Personal Lines Profile

North Florida Agency Network

Tallahassee, Fla.

Owner(s)/principal(s): Rod Vaughn, Virginia Vaughn, Vanessa Jung

2006 personal lines premium: $29.6 million

No. of personal lines insurers: 31

North Florida Agency Network is a network of agencies with administrative offices in Tallahassee. NFAN, founded in 1996, has 24 agency office locations in 32 counties making up the Northern tier of Florida counties.

Rod Vaughn, president, says that NFAN has more than doubled its personal lines volume over the last five years and expects a minimum 30 percent growth each year over the next five years. “We constantly look for the best solutions for our personal lines clients’ needs at the most competitive rates available,” he adds.

What Vaughn says he likes best about the personal lines business: “Advances in automated solutions for workflows and the increased commitment our carriers and management system vendors are making to exciting breakthroughs like the current focus on increasing the use of real-time.” What he likes least “is the fact that our industry is probably the most overregulated of all.”

Vaughn says, the biggest homeowners challenge “is the fact that there is great demand but little supply. Our auto challenge is the fact that we have ample supply but little demand.”

While Vaughn says NFAN’s producers quote personal umbrellas with every auto quote where underlying liability limits are adequate to support the umbrella, finding umbrella carriers that will write over many of the unrated homeowner carriers in Florida presents a challenge.

Three keys to NFAN’s success in personal lines, he says, include: “Our commitment to personal lines as a major profit center; our commitment to full utilization of automated systems; and our belief in the independent agency distribution system.”

Topics Florida Personal Lines