Welcome back to the A.I.M. Mutual Podcast. My name is Chris Sharp and this is part of our Team Behind the Team series, which aims to take a look at some of the individuals and jobs at A.I.M. Mutual that play a vital, but often under-recognized role in the policy cycle for our policyholders. Today I have the pleasure of talking with Jill Ennis, Rating Technician at A.I.M. Mutual about her role and how her work supports the greater service efforts of the company. Welcome, Jill. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us today. 

Hi, good morning.

All right, so to start off, can you tell me a little bit about your background, why you joined A.I.M. Mutual, and how you became part of the insurance rating team?

Sure. I was the typical kid and growing up my dream job was I wanted to be a veterinarian. I ended up going to business school, just kind of following in my mother's footsteps. I have this business administration degree with minors in computer science and applied mathematics. And I then did go on to actually be a veterinary technician for about 10 years. I happened to work with another person that works at A.I.M. Mutual currently now as well, and when I was working at the hospital and she recommended an opening to me. I was just kind of looking for a change at the time. My hospital was in like a transitional period and she recommended it to me. It sounded like a good, way for me to get my foot in the door somewhere else and I applied and here I am today. It's been a little over a year at this point.

Excellent. Actually, there's, I mean, there's a thread there of caring for animals and now switching it over to the insurance side of caring for people, but they're not as far apart as you might think.

No, I know. And I do have the business background, so kind of like being in an office and that kind of change wasn't so bad just because I do have that experience as well.

Excellent. Can you take us through a typical day? What does an insurance rater in workers' compensation do?.

Yeah, essentially we are policy maintenance, so like anything that comes in the underwriters’ talk with the agents: they need to make an address change, they need to change the amount of payroll for a certain class code. You know, just general things like that where we do actually have two rating teams. One of them is going to be the team that I'm on, which is the voluntary market, which is the policies that we actually do actually want to write as a company. And then there's also the assigned risk team that is companies that have applied for workers' compensation insurance and been denied by a couple of companies, but legally they do have to have it. So that they get written, their underwriter would be the state, and they get written with us as the assigned risk day-to-day. I wait for requests to come in. I work mostly with the underwriters whereas the assigned risk [team] would work with the [state] board and the actual insureds themselves. And I do things like audits and anything that comes my way. It's always something different and, you know, if I get stuck on something, everybody in the department is easy to go to and we can totally just bounce things off each other.

Nice. What would you say are some of the challenges you deal with and how do you tend to resolve them?

So I guess maybe my biggest challenge is that a lot of the transactions that I do I maybe only see one every year. And so if I learn how to do it, [and it has been a while, I can check with a co-worker], which is awesome.

Nice. How does the rating group work to support one another? I think you just touched upon this and just talked about it. But, does working as part of a team help you do your job?

Yes. I do think so. Especially now that we have a hybrid schedule. Some of us are working from home and some of us are working in the office. A lot of times we do need to print out stuff that gets mailed out to the insured or to the agent. And if somebody's printing from home and having an issue with their printer, they can contact somebody in the office and make sure that it gets sent out appropriately. We do that a lot actually. <laugh>.

What other departments do you tend to interact with and how important is rating to the policy cycle and putting coverage in place for our policyholders?

Wow. It's a lot of moving components that I think....

Exactly, yes.

...As a lay person from the outside you don't see that or understand that that's what goes into these processes.

Correct. Yeah.

What would you say are three things that might surprise people about our industry and the opportunities that it holds?

Like I was just saying, people don't really realize how many different departments there are within an insurance company or how many different lines of insurance there are. Where A.I.M. Mutual is exclusively workers' compensation in the New England area, other companies might be, you know, the rest of the country or they might only do commercial insurance. They might only do liability. There's different aspects in every single way. And so there's a place for everyone at an entry level position, so you can kind of just move your way up. And then another thing is probably that, people don't realize, but the people at A.I.M. Mutual have been working there for 10 plus 20 plus years, so you bounce around between different departments if you need to but a lot of people are very happy with their position and they've stayed for a very long time.

Yeah. I mean, I saw that in 2023, again, A.I.M. Mutual is considered one of the great insurance carriers to work for.

Best places to work. Yep.

That says a lot. Can you share some of the things that you enjoy most about the work that you do and about working at A.I.M. Mutual in general?

Yeah, I think probably my favorite part is that everybody has welcomed me, just like I came in with no insurance experience at all and I kind of just had to sit and, and watch people do what they do and, and kind of ask the right questions and figure it out on my own. And everybody has been extremely welcoming and I also really like that everybody has been there for many, many years. And you know, it does seem like a place that I could stay for a long time if that is where what my path takes me.

Excellent. Well, Jill, thank you so much for taking the time to share story with us today. And to the listeners, thanks for joining us. If you'd like to hear more about the Team Behind the Team, please tune in to some of the other podcasts in this series. And if you have any other questions about how A.I.M. Mutual can support you and your business, please don't hesitate to reach out with any of your specific needs. Thanks again, Jill.

Thank you for having me.