The Professional Podcast Network
11346 Henry Clay Stokes Jr-12 02 24-Former Senior Quality Insurance Analyst-Phill
>> Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network where brilliance meets business, elevate your brand, and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation. >> Hey there everyone, good afternoon and welcome back to the show. This is your host Phil, and our next guest with us here today is Henry Clay Stokes Jr., who's based out of Hell's Kitchen, New York, and he was the former Senior Quality Insurance Analyst at the Hartford. How are you doing today Henry? >> I'm good. >> Oh thank you. >> All right, I'm glad to hear it. So Henry, can you tell us a little bit more here about yourself and what your area of expertise is? >> Well, yes, I got into the insurance business, sort of, I wouldn't say it was by accident, but I was already in the financial, the accounting and the financial, that was my 4K, part of the financial industry. Because I used to work for Jay, if you more than that at school, Jay, if you more than Chase, put a little bit, and then I left there, and then started off as a temp that, you know, wasn't even traded on the stock market back in 1987. And that company was a small, modern pop insurance company down on Wall Street. And I stayed there for my tenure, then today went public, they went public, and then the company started to advance, and they started to grow. So, what we used to say, I was part of that company since 1987, and I went through every single area of that company, beginning with training accounting, playing, reinsurance, being an underwriter, being an underwriter, to become an analyst. Because the company grew, we needed an audit department, which we never had, because remember, it was a small, modern pop business, and we were just, no, we were growing, little babies on the streets of insurance companies. So, you see a lot of the insurance companies, they have audit, and they have analytical departments, where you could, you know, do your own audits, make sure all the eyes getting got it, and the keys are getting crossed. So, my boss at the time, he was on the question to get that department started, because he knew down the road, we were going to get acquired by another company, so we wanted to have all the necessary, the necessary, you know, departments, the people in place, so when the merger goes through, you know, they could just, and everything is good, you know, it's good for the, it's attractive for the, for the merger. So, I was in that position as navigators, for like about, I'm going to say, three, three to four years. When I saw it, when that position started off as navigators, I was the first one to go in that department, obviously, because I was the first one, and I had to basically shock the business, and put the procedures down, and interview with various people of different divisions, and find out what's in these, what do you have required them as well, or business, in order for me to even spot shackles to be able to go over and do the work. That entails going with the procedures, writing down, putting them on, and on the books, making sure everyone adhered to them, and suggesting audits, I'm going to say, every six months, you know, and do quality control, or all different kinds of quality control, whatever the manager thought for me that they needed to look at, that's what they would come to me for, and they would ask for a specific audit, could have been like, how many sure if we write in California, or how many that are stationed in the Pacific Ocean, things of that nature, so it was a wide, wide variety of things that I have to look at, or to cite, when I'm using my quality control checks, and sometimes I just didn't even know what it was. You hit this requirement, or this inquiry, and I would have to go ahead and do it, so with that being said, it's a lot of, you needed to know the business inside and out, and let me tell you, we started up at the marine company, then we quickly grew to like a commercial, big commercial business, you know, the D&O, you did professional liability, you did commercial primary excess energy risk, you did property risk from the marine book, so we were in the market, we were doing a lot of things, you know, to be such as one of the new players on the block, I should say, I would have to go, I used to go to London, that summer, just the lowest of London, and did you have you ever heard of the lowest of London? No, I haven't really, no. No, it's supposed to be like there, like our stock market here, for the security, stocks and bonds, things of that nature, well, their lowest is like, sort of speak like that, but it's for insurance companies, and it is situated in a building that is deep in its way, the way the building was kind of designed, I don't know, it's kind of crazy, but it's designed inside out, so instead of the building being defined like a regular building, they decided to mold it and turn it inside out, which made it very unique, and if you ever go to London, you'll know going to see it, I mean, they trade, they ensure everything you can think of, they ensure baseball player, pictures, pictures, they're all, they're singers, it ensures their voice, that's one of the things, so everything gets ensured over there in London, I used to go over there, and I used to, you know, my company had a syndicated box, and I used to sit on the box, and I used to, you know, what and how the business was conducted over there, I compared to how we did business over here in the United States, over there it's just that's the birthplace of marine insurance, that's where everything went down, and usually London was, they participated on a lot of risk here in America, so it was not to have, we had a small line, but a small part of the business, London had the majority, so all, with all that being said, when I started the company, it was never, you know, I wanted to be a CPA, that was my goal to be a certified public accountant, but that never happened because the companies that I went to, what I was, that I was interning at, really at the time, because I was, you know, a young man, and my mind was not quite made up, what I really wanted to do, I know I wanted to do something like that, but then when I got closer to that, the reality of it all, I sort of sort of shifted, you know, when you're in school, you have to pay, how your mind is set, but then, you know, you start looking around, now you're going to go to school, and now you're starting to figure out what you want to do, so