Voices of the Industry: Erin Violette, The RiverStone Group

Erin Violette is a Senior Reinsurance Collection Specialist at The RiverStone Group. She has been in the insurance industry for just over 20 years and has been working in reinsurance throughout her entire career. After studying Business Economics at Grove City College, Erin was unsure of what exactly she wanted to do following her graduation. She refers to her journey into the insurance industry as “totally random”. She stumbled on a job posting from Travelers Insurance for a position in their ceded reinsurance department and decided to apply. For Erin, “the rest was history”. She was hired and worked there for eighteen years, before transitioning to The RiverStone Group about two years ago. While working for Travelers, she went for her MBA at the University of Connecticut, concentrating in Management and International Business.

Throughout her career in ceded reinsurance, Erin has worked with the people who provide “insurance for insurance companies”. Reinsurance allows insurance companies to place higher policies with larger limits, by ceding out pieces of their policy to other insurance companies. Currently, her role with RiverStone deals with the collection side of reinsurance. This has allowed her to work on a lot of different types of claims. The variety of her projects is one of Erin’s favorite parts of her job. She gets to “jump from project to project” which gives her some flexibility in the type of work she wants to do each day.

In general, Erin has learned that over the years, the best part of the insurance industry for her is the people she has met and gets to work with. Because insurance is international, she gets to talk to people from many different countries, states, and backgrounds. She has found that the people in the industry are very willing to guide you and teach you new things. And according to Erin, “there is always something new to learn.”

Erin began learning by acquiring an Associates in Reinsurance (ARe). She then worked on obtaining her CPCU. She took a few years to complete that certification and was able to utilize what she was learning in her MBA classes to help her in her CPCU classes. She strategically scheduled CPCU exams that pertained to her classes right after that class ended. Erin was able to gain extensive knowledge on different aspects of the insurance industry while obtaining this designation. Now when she recruits people, she highly respects those who have completed it as well, because she knows the amount of work that goes into receiving a CPCU.

Erin advises students considering a career in insurance that this is “one of the best times” to be doing so. She talks about how there are constant changes to the insurance industry and that many people are going to be retiring from the industry within the next five to ten years. This gives students a great opportunity to learn from these people before they go. She emphasizes that “there are so many companies looking for college graduates right now, the need is there.” Lastly, she concludes that people with all different types of degrees, not just business degrees, can find great success within the insurance industry.

By Faye Rooney
Faye Rooney Corporate Partner Relations