Hochheim Prairie Insurance Celebrates 125 Years
July 24--YOAKUM -- To 19th century German pioneers who settled in the Crossroads, fire raging on an isolated, unprotected prairie was a great threat.
Fires left some settlers homeless, but the rural community didn't think twice about helping them. To control their own fate, the farmers and pioneers came up with a plan to pay into a program that would reimburse them for losses.
The settlers gathered in Hochheim on the second day of Pentecost in 1892 to organize a mutual insurance association and elected J. Schwab as president.
Later that year, 30 like-minded Germans gathered and insured their homes for $6,550.
Hochheim Prairie Farm Mutual Insurance Association celebrates its 125th anniversary this month with more than 100 member branches in the state, about 90 employees, more than 200 independent agents and more than 90,000 policy members.
The business
The insurance association is a mutually owned association, meaning its members, or customers, own it.
"(They) have the ability to provide direction and input," said Jim Brzozowski, the organization's marketing and underwriting manager.
The association fills the niche of providing insurance for rural residents, as national corporation insurance companies aren't comfortable insuring rural areas outside the metropolitan areas, said Linda Schmidt, company president. Hochheim is among the largest farm mutual insurance companies in Texas, she said.
"The purpose that those old Germans had way back -- that still applies today," she said. "Our best way of advertisement is word of mouth. When one of our members has a loss, and we take care of them very timely . they're going to tell others about us."
The insurance industry in urban areas is predictable and homogenized, which attracts national companies, Brzozowski said. The rural industry is more unpredictable. The association covers structures of all kinds, land, vehicles and also offers liability insurance for livestock.
"If my cow gets out there and someone hits it with a car ... we insure in that scenario," he said. "That is something that is more unique, I think, to us."
The organization only insured structures and land until the 1970s, when it took on auto and liability insurance because of many customer requests, Brzozowski said.
The newest type of policy is commercial, and Hochheim Prairie Insurance began covering small local businesses in 2007.
The company has more than 200 independent agents throughout the state.
"Our agents always talk about how it's so nice to be able to create relationships with people in those individual towns with agents," Brzozowski said.
The policy members
Annual meetings for 112 member branches of the company across Texas are a tradition that was started by the founders, Schmidt said. Members gather for a meal and are updated on the association.
The meetings keep the company unique from other insurance companies, and every members' vote counts, Brzozowski said.
The company also returns about $500,000 a year to its branches, which then invest the money in their communities.
Not many other insurance companies host membership meetings like Hochheim, Brzozowski said.
"We try to stay in touch with the local person in a way outside of sending them a bill," he said. "How many companies can you go have a meal and find out how the company is doing?"
Wilburn Pargmann's family has been a policy member since the 1930s. Pargmann's relationship with the association is personal because he is of German descent, and his father was elected to the company board of directors in the 1960s.
He and his brother have houses on the land his father bought in the 1930s that are still insured by Hochheim.
The family built a house in 1959, which lost its roof when Hurricane Carla came through the Crossroads in 1961. The house was repaired with the help of Hochheim.
"They've been part of the community, and we've been part of them basically all our lives," said the 30-year-old Yoakum native.
The changes
Schmidt became the first woman president of the company in 2013. She began working there 40 years ago in 1977, when data was manually recorded in large ledgers by hand and there was no accounting department.
The first ledgers were recorded in German.
The first computer system came in the '70s, and much data wasn't entered into it and couldn't be extracted. Schmidt worked with the company president at the time to establish the accounting department and automate the first payroll system. In 1979, she moved over to the accounting department where she remained until 2002, when she became the company's secretary treasurer.
Sharon Wenske, who works in customer service, has the longest company tenure -- 46 years. When she started at 21 years old, there was only one electric typewriter, and Wenske urged for more.
She worked in the policy department and manually typed on a non-electric typewriter.
"You took that policy, put it in the typewriter and had to type insured names, policy numbers and why you were endorsing ... everything. You could not make a mistake," she said. "Everything had to be perfect. It was frustrating."
Wenske remembers when policy premiums were calculated with a manual wheel with endorsement and renewal dates and rates.
"It gave you a rate that you would multiply the increase times that rate factor, and that's what the increase premium would be," she said.
Information from agents were submitted in the form of physical files and kept in folders, she said.
Hochheim's data wasn't completely computerized until the late 1980s.
Now, the association is fully automated using the latest technology. Policies are issued, renewed or changed electronically.
The employees
The company has a total of 89 employees, 59 who work in the corporate office and 30 who work remotely. Several employees have stayed with the company for many years, and 20 employees have been with the company for more than 25 years.
"We want employees who can spread their wings and grow," Schmidt said. "As someone who's been a part of management for a long time, our employees are our greatest asset."
The company reimburses higher education courses 100 percent if it's beneficial to the employees' duties, said Roger Arambula, human resource generalist.
"We know as a company, the only way we're going to get the best employees is if they continue to develop themselves," he said.
Wenske sees Hochheim as a unique company, she said. It's rich in family values, and she enjoys meeting the different types of members. During her 46-year tenure, she's never regretted her decision to work at the organization.
"If you can't walk through the back door when you come to work with a smile on your face, you're not in the right place," she said. "You have to enjoy what you're doing. I've always liked insurance."
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