McLaughlin Receives Matt Wells Producer Development Scholarship

Jeff McLaughlin, a producer with Dallas-based McLaughlin Brunson Insurance Agency, was recently named the recipient of the Matt Wells Producer Development Scholarship. The scholarship—established by Insurance Journal publisher Mark Wells in honor of his son, Matt—provides McLaughlin with the tuition to attend the three-week long National Alliance School for Producer Development Sept. 21 – Oct. 10 in Fort Worth, Texas.

Generous donations by Peter H. Foley, president and CEO of Las Vegas, Nev.-based National Builder Insurance Services, and Rudy Whitcomb, president of Whitcomb Surplus Lines in Redondo Beach, Calif., enabled the scholarship fund to award McLaughlin with an additional $1,250 for expenses incurred while attending the school.

“It’s a great pleasure to be able to offer this scholarship in Matt’s name,” said IJ‘s Mark Wells. “We had a large number of highly qualified applicants, but Jeff really stood out. The National Alliance Producers School is a strong program that Jeff will certainly be able to benefit from.”

The School for Producer Development is an intensive three-week series of insurance fundamentals courses and interactive sales training sessions. The Dallas/Fort Worth area school will be held at the American Airlines Training & Conference Center Hotel in Fort Worth. The tuition scholarship covers material and instruction, pre/post course work and follow-up, dinner each Wednesday night, and lunch each class day.

McLaughlin graduated from the University of North Texas in Denton in August 2001 with a marketing degree. Since March 2002 he’s worked for McLaughlin Brunson as a producer, assisting design professionals in risk management and the placement of their professional liability insurance. With offices in Oklahoma City in addition to Dallas, McLaughlin Brunson provides risk management services and insurance products to architects, engineers and environmental consultants.

“I want to learn a little bit more about insurance and incorporate that into the selling process, which I can’t really learn here [at McLaughlin Brunson] because we don’t have the training force to do that,” McLaughlin said. He added that ultimately he wants to take “what I learn from the school and use it in my niche and try to become the best producer for design professionals.”

McLaughlin said he was “ecstatic” when he found out he’d won the scholarship. “It was kind of a shot in the dark. I really didn’t know what my chances were when I applied. … It’s an opportunity that I couldn’t get if I didn’t have a scholarship.”

According to Jack Frick, vice president of The National Alliance for Insurance Education & Research, the Fort Worth school is the 12th in a series of such courses conducted by the National Alliance and has been full for some time. There are 60 students registered and a long waiting list. Those on the waiting list for the Texas school will have the opportunity to attend the 13th Producer School, which will be held in Anaheim, Calif., Jan. 18- Feb. 6, 2004.

The program is oriented toward licensed agents with at least six months agency experience. It has graduated 533 participants from 47 states, plus Puerto Rico and Canada. Frick said 49 percent of the students come from large cities with populations of 500,000 or more, 30 percent live in medium cities, 14 percent are from small towns, and seven percent are from rural areas.

The new producers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, according to Frick, and the average age of attendees is 30. Some 64 percent of the students hold Bachelor’s degrees, the most common major being Business Administration.

Detailed information about the School for Producer Development is available at www.scic.com, click on “The Producer School.”

For information on contributing to the Matt Wells Scholarship, which will be awarded annually, contact Mark Wells via e-mail at mwells@insurancejournal.com.

Topics Texas Training Development