State Farm in Columbia turns 50

Terry Lloyd was hired in 1970 as a seamstress for the State Farm Insurance Co. — a seemingly strange job to hold in a company selling car and home insurance.

That was in the pre-computer days at the company’s old location, a building opened in 1956 at Interstate 70 and Stadium Drive on land then surrounded by cornfields. Much has changed since then. State Farm last month quietly celebrated the 50th anniversary of its Columbia operation.

“Correspondence would come in from the policy holders and after it was processed it was sent to us in the records department,” Lloyd said. “We had a large sewing machine and would sew the correspondence across the top to the person’s application to put in a file. We’d run them right through and someone would cut the thread.”

In those days, carriers on roller skates delivered the mail, she said.
After 36 years with the company, Lloyd works as a receptionist welcoming visitors to the company’s 300,000-square-foot Missouri Regional Office at 4700 South Providence Road.

The Sept. 15 anniversary was kept low-key compared to earlier anniversary celebrations. A congratulatory announcement to employees was sent over the intercom by operations vice president Michael Staloch, operations vice president, inviting them to take a break and enjoy a piece of cake.
The low-key approach was partly in deference to those employees transferred to Columbia after State Farm closed its operations center in Monroe, La., and because the Missouri-based operation, once serving only Missouri, now serves a five-state central zone, said Tia Lindell, external relations specialist.

In 2004, after a yearlong facility review of its central zone operation centers in Monroe, Columbia and Tulsa, Okla., State Farm announced it was closing the Monroe center.

It was a blow to Monroe, which lost 1,085 jobs and a $50 million payroll. The company moved more than 200 employees from Monroe to Columbia and a nearly equal number to Tulsa when it closed the Monroe operation.
Deciding factors in the move to Columbia and Tulsa included technology, intellectual capital, availability of jobs for State Farm spouses, education and crime, according to a company officer quoted in the Monroe News-Star newspaper.

The influx of Monroe employees to Columbia made State Farm the city’s fifth largest employer with 952 employees.
Increased competition is the biggest change that Staloch has seen in the insurance industry.

Staloch, who has been with State Farm for 26 years and in Columbia 10 years, says: “You have to change and adapt faster than you did in the past. Firms get a niche area and they really push it hard. We try to be a wider spectrum service.”

“Our value is our agent who you can call and have a relationship with and talk about all financial interests,” he said. “That’s our value proposition.”

Looking ahead, Staloch sees more companies operating on the Internet with what he describes as a call center atmosphere and offering customers 24-hour service.

He did not offer any projection of future employment growth in Columbia, saying only that the company hopes to have room to continue to grow.
Marin Blevins, 61, a support supervisor, joined State Farm in Columbia in 1971 and is now one of the company’s longest serving employees.
Blevins recalls the firm at its old location on I-70. “Interstate 70 was two lanes,” he said. “Employment was 230.”

Blevins said he has seen other major changes in his 36 years with the company.

“Technology has come a long way,” he said. “I used to get 10 minutes every day to make long-distance telephone calls and if I happened to be in the bathroom at the time then I lost my 10 minutes and have to wait until the next day.”

Staloch said State Farm has received more than 657,000 claims as a result of hurricanes Katrina, Wilma and Rita and paid policyholders more than $5.4 billion. He said State Farm has closed about 99.5 percent of claims related to Katrina. There were 61,000 auto claims, 50 percent of which were total losses.

“And that was at times without proof of title or identification. We settled those with only 30 letters of complaints,” he said.

Added to hurricane settlements, State Farm had to settle on another 147,000 claims due to the hailstorms in Missouri, Kansas and northern Arkansas.
“It’s been a fairly tough year, but a good year in that we are continuing to see some good production and some profitability,” Staloch said. “We set aside funds for disasters and we expect these and don’t like them any better than our policy holders, but they are just a fact of life.”
The company reported a 2005 after-tax net income from all sources of $3.24 billion, down 39 percent from $5.31 billion in 2004.