Five Questions With: Robert A DiMuccio

Robert A. DiMuccio is chairman, president and CEO of Amica Mutual Insurance Co. He joined Amica’s accounting department in 1991 as a vice president and has held positions of treasurer and chief financial officer. Prior to joining Lincoln-based Amica, DeMuccio worked for 12 years with KPMG Peat Marwick.
DiMuccio is a CPA and holds the designation of Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter. He is president of the board of the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council and on the boards of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, Property & Liability Resource Bureau, Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, The Washington Trust Company and Crossroads Rhode Island.
DiMuccio has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Providence College.

PBN: Amica was named to J.D. Power’s list of 2014 Customer Champions in March, one of only 50 companies in the U.S. to earn this recognition. Customer Champions were selected from more than 600 brands across nine industries based on what J.D. Power calls the Power 5 P’s: people, presentation, price, process and product. What do you think is the main element, or perhaps the guiding mission, that earned Amica this recognition?
DIMUCCIO:
This is the third time we’ve been included on the Customer Champions list. We’ve been recognized by J.D. Power for customer satisfaction in their auto and home insurance studies more than two dozen times for over a decade. We have almost 3,300 people in offices across the country and they all understand that our customers are our top priority. We’re a mutual insurance company – we exist for our policyholders. We’re also a direct writer, so when you call us, you’ll speak directly to someone on our team who can help you. It’s all about friendly, personal service. People ask all the time, “What’s the silver bullet?” It is really our employees. We hire people who are empathetic, service-oriented and who relate well to others. We put a lot of time into training to instill the highest levels of customer service and empower our employees to do the right thing for a customer.

PBN: J.D. Power also ranked Amica highest in overall customer satisfaction with regard to homeowners’ insurance claims, a second award from J.D. Power within the same week in March. Obviously, customer satisfaction shows up in the bottom line, but corporate costs have to be prioritized. How does Amica prioritize the costs that create this extremely high level of customer satisfaction, when the economy, especially in Rhode Island, continues to be sluggish?
DIMUCCIO:
We’re a national insurance company, so even though the economy continues to be sluggish in Rhode Island, it’s not so in other parts of the country, where we earn the majority of our revenues. How do we prioritize costs? We focus on customer needs. We have one of the largest data-processing departments in the state, with more than 300 full-time IT employees, because almost all of our initiatives have an IT component. We’re working on major upgrades to our computer-based core systems because our customers want quick, easy and mobile ways to file claims, update insurance policies and pay bills. Keeping up with technology is a challenge for the whole financial services sector today – it’s a huge part of what we do. Right now, we’re looking to hire additional IT employees.

PBN: Amica’s excellence in customer service is equal to the company’s excellence in profitability – the company more than doubled its 2012 profit of $71 million with a net income of $149.5 million in 2013. What were Amica’s main focuses in 2013 that led to these stellar financial results?
DIMUCCIO:
Like other insurance companies based in the northeast, Amica took a huge hit in 2012 due to Superstorm Sandy. That was one of our costliest storms ever and Amica incurred more than $66 million in losses. We were there for our customers with more than 13,000 claims related to this monster storm. As a result, Sandy greatly impacted our bottom line in 2012. In 2013 we had many smaller, weather-related claims events all over the country, but at year-end, we saw positive results across the board. These highs and lows may look volatile when compared year-to-year, but when year-end results are measured over several decades, they balance each other out.

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PBN: You’ve stated that Amica had a 6.2 percent growth in life insurance in 2013 over the previous year. What do you consider factors in stimulating that growth, especially with the slow recovery of the economy and a lot of families having to trim their household budgets?
DIMUCCIO:
Amica Life made a conscious and strategic decision in 2012 to grow its business. Prior to this, we only offered life and annuity products to our Amica Mutual auto and homeowner insurance customers. However, with life insurance sales at a 50-year low in the U.S., we knew there was a strong untapped market for life insurance, so Amica Life entered the national consumer market in 2012. By lowering rates to become more competitive and increasing marketing efforts, Amica Life saw strong results in 2012 and continued to build on this success in 2013. Amica Life is introducing new programs for specialty life markets, such as people aged 50 and older, and with the economy picking up a bit, we hope to see more young families purchasing life insurance to safeguard their future.

PBN: There’s been a longtime culture of complaining about the cost and difficulty of doing business in Rhode Island, although many business leaders admit there have been some recent improvements. Amica has been in Rhode Island since 1907, so it has been through many up-and-down economic cycles. Can you offer some insight on strategies for running a successful business in the Ocean State?
DIMUCCIO:
I’m an optimist by nature and I believe we should roll up our sleeves, get to work and change things for the better. Over the past couple of years, we’ve pitched in to help Rhode Island’s government, by having our training and development department assisting in designing and carrying out customer service training programs for the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of Environmental Management. One thing we must do is create a stable and competitive tax environment for both individuals and employers in Rhode Island. The regulatory environment needs to be fair, approval processes have to be relatively quick, and rules need to be transparent and equally enforced. We’ve seen reform in the personal tax system, which has improved the state’s national rankings in this area. Getting Rhode Island’s economy moving forward will require some difficult choices and take time -however, we at Amica believe it can be done.

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