Today we’d like to introduce you to Emily Gerber Poe. She and her team share their story with us below:
Gerber Insurance & Financial Services is proud to be a third-generation, family-owned insurance, and financial services agency. The agency was founded in 1943 by Ed Gerber, the grandfather of current owner Emily Gerber Poe.
He started out as a Farm Bureau agent before going on to become one of the first Nationwide agents. Emily’s father, Joel Gerber purchased the agency in 1974 after working for his father for a number of years. Following in her father’s footsteps, Emily joined the team in 2006 before purchasing the agency in 2013.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Like anything in life, the road to success has had its ups and downs, but overall it has been extremely rewarding – and the mountaintops have far outweighed the valleys. We’ve worked through navigating a hard market, going independent, and partnering with other agencies. But it’s not so much a struggle as it is working through change. Although the word struggle has a negative connotation, it’s a challenge, it’s an opportunity to overcome. The 2020 pandemic was certainly a struggle for every business and took place at the very same time that we went from being an exclusive Nationwide agency to an independent agency.
While no one could foresee the pandemic or the effects it would have, Emily had already started paving the road in 2018 for the agency to become independent, which helped tremendously with the transition. The overarching principle of the challenges we are consistently trying to overcome is ensuring that as we grow larger, we are growing smaller at the same time. When we partner with another agency, we’re in another city, we’re growing our book of business, we’re widening our reach. We need to make sure that while we’re growing wider, we’re not growing so wide that we lose some of our depth and our service suffers. We pride ourselves on providing excellent customer service and we want that to always be one of our top priorities.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Gerber Insurance & Financial Services?
We are a three-generation agency that cares about protecting what matters most to you. Everyone’s got a fancy tagline, right? But we actually mean it. For three generations we have been focused on providing the very best care, in the most honest way possible. People trust us, people trust the Gerber name. Our name means something – it means that we’ll be there. We’ll be there on the best day of your life and we’ll be there on the worst day of your life. And on those worst days, we’ll be right alongside you, fighting like crazy on your behalf to make sure that on your worst day, you experience the best possible outcome.
Family will always be what is most important to us. And not just blood family – we consider our team members family, and we consider our clients family. Our highest priority from the top down, is that we ALWAYS do what’s best for the client. And that’s not something a person will find or experience when shopping for insurance online. Yes, you can purchase insurance online, but what you’re not going to get online is the ability to call someone on our team and have a real conversation with a real person, who lives where you do, will be honest with you, and understands your needs; an expert who will do what’s best for you by guiding you and educating you on what YOU specifically need. We take pride in knowing our clients on a personal level. We don’t take a cookie-cutter approach. We protect what matters most to you based on YOUR specific needs. Whether you’re a business, a farm, or a person with a home, auto, and rental property, we look at you and your needs holistically and take care of you completely. We take pride in being educators, not just asking “What do you want?” We help you understand the process and the product so that you can have peace of mind that your needs have been analyzed thoroughly and are protected properly.
We are insurance professionals and experts in our field, and a big part of our job is educating our clients. We understand that our clients aren’t experts in insurance, and they aren’t expected to be. If finding great insurance was as simple as finding the cheapest rates online, you wouldn’t need experts. Our job is not to find the cheapest rates – it is to make sure you have competitive rates. That’s part of why being independent is so wonderful – because we can do just that. We can find competitive rates, with the exact coverage you need to help protect what matters most TO YOU.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.gerberinsuranceagency.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/
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Image Credits
K. Fischer Portraits and Bobbie Penwell
