Insurance career journey in focus
NIBA member, Don Shields talks about his commitment to service and the three passions that have underpinned his career.
When I finished high school in 1981, I got into an engineering course at Melbourne University, but decided to defer. I saw a job advertised for insurance, so before I applied my dad took me to meet his friend Harry who worked in insurance, and after talking to him, I applied and got the first and only job I have ever applied for, with Mercantile Mutual in Geelong. I was earning a good wage and enjoying my life, even if it took a couple of years before I felt comfortable in the industry and thought it could be a career.
“I joined the Army Reserve when I was 18 and Mercantile Mutual was supportive with the leave I needed. I was doing officer training and they could see the potential benefit of the leadership and management skills I was being taught. It was a happy collision of worlds. Funnily enough, I applied to go to the Royal Military College when I was 16 and was rejected. A lot of years later, I went back as an Army Reserve Captain to instruct there.”
”After six years I was poached by NZI insurance as a Commercial Underwriter which took me to Mildura and Bendigo. But I wanted to get back home, so I started my own business in December 1993, which became Geelong Insurance Brokers. One of the people who finished his 50+ year insurance career working for me was my dad’s friend Harry – the same man who’d explained the industry to me. I had quite a few staff in the latter stages of their career. Some of them had started at 15 in the mailroom and spent 55 years in insurance. They had great interpersonal skills and excellent client relationships, but lacked computer skills.”
“I had to leave the army after 21 years when I was diagnosed with cancer, retiring with the rank of Major. At that point, there were four of us in the insurance business. The end of my military career allowed me to spend more time in the business and it tripled in size. It was a big shift for me – up to that point I’d thought of myself as an Army Officer first and an insurance person second.”
“I’m a firm believer that, if you look after people, they look after you. Right from day one, I’ve used a holistic approach, particularly with clients. One client in construction fell from a height and broke his neck. Without the right covers in place, there would have been a fire sale of his assets and he would have ended up in an aged care home. His cover meant he could keep his business, modify his house and his car. When he woke up from his coma, I was the first person he saw, with the forms so he could get his insurance payout. There’s an old saying that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
“I joined Rotary not long after starting my business. Initially, it seemed to be a lot of old men and barbecues, but I was converted quickly when I saw the projects they were involved with and the service to the community. My club put a kitchen into a centre that has been feeding the homeless for the past 30 years. It funded a start-up training disabled kids in hospitality and catering. We built schools in East Arnhem Land and in Fiji.'”
Rotary’s new area of focus is the environment. We have a program called ‘Donations in Kind’ which takes second-hand medical and education items otherwise heading for landfills and sends them to developing countries. Another project involves playgrounds. In Victoria, around 1000 playgrounds a year are ripped out because they don’t meet a changing specification. Around 120 of these have been sent over the last five years to places like Sri Lanka, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nepal, Philippines – where playgrounds are rare.”
“I grew up on a farm, so I’ve always been very family and community-minded, and Rotary fits in very well with that. I’m a Rotary district insurance and risk management officer and provide free advice and assistance to all Rotarians throughout my region. From here, who knows? I’d love it if Geelong Insurance Brokers continued to thrive after I’m long gone. That, and my work with Rotary, I hope will be my legacy’’.
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