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Vassar Joins Volkswagen Group of America

BY MATTHEW BRODSKY
Risk and Insurance Magazine
May 14, 2008
Reprinted with permission

Rick Vassar was watching Hootie & the Blowfish jam at this year's RIMS conference, and what captured his attention was not the band resurrecting its hits from the '90s.


It was how the floor in the San Diego Convention Center undulated with the carefree dancing, stomping and stumbling of the hundreds of revelers at the show.


"How much would they get sued," Vassar remembers wondering, should the floor collapse.


Chances are, considering their astute, wry nature, many other risk managers in the hopped-up Hootie audience that night had a similar thought.


But this observation is not why we're writing about Vassar. In April, he started work as risk manager for Volkswagen Group of America Inc. That's why.


"I couldn't have scripted it any better," he said about his new gig. He now works a mere 10 miles from his home in the Washington, D.C, area. It's a chance to do good things at a big company. And it gets him back to working in the automotive business, where Vassar got his start.


Turning 50 this June, Vassar first found himself in risk management back in 1986--in car rental claims at Thrifty. Three years later, he would become risk manager for the company.


It was fast success, an indication of things to come. Yet at the time, Vassar admitted, even though he knew he was good at risk management, he wasn't digging it.


Not until he found his passion for it, in education.


Then, he said, his profession became "more than just an opportunity, more than just a paycheck--a passion to try to impact the way people think about risk management."


His goal has been to try to humanize risk management to corporate, to communicate to the C-suite what risk managers should be tasked to do. He said that most people in business see risk management as a mystery that doesn't fit into their organizational charts.


"It's become a goal of mine to educate and enlighten companies that you can save money, lots of money," he said, through smart insurance buying, loss control, safety and everything else that a risk manager can provide.


Gone should be the day that bosses single out a victim in finance or legal and damn them to become the company "risk manager" ... without training ... a week before renewals.


Of course, Vassar also has set out to educate the other side of the equation: risk managers themselves.


"It's up to the risk manager to determine their place in the organization," he said, adding that it can be a difficult and tense transition. Risk managers are not the "rainmakers" in any organization, after all. They typically do not generate revenue. Risk managers can save, and that's their way of making money for their organizations, he said.


Of course, much of Vassar's sentiment is also shared by other risk managers. Besides "Only Want to Be With You" and "Hold My Hand," risk managers at RIMS also heard a very similar message from their leaders and session speakers: Risk managers should recognize, and act upon, their importance to their corporation.


But Vassar feels so strongly about the subject that he wrote the book on it--literally--a paperback titled Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy. Originally self-published in 2006, the title has been picked up by book printer.


Which brings us back to his new job.


The subject of his book happened to come up during the interview with VW, and he just happened to have a copy in his briefcase.


"The book lent credibility to my experience and education," Vassar said. "They were looking for someone who could come in and roll their sleeves up and get started."


Vassar might have to roll up his sleeves, loosen his tie and eat his Wheaties for his new job. He has decades of experience--he worked with Thrifty through 2002, then became head of risk management for 200-employee Valcourt Building Services--but Volkswagon of America is a higher gear. VW is the fourth largest automaker on the planet with more than 325,000 employees worldwide and 1,400 in the States. It has a global risk management department with input over the U.S. program, as well as a global insurance program with which certain U.S. coverages must be integrated. Meanwhile, the company is in the process of relocating its headquarters, placing a new plant somewhere stateside and gearing up for a big push into the U.S. market that will see it sell 1 million vehicles by 2018.


When asked about longer hours and more stress, Vassar grins. "It's going to be a challenge."


One that he's confident he can tackle and pin to the ground. He cited his experience working in auto fleet and in claims at Thrifty, which was only broadened with his work at Valcourt. At the building management company, he had to be ahead of the game. A lot of the company's projects involved men hanging off buildings--think window-washing--so when a claim drifted his way, it was bad. The goal was to prevent them, not deal with their aftermath.


With his experience and VW's expectations, his hiring is a "good marriage," Vassar said.


"They have made a commitment to risk management," he said. "They do view risk management from an enterprise standpoint."


Not to mention the automaker's dynamic and employee-oriented environment.


"I think they're a moving force in the United States. It's my goal to make a lifelong commitment to VW," he said. "I would love to finish my career with VW."


MATTHEW BRODSKY is senior editor/Web editor at Risk & Insurance®.




