Bethel Small Business Spotlight: The Insurance Center

Every local business has a story worth sharing with the community. And that’s the belief behind this exciting series — to shine the spotlight on all our favorite local businesses, and to learn a little about the ones we may not know that well.

• Business: The Insurance Center
• Owner: Paul Improta
• Website: http://www.TheInsuranceCtr.com
• Address: 6 Stony Hill Road, Suite 210, Bethel

What business are you in?

General Insurance - everything but medical insurance. We represent a many companies to offer the very broadest range of market segmentation and unique needs of our customers. For personal insurance, we have carefully chosen the companies to work with that offer a stable insurance market in each unique customer risk profile, from people just starting out and acquiring wealth and things, to those more mature and more wealthy customers. For our commercial clients, we offer all of the mainstream programs, as well as carefully selected programs for unique or hard-to-place insurance. Instead of being a one-name insurance franchisee with a limited product offering, we are the entire insurance shopping center!

Why start a business in this town?

This is our 90th year in business. Having began in 1925, I was commuting to Stamford but living in Bethel. Driving to Stamford on a regular basis became tiresome. I was living in Bethel where my family interests were, yet because I was in Stamford all day I was unable to participate fully in the Bethel marketplace. I chose to open an office in Bethel in 1999, and eventually transitioned to Bethel entirely in 2012. Bethel is a great place to be based. Our territory is CT, NY, VT and NH but our work emanates from Bethel and Greater Danbury.

What’s the most difficult challenge you’ve faced as a business owner?

That’s not an easy question to answer. Every small business has its challenges, from finding and training qualified employees to constantly adapting to and investing in new technology. Because we are independent, unlike one-name insurance agencies, we must purchase our own independent agent-specific software and hardware, as well as do our own agency-specific advertising programs. However, I believe the most difficult challenge has been turning on the public to the realization that we are a professional service and not a transaction-based commodity sale. We are a soup-to-nuts firm that not only has access to markets to insure practically any situation, but we have the know-how to differentiate between the multiple programs we offer and then recommend the best possible program for each individual situation.

What’s been your proudest achievement since opening?

My best achievement has been growing our businesses across all segments of our coverage specialties since opening in Bethel. It has been a challenge, but we have grown every year including since 2008 and the onslaught of the great recession which has affected Connecticut small businesses across the board. Last year we opened CTBoatInsurance.com where we are the go-to one-stop shop for any type of boat insurance. We offer programs from among 20 different insurance carriers.

How does your business give back to the community?

We are big believers in giving back to our community. We are active participants in many local charities of which you would be familiar. For any charity golf tournament we donate a hole-in-one contest where in addition to the prize winner the charity will receive 20 percent of the prize value. This can happen multiple times at the same event. For nonprofit customers, for each referral they send us that results in a sale, we will split the proceeds with them as a donation from the customer they referred. We belong to many community-based local organizations including the Chamber of Commerce where we are involved in their various activities and events.

Would you like to see your small business showcased in this series? Email wendy.mitchell@patch.com.