The Role of Great American’s Underwriting Team Carolyn Cunningham, Divisional Assistant Vice President – Underwriting

At Great American Insurance Group, our Crop Operations and Underwriting team stands as a pillar of excellence, powered by seasoned professionals with unparalleled industry expertise. With a presence in six regional offices and a dedicated Home Office team, we ensure that our agents and insureds receive the localized support and personalized service they deserve. Our underwriters go beyond policy assessments— they build lasting relationships, offer outstanding customer service, and help safeguard the future of American agriculture. 
The majority of our underwriters have over 14 years of industry experience, with many having more than a decade of tenure at Great American.

Our Home Office Underwriting team is a group of dedicated leaders with more than 125 years of combined crop insurance experience. We enjoy assisting our offices with agent and system training, developing technologies to improve business with our agent/producer customers, and supporting our field staff. 

Supporting Agriculture: Our team strives daily to assist the American farmer and rancher with the risk management of their operations. We take pride in serving the producer and doing our part to support agriculture throughout the country and in our communities. Within our Home Office team, Business Owners Mike Peterson and Melissa Wesenick work closely with our IT team to develop and enhance tools within GreatAg® to assist both producers and agents. They continue to work with our precision technology, Grower Mobile apps, and develop utilities such as the planting tool within GreatAg to streamline acreage and production reporting. They also help design applications that allow producers to receive notifications, view bills, and many other tools to assist both producers and agents. Chad Edwards works extensively with others to provide CE credit to agents through webinars and classes, evaluates procedures, and supports our field offices. He is our dedicated livestock expert who assists not only our regional office livestock underwriters but also with many of our agents. 

Evolution of Crop Insurance: From the time I started in crop insurance as an underwriter with Great American, the policies and our daily work have changed considerably. Early on, we offered just yield-based and hail products, working with physical paper files, shelf forms, and newsletters. We completed the policy entry ourselves, with customer service involving phone calls and in-person meetings. Advances in technology drastically changed our daily work, evolving communications with our agency force to include email and eventually mobile phone and web-based notifications and data entry. On the insurance offering side, we evolved into revenue and area plans, more private products, livestock insurance, and 508h product offerings. We can now train our agencies remotely through webinars, increasing communication and sharing information regarding RMA changes faster and more effectively. We still very much enjoy meeting our agents and producers face to face. GrAIN Newsletter 13

Future Outlook: As agriculture continues to evolve and farm operations change, I believe we will see a continued swing towards managing risk with regard to input costs, revenue, and livestock insurance. Market dynamics, changes in commodity prices, and global trade policies will affect producers' decisions and insurance needs. Technology evolutions and data analytics will continue to change the landscape. Companies will need to stay diligent with technology, finding talent, and training our teams to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers and changes that come our way. Moving Forward: As the landscape of agriculture and crop insurance continues to evolve, Great American Crop remains committed to innovation, expertise, and service. In my new role, I look forward to meeting many of our agency customers. I also plan to work with our regional offices to develop and maintain talent. It is important to grow our bench strength and familiarity across varying types of crops and policies. Finally, I will seek ways to enhance and improve our daily activities to continue delivering the customer experience our agents expect. 

Something that I believe is overlooked with our Underwriting team is the many hats they wear. Not only are they reviewing policies and answering questions, but many of our team members spend time each week providing input regarding form changes, system recommendations, and testing new technologies. They also spend considerable time assisting in training agents on the system and learning new products and procedures. The underwriters take great pride in their relationships with their agencies. I am very proud of their effort and desire to do so.