Global Approach

Luis Angel Pérez and Richard Logan have never met. In fact, 3,500 miles and the Atlantic Ocean separate the two. And that’s too bad because they have a lot in common. Each owns an independent insurance agency—Perez with Cumbre Correduria de Seguros in Pamplona, Spain, and Logan with Goss Logan Insurance in Lebanon, N.H., and each has a long-standing relationship placing personal and commercial lines insurance through a Liberty Mutual company: Madrid-based Liberty Seguros and Keene, N.H.-headquartered Peerless Insurance, respectively.

“Our agency has had a relationship with Peerless for more than 45 years and, during that time, the clients we serve have had a consistently positive impression of Peerless,” Logan said. As proof, the two independent agents point to recent commercial claims experiences with local restaurants: Lui Lui in Nashua, N.H., and Restaurant Alhambra in Pamplona.

Iñaki Idoate (photo above), owner of Restaurant Alhambra, describes an incident at his 26-year-old, highly rated restaurant. “It was during the Festival of San Fermin. We were very busy, and a woman slipped and injured her leg,” he said. “I immediately called my agent, Luis Angel Pérez, whom I have known personally for 40 years, because, if a customer gets injured in our restaurant, it’s very important that we deal with the matter quickly.”

“I called the injured woman, asked how she was feeling, reassured her that Alhambra had excellent insurance, and explained that we’d take care of everything,” Pérez said.“In other words, we help both our client, Restaurant Alhambra, and our client’s client.”

For Eric Roberts, owner of Lui Lui and a Peerless policyholder for more than ten years, it started with a phone call. “It was Christmas morning, and my family and I were leaving town for the holiday. On the way, I stopped by the restaurant to find water spraying everywhere from a broken pipe in the ceiling,” he said. “We had more than $30,000 worth of food in our walk-in refrigerators and freezers and, when the fire department arrived,they turned off the power and heat, so we lost all of our refrigerated and frozen items. Combined with the physical damage, I didn’t think we’d recover, and that was my frame of mind when I called my independent agent.”

Much to Roberts’ relief and surprise, the first words out of his agent’s mouth were “don’t worry, you’re covered.” “I’m very pleased with the way the claim went,” said Independent Agent Logan. “Within an hour, we had a certified contractor on location to stabilize the situation and, within days, a construction crew had begun restoring the restaurant to its pre-loss condition.”

“In this case, our coverage allowed me to keep paying my employees, all of whom returned when we reopened,” Roberts said. “It even covered TV advertising to let the community know we’d be back in business soon. I’m a restaurant owner, not an insurance expert, so I rely on my independent agent to recommend appropriate coverage. Thank goodness I do.”