Insurance Industry loses an ICON! Peter B. Lewis passed away Saturday, November 23 at his home in Florida. Peter was a true iconoclast and innovator whose contributions to the industry, to Progressives success, and to the success of independent agents were many. Peter B. Lewis, born November 11, 1933 in Cleveland, Ohio, acquired control of the Progressive in 1965 in an early leveraged buyout. At that time, the small insurance company with $6 million in revenues specialized in insuring drivers who had difficulty finding auto insurance. In the 45 years since, 35 as CEO, Mr. Lewis oversaw the transformation of a 100-employee company into a full-line auto insurer with 26,000 employees and annual sales of $17 billion. Today, under CEO Glenn Renwick, Progressive is the nations fourth-largest auto insurer selling direct and through more than 35,000 independent agents. Much of Progressives success derived from two of Mr. Lewis contributions: his vision that an auto insurer could reduce the human trauma and economic costs of auto accidents in cost effective and profitable ways, and his clarity about the Core Values governing and still guiding Progressives decision-making today. Under Mr. Lewis guidance, Progressive revolutionized the industry with 24-hour immediate response on claims and service, mobile claims adjusters dispatched directly to accident scenes, and a unique, concierge level of claims service through service centers. His openness and transparency in his personal life carried over into the business, making Progressive the first and still the only public company releasing full monthly financials. And his vision not only introduced a solution for consumers who wished to purchase directly from an insurer, but agent innovations like desktop rating and point-of-sale verification that helped Progressive grow to become the number one personal auto carrier in the independent agent channel. Mr. Lewis believed that a company was only as good as its people and set out to hire the smartest people he could find. He began recruiting from Ivy League schools in the 1970s, a time when Ivy Leaguers were much more likely to head to Wall Street than to what was then a small insurance company in an industrial Midwestern city. He created an environment where people were challenged to think differently and to always do better than they had before. He fostered a culture of risk, learn and grow in which people had the freedom to try new things, make mistakes and learn from them. Lewis retired in 2000 and invested through his philanthropy in people with purposes he shared and the management ability to achieve those purposes. He supported risk-takers who break new ground and show results. Lewis challenged many of the nonprofit organizations he supported to improve their management and finances. Lewis served on the Board of Princeton University, his alma mater (Class of 1955), where he was its largest contributor (over $220 million) including the largest gift in Princetons history ($101 million) to expand its programs in the creative and performing arts. Lewis other gifts to Princeton included $60 million for a Gehry-designed science library and an endowment for the Lewis/Sigler Genomics Institute. His main challenge to Princeton was to improve on its already top-ranked excellence. Lewis is survived by his wife, Janet Rosel Lewis, his brother Daniel Lewis, his children, Ivy, Jonathan and Adam, his five grandchildren, Ariel, Dakota, Augusta, Max, and Ben, and his ex-wife, Toby Devan Lewis.
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 05:03:52 +0000
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