Please join us in congratulating operation’s Ed Barber on 35 years with OneBeacon! Ed began his career at Aetna Casualty and Surety Company in 1980 as a Premium Auditor. There, he met his future wife, and decided to leave for the opportunity Commercial Union presented in May 1984.
Ed’s territory consisted of the Eastern half of New York State. After 3+ years of performing workers compensation and general liability audits, he was promoted to Territorial Audit Manager and moved to the Boston area in January of 1988. In 1997, Commercial Union merged with General Accident Insurance Company, which became CGU. We merged the two Premium Audit Operations into one central location in our Foxborough office. A few years later the CGU US operations were sold to White Mountains, which then became OneBeacon.
Ed was working as the Premium Audit Operations Manager, and at the height of this transition, they had an inside audit staff of over 40 employees. During the next 11-13 years, they did a lot of “right sizing” to meet the demand for their services, as well as the demands presented when OneBeacon became a specialty company in 2008. And that brings us to where we are presently. Ed manages a staff of four associate auditors/senior auditors inside as well as a network of 3rd party vendors who perform on-site physical audits for us throughout the country.
“I am sure many employees that have had a long career with OneBeacon will attribute the longevity to the people we have been able to work with over the years,” Ed said when asked what made his time at OneBeacon special. “While performing our jobs can lead to some difficult situations, the timely addressing of these situations and open lines of communication usually lead to resolutions that are satisfactory to all parties. Knowing that we can involve people from all teams to address these situations leads to a lot of job satisfaction. And that goes back to the good people we are able to work with across departments to insure our customers have a good experience with OneBeacon.”
Ed reminisces back to the initial years when we became OneBeacon. The senior management team at the time adopted the “OneBeacon Operating Principles,” which enabled all managers to think like owners. “Those years were also a time when we empowered our employees to make suggestions and decisions about how we did business to streamline operations and improve the customer experience,” said Ed.
Ed loves the Boston area – he’s grateful to have raised four children in the area. He also is a huge Boston sports fan. Some of his New York friends label him as a “trader” because he became a huge Sox fan. He even got to attend World Series games in 2004, 2007 and 2013!
Ed also just retired from officiating high school basketball after 26 years. “My experience in open communications and resolving issues at work helped me become a pretty decent basketball official,” he says.
Congratulations to Ed on this milestone achievement!