Brightway Names Kristine Azar Vice President of Customer Experience

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. (PRWEB) August 03, 2015

Kristine Azar, with 30 years of industry experience in Agency Marketing, Distribution, Strategy, Product, Underwriting and Operations, has been named Vice President of Customer Experience at Brightway Insurance, the company announced.

Brightway is the nation's seventh largest privately held Personal Lines independent agency, selling property/casualty insurance through a network of franchised locations around the country.

Effective August 17, Azar will be responsible for Brightway's customer experience strategies and execution through the company's Service Center in Jacksonville. The center handles the service needs of more than 250,000 policyholders and nearly 120 franchise locations.

Most recently, Azar served as VP, P&C Operations for The Kemper Corporation. Prior to that, she held various roles during her 28-year career at The Hartford, including AVP, Agency Channel Operations, AVP, Agency Marketing and Distribution Strategy, Senior Director, Strategic Business Design, and Senior Product Manager. In the early 2000s, Azar played a key role in building and managing Hartford's AARP relationship and program.

Azar earned her bachelor's in Business Administration from Albertus Magnus College and her MBA from the University of New Haven.

"The work performed by our Service Center staff is critical to the company's success," said President Talman Howard. "Hiring Kris is our most recent investment in leadership that ensures we provide a differentiated, delightful experience to our customers and to our Agency Owners. By doing this, we delight customers and can continue to deliver industry-leading retention, and thus higher commissions, to our Agency Owners."

Chairman and Founder David Miller said: "At our core, we are a service company. Our jobs are to exceed our customers' and our agents' customer service expectations. I am thrilled to hire Kris and look forward to watching her put her deep, broad industry background, and specifically her Operations experience, to work for Brightway."

Brightway began franchising operations in 2008 and has 117 franchise locations in ten states. In June, Brightway was named by Forbes as the number one "Franchise to Buy" in its investment category and was the only insurance agency franchisor ranked.

Earlier this year, Brightway was the only property/casualty insurance agency franchisor on Entrepreneur magazine's "Top 500 Franchise" list as it ranked #252, making 2015 the second year in a row the company has placed on the list.

The company recently announced that it has reached a milestone of 250,000 policies in force.

For more information, go to brightway.com.

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