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Dallas Reynolds is prepared for catastrophe. When May turned into the rainy season, flooding houses in Atlanta that normally stay dry, he and his crew were ready. That hail storm in South Georgia? Handled. Hurricane threat in Biloxi, Miss.? Reynolds, as senior vice president at State Farm Insurance Cos., was there.
Reynolds is in charge of the Southern Zone, which includes Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina, for the giant insurance company. That includes 4,215 employees, 1,381 agents and about 5.2 million auto and homeowners policies. In Georgia alone, Reynolds oversees 585 agents and some 2,343 employees. Here there are 646,741 homeowner policies in force and just under 1.6 million automobile policies.
What's more, the Southern Zone is a "high cat" area. That's short for an area prone to having a high number of catastrophes.
Flooding is all in a day's work. "We've been handling that for years," Reynolds said. "The problem is, do you have enough?" In other words, are there enough agents, adjusters, administrators and...