Great Bay Insurance Group, the leading provider of coastal homeowners’ insurance in New Jersey, has announced that Timothy J. Byrne, Sr., the group’s Chief Executive Officer, has been awarded the Company Person of the Year by the PIANJ at its annual conference. This award is given to individuals who foster strong working relationships with agents and brokers and who exemplify a commitment to professionalism and service.
Great Bay is a coastal Homeowners writer in New Jersey with plans to expand into other products and States. Great Bay is known for its ease of doing business, prompt fair claims handling, and most of all for providing a stable market.
Mr. Byrne, Sr., a founding member of the Group in 2019, has over 40 years of broad industry experience in various leadership capacities. Mr. Byrne began his career at 14 years old working summers in his father’s retail agency founded by his grandfather John J Byrne in 1959, The J Byrne Agency of Cape May County NJ, working nine summers while attending Wildwood High School, Rutgers College and a post-graduate degree in Insurance from what is now the St. John’s School of Risk Management, Insurance & Actuarial Science. Mr. Byrne joined the agency full-time in June of 1983.
In 2003, Mr. Byrne, having identified the need for a Coastal Homeowners’ option, founded Coastal Agents Alliance (“CAA”), ultimately placing over $50,000,000 in surplus lines homeowners’ business in eight northeast states. In 2015, he sold CAA to Gryphon investors, who merged CAA with Orchid Underwriters out of Vero Beach, FL.
After three years at Orchid Underwriters, Mr. Byrne left to form Great Bay Insurance Group, which began operations in August of 2019. In Mr. Byrne’s acceptance speech, he highlighted his love of independent agents and how IAs were the key to his success. Between his time at CAA and Orchid he claimed he has probably visited more independent agencies than any other person alive. “Few can do what independent agencies can do,” Mr. Byrne told the audience of independent agents. “From the threat of ‘captive agents’ in the 1970s to the ‘banks-forming-insurance-agencies’ of the 1990s to the current AI and the internet cutting out the middleman, agents have survived. Weathering the coastal HO crises post Andrew or KRW, or the wildfire crisis post-California fires, IA’s have not only survived but thrive in challenging environments. Other outlets of distribution pack up and go home,” said Mr. Byrne.
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