I think to work for J.P. Morgan Chase for about three years, I realized after being at three years, it wasn't for me, I couldn't picture myself being there for more than five years, and it was nothing bad about the company, the company's a fantastic company to work for, but it was just that it wasn't right for me, culture was not, not my culture, that then, things might have changed since then, you know, it's a lot different now, but back then at the time, it wasn't for me, at the time, that particular time was not for me, so I left, and I was living at home at that time, so it really didn't matter if I stayed on the job or not, I found this company navigators, they weren't always called navigators, they were called New York Marine Managers, and it was this book, I should have a small mom and pop company, and at the time, there was temp agencies around, they literally walk into a temp agency, I hope I'm not giving away my age too much, but I used to walk in New York, you could actually go to a temp agency, and you could actually give your resume to whoever was working in there, and they would literally find your job right away, so that's what happened to me, I ended up, you know, when I came back from after vacationing, after taking place, I would take a job, on the street, there was no internet, or, you know, getting, you know, putting your resumes on the internet, and there was a lot of that around, so you had to physically take your resume around to these temporary, you know, like employment offices or, you know, temporary office, temporary agency offices, and you have to do that, you have to, you would have to walk out on the street on the pavement in the summer, in the winter time, to find a job, so I was lucky, because when the first go round, I ended up being sent out to New York Marine Managers, where I started off as a summer intern, I stayed there for like, I think I started like in July of '87, in September, my boss, the woman I was working for at the time, she came over to me, and she goes, "How much is my position here at the position? I think it will take a long time, I'm permanent!" That was right, because I was really looking for a job, you know, but at the time, they only had to check all the available, so I got in there, and I was in there from the summer, and then by the fall, I was a full-time employee at New York Marine Managers, where it all began, you know, and I worked there, I worked in the main shore department, and then from there, I went into the accounting department, and I was going to now start doing receivables, making sure the money was allocated correctly, so I worked in the premium service department. And then, we just, things started to kind of change in the company, we had to break up, not really break up to go out of business, but break up, because we were starting to figure things out, the department, you know, depending on which book of business you did the accounting for, they were doing an experiment, they were like taking the accountant who worked on their particular business, I happened to work on the, that's the, when I used to be the premium, that's my account for all based on the accounting of the ship, because other people in the department who worked on maybe the premium for cargo ships. Yeah, so that's what I think, so when an underwriter, he was very, very brilliant, and he came up with the idea, well, why don't we script the accounting department up, and why don't you take an accountant and let them work for their particular department, doing only their business, was efficient and have all the hands in the pot and stuff like that. And they did, so they broke up the premium accounting department, going to where they did all the hull business, it was over there with the manager, the senior vice president, they had the underwriters, they had admins over there, and then I came in there, and I was here with talent, so each department was, was leading the meeting, they had their own, their own ship going, all the money and everything came together. So with that being said, you know, that I started to move up, move up in the ranks, because I was a very dedicated worker, I always believed in stability in a job. Yeah, stability, it's just a lot about you, because I know a lot of people back then, and they still do it today, and they'll stay on the job couple of months, and they're hoping they go to another one to get more money, and then they'll hop and go to another one to get even more money, but she, longevity will say a lot about you as a person, you know, and it gives you that, to become more marketable, people will see the net worth in you, and they'll say, okay, she's going to come in, or she's going to come in, I'm going to invest all this money, and they're just going to up and leave. Yeah, and you know, and I'm a firm believer that, that's why you have these companies now, they don't pay a lot. Yeah, and I think the reason why they don't pay a lot is because, oh, they're going to stay couple of months to leave anyway, just carry someone to take their thought, they salary, so the salary is not going to move that much, it's always going to be, it's going to remain that way, and the companies have gotten so relaxed about that whole policy that they are not willing to give you the salary that you deserve. Very true, well, right, and I think that's, we're doing it to ourselves, of course, and I just think we should, we should just kind of like look at that as some sort of philosophy of going forward, and think, just think about what we're doing, and I know that today's generation is a lot different than when I was growing up, you know, it's a lot, it's a lot different when it comes to career, what careers and things like that, and I know it's very competitive out there, and the competitiveness is, it's like, it's really, it's really, it's really heavy because people are coming out of school much easier now, sooner now, and people are, everyone is getting your basketball career, the basketball degree today is like a diploma. Well, Henry, unfortunately, we're out of time, but I want to thank you again so much for joining us here today. It's all good, well, Henry, thank you so much, we'll have a great day, okay? Okay, thank you very much, have a good one, bye-bye. Take care, bye. The rest of our listeners, stay right there, we'll be right back after the short break. Welcome to the Professional Podcast Network, where brilliance meets business, elevate your brand, and supercharge your revenue with inspiring insights and innovation.