Tom Wienckoski has been in Brevard for almost 40 years. Born and raised in New Jersey, he came to attend FIT for a degree in electrical engineering and never left. He started his first company, MC Assembly, in 1986, and when he sold it in 2008, he diversified. Wienckoski says, “We (with wife Charlotte) have since done a lot of different things; from a rose company, an insurance company, and a staffing company. Your typical entrepreneurial-type things.” His passion, though, is NuVantage Insurance, which he started in 2009.
GETTING DOWN TO BUSINESS
NuVantage Insurance initially featured personal lines of insurance, including home, auto, boat, jewelry, wine, art and other valuable personal assets, but has recently expanded its commercial offerings. “We provide everything for our business clients: general liability, product liability, facilities, buildings, equipment and workers compensation,” Wienckoski says. “We service a really wide variety of industries. From doctors’ offices, dentists’ offices, retail, manufacturing companies and restaurants. You start a company specializing in one thing and, as the company grows, opportunities present themselves.”
Wienckoski will tell you he has always started small. “You wear multiple hats and then as you grow, you delegate things out and you bring people in, or you promote people to fill specific positions. We started small here, but now we’re one of the fastest growing insurance agencies in Brevard.” He is also a proponent of marketing, spending about 10 percent of NuVantage’s annual revenue on “everything from print, radio, television and a lot of social media.”
NuVantage’s latest opportunity for expansion is in life insurance. Wienckoski says, “We’re taking that on over the next two to three months. We’ll be marketing, allocating resources, and we’ll also probably hire somebody to run that division. We insure about 6,000 people in Brevard County, so we’ve built a client database. When we grow into a new market like life insurance, we have those 6,000 we can immediately reach out to; they’re current clients we might carry auto insurance for, or we might carry their business insurance — whatever the case might be — and, quite honestly, it’s often more cost effective for them to bundle coverages with us.” NuVantage has access to a tremendous array of carriers, both on the commercial side and on the personal line side, which is one of the most important aspects of an agency. “Service is always first, and price is kind of a no-brainer, but you must also have access to the right carriers,” NuVantage’s president says. “This industry is kind of apples-to-apples when it comes to coverages and pricing, so often the only differentiator is service, though we typically have more carriers, and for every little niche a client may require.”
GOOD ADVICE FOR CONSUMERS
Insurance, Wienckoski explains, is very dynamic, with rates fluctuating regularly. He advises everyone to shop their insurance every single year. That doesn’t mean to go find a new agency, but to identify carriers that might have changed and to identify others that might better suit your current needs. “That’s what our agency does, but not all do. We have a whole team of people that does nothing but service and renewals, and we look exactly for those opportunities for our clients. It is the agency’s job to get as much information as they can to identify their clients’ risks, and then present the best way to cover them.”
Wienckoski’s advice is to take the time to sit down with your agent and let them know exactly what your needs are, and what’s changed in your life. “If you’ve added an addition to your house, bought a car, sold something of value, it doesn’t take long. It seems like it’s taking a lot of time, but by dedicating 15 to 20 minutes, your agent can then do a great job for you. That’s what we do.”
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