Preferred Mutual donates $5,000 to Good Shepherd Communities in New Berlin. (Submitted photo)

NEW BERLIN — Preferred Mutual Insurance Company was founded in New Berlin in 1896 and has been an active member of the community ever since.

They are headquartered in New Berlin and provide property and casualty insurance coverage to more than 232,000 individuals and businesses through a network of more than 560 independent agents located throughout New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and NewHampshire.

Preferred Mutual’s leadership team includes experienced board members and executives who oversee and support the company’s mission, vision, and business.

A year of community support

Preferred Mutual President and CEO Benedikt Sander said supporting the community is the reason they exist. They support involvement that improves the quality of life where their employees live and also support organizations that provide disaster relief, safe housing, transportation, and opportunities for small business growth and development.

“Being engaged in the community is always important to Preferred and always important to the people that work at Preferred,” said Sander. “One thing we did last year was create what we call ‘Team Chenango,’ and we put more structure behind our community engagement.”

He said the company supported local projects involving Giving Thursday, Helping Hands, and the United Way to give back to the community. They were also active with youth contributions, scholarships and sponsorships. The company works with other organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Red Cross, Chenango Memorial Hospital, Chase Health, and more.

“It’s been amazing to be involved and every time more people want to volunteer,” he added.

Preferred employees volunteer for a number of programs including Adopt-A-Highway, Habitat for Humanity, Salvation Army flood relief.

“This has been a huge success, not only tapping into what I think is important to us and our people but also really making a difference and making this a much  more structured part of what we do,” said Sander.

He said community participation was popular with employees and a huge success.

“We are very excited to continue this tradition by getting more involved with new charities in the community because there is definitely a lot of need in Chenango County, and we want to do our part to support our neighbors,” said Sander.

Preferred Mutual announced in 2023 they received a Financial Strength Rating from AM Best Company and for the 21st consecutive year, they were reaffirmed with an “A” (Excellent) with a “Stable” outlook. Excellent ratings are given to insurance companies who not only have excellent financial stability but are able to meet the contractual needs of the policyholders.

AM Best acknowledged Preferred Mutual’s operating performance is supported by solid underwriting results and consistent investment earnings.

Facing Future Challenges

Sander said, “On the people side, there are some things we started last year which I’m really excited to continue into the future. It’s really around people who attend the meetings with local superintendents in Chenango County, so I’m excited to find more ways to recruit from the high schools and support the students at the high schools that choose to not attend college, to make sure we can help them navigate the path and hopefully vilify directly from being high school graduates and make this a more structured path; that would be wonderful.”

“We’re also working with Le Moyne College and want to give them a great career path and put more structure to make sure we have the right way to attract them and develop the students to have long term careers,” said Sanders, adding, “Hopefully with us.”

“Wherever you are, there are always plus and minuses, and so we always have to manage the strengths and manage the challenges,” he added.

He said, “Small companies like us, who work in one, two, or three states have a base network of CEO’s and have to uncompete so we can share protective screening without any anti-trust concerns.”

He said he talked to some CEO’s who are based in big cities with many universities and they complain about the intense competition of talent.

“You might think how amazing it is to be in big city with a lot of Universities and a lot of talent coming through, but wherever you’re based there are plus and minus’s, so we like where we are,” Sanders added.

Sander said the company has been in rural areas and working around the challenges. “There are absolutely great people everywhere,” he said of the local area.

“That’s one reason we decided to partner with local superintendents with places like Le Moyne and Utica College, as they have a good risk management program,” said Sander. “We want to make sure we find the people that want to work for a company like ours -where we grow our managers, leaders, over time.”

“We have to work a little harder in finding talent and building our leaders, we can’t assume we can just find them and that’s ok,” he said. “We’ve been doing this for a long time as well.”

He said they haven’t really seen a lot of challenges in retention in keeping strong people but once again, they have to do the right thing.

“Talent attraction can be a challenge,” said Sander. “it’s not so much a challenge for the typical entry level positions but positions such as cyber security and technology, where we need a specialist, that’s where we need to reach out further to find that talent.”

He said their search for such a specialist led them to Albany where they hired their cyber technology manager to improve safety with customers and data.

“You can’t always hire locally, but when you can it makes things a lot easier,” he added.

Sander said they have 300 over all employees and about half of them in Central New York with most in Chenango and Otsego County. He said the New Berlin property has about a handful at this time with underwriters and key persons based locally with more in Norwich than New Berlin.

Investing in their

employees

Sander said their training programs go across all levels in the company.

He said last year they hired a gentleman from Le Moyne into a risk management underwriting role and he’s still receiving a lot of general industry training.

“Insurance is a wonderful industry to join because there’s a lot of industry wide education,” he added. “We use a lot of industry training, we’re teaching classes, and leaders are teaching classes to our more junior employees so they can earn a general insurance designation to commercial underwriting.”

He said along the way, the employees become part of the system and culture.

“I worked with much larger companies before I came to Preferred and the ability to tailor to the needs of the individual and tailor to the needs of the community, it’s just so much easier when you can do the thinking with five people as opposed to 500 so you can tailor and make it specific,” he explained.

Heading into the future with technology

Sander said, “There are several things that will always be important to Preferred Mutual and it’s the focus on customers, the focus on our agents- to whom our customers find us because we’re not such a brand name, and more broadly, our focus on our people, and focus on technology.”

He said a founding principal was customer focus and technology help support that priority.

“Technology is a huge focus for us as insurance is heavily dependent on technology,” he added. From the holder policy, where you pay your bill, when you adjust your claim, all of those things depend on technology.”

“We made the decision over the last few months to replace our old technology and go with the much more current state of technology with more in the cloud, more integrated, and more third party data,” he said, “Which also allows us to tap into some other more cloud based, AI based technology, which is our big focus for the next three years.”

He said, “Like many countries, we have used our technology for 10, 20, maybe even 30 years and while the technology serves just fine, we know how much more powerful technology has become.”

“We’re real excited to lay the foundation for the next bit of growth and service our customers over the next 30 years,” said Sander. “I’m very excited for the company and for all of us because this will build a new future.”

“We’re all about serving our customers, focusing on our people, our talent, and our pricing, technology and products then obviously the financial results,” Sander said.

He said the company strongly believes in always doing the right things.

“If you treat the people well and invest in them, give them a career path; then you’ll get great performance for the company and for everyone on the team,” said Sanders.

For more information go to www.preferredmutual.com