Shannon Lucas has worked in the insurance industry for more than 20 years with Florida Farm Bureau, Tower Hill Insurance Group, Homewise Insurance, UPC Insurance, Heritage Insurance and now Slide Insurance Co. She is currently chief operating officer and chief risk officer at Slide Insurance.
In 2021, she co-founded Slide, a next-generation insurance technology firm, leveraging big data, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to disrupt the decades-old insurance business model.
WHAT ARE SOME WAYS YOU GIVE BACK TO THE COMMUNITY?
I lead our ‘Slide it Forward’ program. At the beginning of every year, we survey our employees to ask for personal recommendations of charities they would like us to consider supporting that year. From this list, we pick four charities (one each quarter) to support, based on a host of qualifications. We close our offices so our employees can work together to help others. We have worked with Autism Shifts, Feeding Tampa Bay, Operation Gratitude, Sleep in Heavenly Peace and the Salvation Army. Our Slide it Forward campaign is incredibly successful, and we have a 100% participation rate in all our events.
WHO HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST MENTOR AND WHAT HAVE THEY TAUGHT YOU?
This is going to sound corny, but my husband (Bruce Lucas) is my greatest mentor. I joined Heritage in December of 2013 to learn from the CEO that was taking the insurance space by storm. Bruce raised $60 million to fund Heritage Insurance, the largest capital raise in the history of Florida domestic insurers. Once in operation, he completed an unprecedented deal with Citizens Property Insurance Company that resulted in a tremendously profitable first year.
Over the course of the next six years, he took Heritage public, negotiated the purchase of four additional insurance companies and grew top line to over $1.3 billion in annual revenue. These deals didn’t fall in his lap. I learned from Bruce, that “if you don’t ask, you don’t get.” This sounds like a simple concept but really resonated with me because I had spent most of my career in the background.
Bruce has taught me so much, but I credit him with encouraging me to use my voice … now, I am paying that forward.
