves of at least part of Corp South. Eventually they could get down to HQ and ILOC. In a high property tax state that has an impact.
Hubs are not owned by SF. They just lease space. While leased space is a real expense it is relatively small in the whole scheme of things.
Well they could ditch massive costs by getting rid of the hubs completely. They already buy us mobile work ready equipment, and we already have a track record of it working, on top of no longer needing to keep up with the INSANE hub cost of living inflation, guess establishing hubs in boomtowns wasnt such a great idea.
We will see if the executives will put our money where their mouth is and reduce costs while making the current workforce happy. Not sure if their goal is to retain a disgruntled workforce or not, given their actions, so we will see.
There are plenty of cost reduction paths to go, unfortunately many are tied behind having an experienced and competent workforce, something they sold off first during our transformative "growth". So much money is bled from claims due to people having low skill and no accountability....and the buildings we pay for that no one wants to be at.
@3slu…..I agree. Every rate decrease is an even bigger percentage pay decrease, because my payroll and expenses don’t drop. And people complained about rate increases even when he had 5 straight years of decreases, so I’ll take more money every time. The only difference is that I have decided to retire in spite of the income. I don’t want to die at work. I don’t want to stay awake at night because some loon is texting me in 4 letter words, all caps, over their teenage son who was discovered and charged for after he totaled the new truck. I want to do some things I’d like to do while I’m young and healthy enough to do them. So I will just live modestly in retirement.
Every company is taking rate, most significantly more than SF. As an agent I love it, 18% rate increases means at least that % of income increase. I have never made so much friggin $$$. Everyone is used to this inflationary cycle, no one even calls to complain, it’s crazy. I always hated it when we took rate decreases, always meant a income decrease for agents. Had planned on retiring but when your net increases 100k plus it’s hard to walk away. Almost makes up for the elimination of the pension and retirement health insurance for agents. Almost.
@2nnk. Don’t even begin to understand that reference.
Like Johnny Cash sings: Oney, hey Oney!
They’ve already given written notice that quality comp on my contract will extend well beyond my retirement date. Stay in your lane, cubicle dweller.
They can change comp at anytime, if you think SF will wait for you to retire sport, you are living in Bizzaro world.
@2flf-a terminated low level claims failure advising agents how to think about their role-priceless.
Who said anything about trusting? Just looking at reality. Agents will be fine. If the terms here change and aren’t acceptable anymore, they’ll go do something else.
there have never been layoffs at SF
Dont ever say they cant. They can and if you trust them, youre a fool.
They can’t change agency compensation until they can actually do the service work and take all the angry customer calls that agency is currently forced to handle. So it’s not happening soon. And certainly not before I retire.
Agency compensation changes on the horizon. When markets get to the point when nobody can afford basic insurance, justifying renewal compensation levels will be a thing of the past.
State Farm will probably lag in this area, Progressives cutting edge underwriting modeling and successful direct distribution model will impact growth for a number of years. Progressives expense ratio at 28% was eye opening on recent numbers release.
"It will be interesting to see how bad the profit/loss picture gets."
- In Agency we see the changes coming clearly and quickly. Rate increases becoming regular and frequent again. Underwriting is getting very tight. We always expect to see some quotes turn up "ineligible". But it's happening more and more even on state to state transfers of longterm customers. Or our renters buy a home and are ineligible for homeowners insurance. Of course, they end up taking the cars to the new carrier. We're taking on less bad business and shedding more of what we already have on the books. This business is cyclical and always has been. Our ability to use data is helping. It sometimes clashes head on with our ability to treat customers as people, though.
I got into insurance as a second career later in life because of the “security” and “stability” of the industry. What a joke. I am thinking I’ve wasted a lot of time, energy, and money for the past few years, trying to make it as an independent. A deployment here, 6 months off, then another deployment, 5 months off…then layoffs.
Tippy loves to cut, unless it is an exec perk.
WFH are not "huge expenses", unless they were hired due to the pandemic I guess. They already forced out and did "quiet cutting" to employees they thought were too expensive or whatever back in 2017, including anyone who had an old-school WFH thing going on. In fact, SF is pretty much the OG in regards to "quiet cutting", these other carriers are now doing theirs. Recent WFH was only something that came about due to the pandemic, not really in the original plans, but it became a good opportunity to abandon non-hubs. Outside of hubs are a lot of self-motivated, knowledgeable, and low maintenance type employees though that actually contribute significantly to the operation, at least in claims anyway. With many of them hired within the last 5-8 years as well when they started their great replacement. You can't just sit at home doing jack when you work in claims.
Seeing is believing.
@moi. Well said. Correct. WFH and field are huge expenses with a lot of tenure. To the hub or bye bye again coming soo to the farm near you.
It will be interesting to see how bad the profit/loss picture gets. Growth is still off the charts but all Tipsord is doing is buying bad business while leading the company to more huge U/W losses. Exec is expense crazy right now! Progressive is doing great just like we knew they would. They shut down production, got the bad stuff off the books, and are now out growing us with an excellent combined ratio. Just remember from 2016-2021 Tipsy downsized the workforce, mostly claims, by almost 40%. SF went from 71,000 employees to 53,000 employees in 4 years! Basically lay-offs! We are not even back at 62,000 employees and have added almost 8 million households since 2016! We weren't staffed correctly in 2016 much less now. What worries me more, is that these companies doing layoffs are also making people come back into the office to try to force more people out the door! I see that being our new reality next year! I bet we are there 3 days a week every week! Exec will be back to their normal tricks, lies, and schemes the second the labor market tightens backup! Count on it! This is still a sh-t bag company, don't get lulled to sleep!
Can’t be. According to approximately 7 people on this site, the world would be perfect except for Tipsord.
@jfj state farm essentially laid off 850ish people in enterprise tech in March.
State Farm?