Joy LaFrance | Age: 50 Chief underwriting officer

One80 Intermediaries, a division of Risk Strategies Co.

Chagrin Falls, Ohio

At the age of 15, Joy LaFrance was already entrenched in the insurance industry.

“I was working for two gentlemen who were captive agents for Farmers Insurance,” she said. “I was doing telemarketing, then getting the applications and doing the quoting for their insureds.”

She continued the job through high school and her first year of college, then moved to the independent broker side.

“In 1996, I came over to the excess and surplus lines side to become an underwriter,” she said. “In 1998, I started my company with a business partner, that focused just on niche insurance programs.”

Those niche programs, she added, “include almost everything, from your traditional P&C products to life and health, to non-insurance products like warranty.”

That led to the decision to merge with One80 Intermediaries, “which was a great decision and one of my greatest accomplishments,” she said. “We will be at a half-billion in networking revenue in less than three years.”

“One80 Intermediaries acquired Joy’s company, International Excess, in February of 2020,” said One80 President Matthew F. Power. “I was immediately impressed with Joy’s leadership, business acumen, deep knowledge of the industry and relationships with brokers and carriers alike.”

A highlight of the move to One80 was that her 42 employees went with her.

As a specialty underwriter, Ms. LaFrance has designed new programs to fill voids in the market. One of those programs is for cannabis.

“Cannabis was a gap in the industry,” she said. “There weren’t many people comfortable covering it because, as we know, its legality varies by state.

“You didn’t have 500 companies writing a similar class, you only had five.” Currently, she said, there are about 30 insurers in the U.S. covering cannabis.

Ms. LaFrance also strives to help women succeed.“I do a lot of mentoring with people across our entity, which is key,” she said, adding, “it’s important to really listen to what people want to accomplish, because they have to make their own decisions.”