S2:E31 Roofing Road Trips with Heidi - Insurance in the New Normal

By Colin Sheehan, RCS Reporter.  

Ashley and Seth Pietsch help contractors understand insurance. 

Vice president and president of Integrity Insurance and Bonding, Ashley and Seth Pietsch, joined friend Heidi J. Ellsworth on her podcast, Roofing Road Trips with Heidi, to talk through insurance. Specifically, they discussed what contractors need to know about insurance and how it looks in the midst of COVID-19.  

The couple resides in Damascus, Oregon and Ashley shared that she started in insurance back in 2004 through the family business. “My whole family has been in insurance, so [I] got licensed and was quickly promoted to the lead account manager. . . and then along came Seth in 2007 and he joined our team,” said Ashley. "When my father sold the agency to a larger firm in downtown Portland, both Seth and I went there [until] 2018, [when] we branched off and started our own independent agency.” 

Seth’s road to insurance started in an unexpected place: professional baseball. He played for five years for the New York Mets and a few other teams before deciding to join Ashley and her family in insurance. Seth admitted that he knew very little about insurance at the start, but was able to apply the same mental skills he learned from playing sports to insurance. “With professional athletics, it's just a grind. It's an everyday grind that you have to go through and it never stops,” he said. “Owning an insurance agency or anything that has to do with sales is an everyday grind. You can't let off the wheel, otherwise you're not producing revenue, you're not moving forward and you just get stagnant.” 

Speaking of stagnation, many businesses and contractors have felt the economic effects of the pandemic due to the lack of big purchases by homeowners and building owners for new roofs or projects. “Primarily I'm hearing a lot of people a little worried about their sales,” said Ashley. 

Ashley and Seth pinned the role of insurance as a helping hand, not a hindrance. However, it’s still the case that nearly all insurance companies have an exclusion for pandemics. This means contractors are having to meet their sales numbers in different ways. “Now contractors are trying to get creative and come up with new ways of generating revenue where maybe they do a job that they would have turned down a year or two ago,” said Seth.  

The three moved on to talking about what contractors can do to prepare for their next renewal, and how they can make changes to contracts to get the best pricing. Ashley explained that their company reaches out 90 to 120 days in advance to clients to talk through their insurance. “We don't ever want our clients to overpay for insurance, but we also don't want them to totally undershoot and then get stuck with a huge audit,” said Ashley.  

“We're a partner in this with you,” assured Seth. “We're going to be on the sideline overseeing everything that we possibly can to help you run your business and take the stress out of insurance. Your job is to go out, sell roofing jobs, drive revenue and keep your employees safe. The insurance part really isn't supposed to be a major concern.”  

Listen to Ashley and Seth’s full story on Roofing Road Trips with Heidi.  

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