Alivia Cooper
Alivia Cooper (BBA 14) and Anna Bendgen (BBA 14) are quickly making an impression at their jobs.
Cooper, a marketing underwriter for Amerisure Insurance Co. in Tampa, Florida, started her undergraduate career as a chemistry major in hopes of pursuing a career in medical research. Unsure of what she wanted to do, she decided to change her major and joined UM’s School of Business Administration in spring 2012. Cooper chose to triple major in risk management and insurance, managerial finance, and banking and finance.
Along with succeeding in the classroom, Cooper was also a member of the Ole Miss rifle team for four years and participated in the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials for a chance to compete at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.
With three majors worth of knowledge, Cooper, a Louisville, Kentucky, native, realized during job training that she was immediately applying loads of information from her undergraduate degrees to her job at Amerisure. This helped her become the youngest individual to receive the University Associate Certified Risk Manager (UACRM) designation in January 2015 and then go on to achieve the Certified Risk Managers designation. Fast forward to November 2015, and Cooper was assigned as lead underwriter of Amerisure’s second-largest agency.
“Becoming an underwriter after completing my risk management and insurance degree has proved to provide me with an extremely solid foundation,” Cooper said. “Continually enhancing the coverage form knowledge that it takes to be an underwriter will prove beneficial in virtually all aspects of the insurance industry.”
Cooper’s first project as an underwriter was to implement a property coverage form into a new policy management system. Along with underwriters selected from across the country, she was selected to specialize in the coverage, test the system for errors and become a resource for other underwriters in her office who had questions about this particular form.
Most recently, Cooper was selected as one of three underwriters in the company to learn how to model wind risks throughout the country. Prior to her selection, all wind modeling had to be sent to a corporate consultant to have this task performed. Cooper is now able to perform this task for other underwriters in her office, mainly focusing on accurately pricing hurricane risks in coastal regions
Anna Bendgen
Bendgen, a business continuity and risk administrator for Sedgwick Claims Management Services Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee, knew when she started college that she wanted to enter the workforce immediately after graduation. During her junior year, she interned with Sedgwick in the risk management department and enjoyed the opportunity to learn about the risk management and insurance world. In fall of her senior year, a position opened with Sedgwick, and Bendgen was quick to apply.
Bendgen, a Munroe Falls, Ohio, native, said she uses knowledge she learned from the classroom every day at her job and that the communication courses and soft skills have helped her succeed quickly. Since starting her job in May 2014, she received the Risk and Insurance Management Society Rising Star of the Year award, an accolade given to risk professionals who have demonstrated exceptional initiative, volunteerism, professional development, achievement and leadership potential. Along with winning the national honor, Bendgen accepted the inaugural award at the society’s annual conference.
Currently, she is leading the effort to develop a workplace violence prevention and response training program and also is charged with maintaining and testing Sedgwick’s business continuity plans.
With the help of RMI professors Stephen Fier and Andre Liebenberg, both Cooper and Bendgen were able to seek out scholarships and internships to help find which area of insurance was right for them. “The passion they have for the subject matter they teach is infectious, and the amount of time and energy they invest in helping their students succeed is inspiring,” Bendgen said.