Authenticity
Being original, genuine, trustworthy, reliable.
Distinction Risk Solutions
Core Values: Authenticity, Candor, Collaboration, Competence, Discovery
Distinction Risk Solutions is a niche focused commercial and personal lines P&C insurance agency and business consultancy built on a commitment to serve our clients; centered around collaboration and discovery. We listen, engage and recognize your uniqueness, allowing us to understand and develop the best outcomes for your business and your customer. Experience, derived from over 15 years of leadership of underwriting, risk and service teams for a successful insurance carrier, provide real world expertise in business acumen, continuous process improvement and enterprise risk management.
Distinction Risk Solutions is focused on enabling your success by partnering with you to optimize your risk and operational profile, enabling you to invest your time growing your business and enjoying life.
Team and Partnership Approach
Chad Bertucci, President & Founder
Chad grew up in small town Nebraska with most of that time being spent as a resident of and student in the Panhandle of Western Nebraska; during which he had the opportunity to broaden his experiences by mowing yards, waiting tables, changing oil, working in farm fields and on construction of a waste tech facility, along with many other jobs while relishing the feeling of community typical of small towns. Fortunate to have had a strong support system of teachers, family and friends that lived and instilled the value of hard work, gaining new experiences, doing good acts, setting high expectations and engaging in continual learning, Chad continues to foster these beliefs with others today.
Following graduation from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Chad and his wife Jennifer spent ~6 years in the Denver, Colorado area where Chad began his insurance career at SAFECO as an underwriter. 17 of his 20 subsequent career years have been spent in the P&C insurance/reinsurance industry as an internal business process and risk consultant (including five years with two separate divisions of GE) as well as a senior leader directly responsible for and partnering with teams in leading the areas of insurance operations and service delivery, finance/strategy, risk (underwriting, analytics, claims), regulatory compliance, product development and pricing. Along the way Chad has had responsibility for budgets ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of dollars with a strong record of success and an equally strong understanding of line operations, executive decision making and the importance of good communication channels; all skills he looks forward to leveraging in delivering value to future partnerships and clients of Distinction Risk Solutions.
Embracing the benefit of relevant continual learning, Chad has earned his:
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MBA
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CPCU, Associate designations: in Risk Management (ARM), Reinsurance (ARe), Commercial Underwriting (AU), Underwriting Management (AU-M) and Insurance Data Analytics (AIDA) from The Institutes
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P&C insurance agent and consultant licenses
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Six Sigma Black Belt and Change Acceleration Process (CAP) certifications from General Electric.
Importantly, Chad has a passion for family and community and founded Distinction Risk Solutions in order to spend more time involved with both and to work with community focused organizations to improve their organizations through more effective risk management, risk transfer and process improvement approaches.
TJ Brummels, Partner
TJ was born and raised in Northeast Nebraska. Growing up in small town he played numerous sports while enjoying time in the outdoors. Being from a small town he had many different working opportunities, from walking beans to roofing, which helped instill a solid work ethic. He then attended the University of Nebraska-Omaha, where he competed on the UNO Wrestling team and received his Bachelor of Science in Education degree.
Upon graduation, he spent time in the education field while coaching wrestling. Looking for a new challenge, he entered into the business world having a variety of leadership roles in banking and logistics prior to entering the insurance industry. He has spent 10 years learning the insurance world through a large insurance carrier where he led process improvement projects, supported operational efficiencies, grew a profitable workers’ compensation book of business, and held a leadership position over an underwriting team. TJ focuses on providing exceptional service while also improving the customer experience.
In addition to his bachelor's degree TJ is a licensed P&C insurance agent and holds the AINS certification from The Institutes.
Above all, TJ has a drive for building relationships and keeping close connection with people he meets, his family and friends.
Approach to Partnership - The Distinction Way
The Distinction Way begins with our core values and extends, in execution, to best practices established within the risk management profession for the identification, addressment and ongoing monitoring of your key business risks. Our core values, selected practices and belief in responsiveness apply not only to our approach to partnering with and providing services to you, but also in the evaluation and selection of our partners who will be providing insurance and related services to you.
Importantly, we want you, the potential client, to know Distinction Risk is not a transactional company and does not partner with everyone or every potential client. We expect collaboration and think you should as well. As such, our engagement process begins with a Partnership Alignment Review (PAR) entailing a conversation centered around building an awareness of each other's approach to business and, in particular, the servicing of customers. Essentially, we want to ensure our values and approaches are "on par" or significantly in alignment. This is true whether we are discussing insurance solutions or non-insurance consulting services.
We will be open and candid. We believe the opportunity to provide valuable services to you as an independent agency and consultancy should come at industry relevant levels of compensation. We don't believe in a model where volume should be a primary driver, but rather we believe in developing solutions where you - the client, the carrier - our partner, and Distinction Risk Solutions all benefit when the niches we serve and the clients in those niches experience reduced losses. Our goal in providing our service is to improve the health and sustainability of your business.
The Distinction Way is about collaboration and competence... ultimately building trust. Without responsiveness to needs, it's difficult to establish trust. Lack of responsiveness shows a lack of respect, personal responsibility and accountability. Despite a growing perception of insurance being a commodity, all carriers, access points to those carriers and service providers are not equal when it comes to understanding your business, when it comes to financial strength and importantly when it comes to providing high quality responsive service - whether that service relates to pre-loss prevention activities, post-loss severity mitigation, ongoing claim handling, updating your coverages or other. We aim to align with providers that best understand your industry.
The Distinction Way also recognizes the fact that risks, like your business, are dynamic and ever changing. We value ongoing exploration, reviews with our clients and discovering new ways to improve your risk profile. Our role is to be a trusted risk advisor to you, so we work each day to learn and make sure we are well positioned to do just that.
