Personal lines (auto, home, boat, personal items) policyholders can register to view and print policy documents, including auto ID cards. Directly billed policyholders can also view and print billing statements.
Directly billed policyholders can make a one-time premium payment online from your bank account or credit card using this feature.
Personal lines (auto, home, boat, personal items) policyholders can register to view and print policy documents, including auto ID cards. Directly billed policyholders can also view and print billing statements.
Directly billed policyholders can make a one-time premium payment online from your bank account or credit card using this feature.
We are always looking for new ways to better serve our clients. It’s not about innovation for innovation’s sake: Any novel product or approach must fit within our legacy of putting people and relationships first, and letting the profits follow, rather than lead. It’s what has guided our cautious but forward-looking approach to business since 1950. It’s an approach that continues with the cutting-edge products, services and technologies we deploy today.
Innovation is not only about ideas, however. It’s also about opportunity. And in our first years, our chances to build better, cheaper and more streamlined products for our clients was curtailed by Ohio’s insurance laws. By the mid-1950s, Ohio was the only state left prohibiting multiple-line policies. While insurance companies in every other jurisdiction from coast to coast, including neighboring Kentucky—where The Cincinnati Insurance Company expanded in early 1954—allowed residents to protect their homes from fire, theft and liability with a single policy, those based in the Buckeye State could not.
After much lobbying by the state’s insurance industry, the Ohio Legislature at last took up the issue of package policies in early 1955. The new law took effect on Labor Day of that year. Cincinnati Insurance and co-founder John J. Schiff, Sr. (Jack) didn’t wait to get started on multi-line policies. Schiff had read about a multi-line homeowner’s policy developed by the Founders Insurance Company of Los Angeles, and on a trip to California around the time legislators in Columbus were approving such products, met with its president and got his hands on a copy of the policy.
When he returned to Cincinnati, Schiff handed the Founders policy to general manager Robert Cosbey (Bob). Cosbey was an insurance veteran who joined the company in 1952, and he got to work extensively revising the policy to meet the new Ohio law. Unlike competitors, we decided against a single standard homeowner’s policy. Instead, sticking with our flexible approach, we decided to write individualized policies offering the best coverage more economically than cookie-cutter policies sold elsewhere. Thanks to Schiff’s foresight and Cosbey’s hard work, Cincinnati Insurance was able to offer the new package policy as soon as the law allowed.
Not everyone was convinced of the merit of the new package approach. One agent dismissed the burglary and theft coverage of the new homeowner’s policy, telling Cosbey he didn’t know anyone in his area who stole houses. But most agents embraced it enthusiastically; one noted that his net premiums for January 1956 were 41.2% higher than in January 1955, “thanks to Cincinnati’s Homeowners policies.” The company itself saw even stronger growth. The homeowner’s policy, combined with other new products, a growing number of independent agents and expansion into a third state (Indiana) saw the company’s gross premiums jump 58% in 1956 to $928,159, a total that soared to $4.8 million by 1960.
Homeowners were not the only beneficiaries of new multi-line policies. At the same time the residential package policies debuted, Cincinnati offered a similar “Dealer’s Policy” for commercial properties, often replacing as many as eight separate policies with just one.
In the 1960s, we continued to expand our product line, and soon offered 13 major types of insurance—with a variety of adaptable policies within each to meet client needs, including 35 different types of fire coverage. With those new product lines and policies came a growing emphasis on package policies, each custom-designed to give clients better coverage than their individual policies, and at a lower price—win-win thinking in action. Soon, the independent agents representing Cincinnati were not just packaging different residential coverages, or different auto coverages, but also offering bundled homeowner’s and car insurance. In the 1980s, we worked hard to train agents to sell both property and casualty insurance alongside life insurance.
Our quick adoption of flexible multi-line policies, especially homeowner’s policies, supercharged our growth. Packaged policies quickly helped make us one of the largest insurers in Ohio.
Innovation is not always about invention. Sometimes, it’s about scanning the industry, adopting a promising idea and putting the Cincinnati spin on a product. Our original homeowner’s policy, inspired by a California firm, would soon be iterated and applied to commercial policies for small businesses. It’s that kind of quick thinking, great service and coverage commitment that made our humble agent-sponsored company into the powerhouse we are today.
As The Cincinnati Insurance Companies celebrates 75 years of being A Bridge to Better, we honor our legacy of putting agents first, our noble industry, and our commitment to meeting the ever-evolving needs of policyholders.