May 14, 2008

Copyright 2008© LRP Publications

The key to success for any tool is acceptance by the industry it targets. When I published Hide Here Comes the Insurance Guy, I knew it had to be accepted by the insurance industry if it was going to be taken seriously. The overwhelmingly positive response has both validated the book and humbled me as an author.

Below is a review from David Dankwa, associate editor of BestWeek, which is a publication of AM Best, the financial rating company. The article appears in the November 13, 2006 edition, along with a podcast interview available at bestdayaudio.com.

In New Book, Risk Manager Explains 'Commercial Insurance' in Plain Language

OLDWICK, N.J. November 13 (BestWire) — "If I had grown up in Wisconsin, I would know cheese; Georgia, peaches; Florida, AARP," writes risk manager and author Rick Vassar.

As fate would have it, Vassar was raised in a suburb of Hartford, Conn., the insurance capital of the world, where "folks gather at the local diner in the center of town and discuss such compelling subjects as the necessity of waiver of subrogation and additional insured status or the effects the new insurance commissioner would have on the local economy.

"This is where "the insurance curse began in my family," he writes.In his book, "Hide Here Comes the Insurance Guy," described as a practical guide to understanding business insurance and risk management, Vassar shares the wealth of information he's gathered over several decades in what he calls "plain speaking" insurance language.

There aren't any books available that address the needs of the business insurance consumer, and second, many business professionals refuse to enlighten themselves on the nuances of the insurance trade, he says. As such, "the insurance guy" Vassar describes in his book is a lonely person, something of a corporate outcast. He is the type of co-worker people steer away from in the hallways, afraid that he'd work insurance into a conversation.

Using humor, Vassar, also founder and president of Virginia-based Vassar Group, provides insight into the commercial insurance industry from a risk manager's perspective, offering practical advice on the insurance purchasing process. As he describes how terrorism insurance works, how to value one's property when considering property coverage, and workers' compensation strategies, he also picks on attorneys in a section called "The Skinny on Attorneys" and on adjusters in "Anatomy of an Insurance Adjuster."

Vassar discusses in depth the selection of an insurance broker and argues that bigger isn't always better. The difference between a big, national broker and a local or regional broker is like Advil and Ibuprofen, he writes. "You're only paying extra for the name."Vassar says if a company is in tune with what's going on in the marketplace, it can get the same pricing from a small local broker that would from a midsize, regional broker or Marsh & McLennan.

Also, from a service standpoint, Vassar says he prefers a midsize broker to handle his company's midsize account. "Currently, we have a good bit of premium but it wouldn't be a big number for a national broker, like Marsh. For a midsize broker, it's a significant portion of their overall book of business. So, we're more of a big fish in a small pond, whereas with a bigger national firm, we wouldn't get the same level of service," he says.

He frowns on the practice of corporate insureds assigning brokers to shop specific markets, often at the urging of the incumbent broker who insists that "the underwriter only wants to work with one broker per account." Vassar writes that assigning markets defeats the purpose of a free-market system.

He writes also about the role of lawyers in claims processing. "If you're an organization, especially in a self-insured or self-funding situation and you're going to make a decision that's going to have a financial impact on your company, then it needs to be the company that is making the decision as to the financial viability of either settling the case or taking it to trial. Many companies just hand it off to lawyers as soon as they get a lawsuit."

Vassar cites the McDonald's hot coffee case, "where there was an opportunity to settle the case as a medical claim, and they ignored it. Well, the issues in that case were that there was a legitimate injury, a legitimate burn, and eventually they did work to improve the cups and they lowered the temperature of the coffee that they were serving. They also later settled the claim for a much higher amount."

While the book targets buyers of insurance, Vassar says the insurance community also can learn a lot from it. "I believe the book will give valuable insight to the insurance community as to how risk managers and businesses process their information concerning risk and insurance. If a broker or insurer has a better understanding of the needs and concerns of the insured, they will be better able to market products that will meet these needs."

And what do businesses need? Vassar says it is: "The best price and the comfort of knowing that what they are buying will cover an event that creates a financial uncertainty which could prevent them from opening their doors tomorrow, or could close their doors forever."

(Listen to an audio conversation with author Rick Vassar at bestdayaudio.com)(By David Dankwa, associate editor, BestWeek: David.Dankwa@ambest.com) BN-NJ-11-13-2006 1032