Fast Focus
	Going green is just not a feel-good proposition.
	Rutherfoord went green and now gets calls asking how.
	Succeeding in the green technology arena takes underwriting know-how.

The Color of Money

What does going green really mean? These brokers are happy they found out.

By  Leslie Werstein Hann

Green, green, enough to make you scream?

Everyone is going green, or at least everyone is talking about going green. Stick the word “green” on your product, save the planet, and maybe even shave a few bucks off your company’s energy and paper costs.

You’re not alone if the intensity of green marketing hype is making you sick enough to regurgitate something green. But as Corporate America catches on to the fact that climate change is, indeed, serious business, savvy brokers and insurers are making calculated moves to address the environmental challenge—and to put some green on the bottom line by capitalizing on new business opportunities.

While they are not the only insurance brokers going for the green, William Gallagher Associates (WGA) in Boston and Rutherfoord, based in Roanoke, Va., are middle-market brokers in the vanguard. Both brokers are changing business policies and practices to reduce their companies’ environmental impact while developing business strategies to profit from the green wave.

Top executives of both firms fully expect their green initiatives to help them grow. We’re not talking the wishy-washy ideal that financial rewards will come to those who do good in this world. We’re talking about growth the old-fashioned way, dollar by dollar over the long term with new revenue coming from new clients and more revenue flowing in from current ones.

“I’m not one to make predictions about dollars,” says WGA Chairman and CEO Philip Edmundson, “but we see this as the best growth engine for our business.”

The paths that WGA and Rutherfoord are taking, while differing from each other, stay true to their current business models. The success of their green experiments depends on their ability to build on the elements of their businesses that already differentiate them in the marketplace.

For WGA, this means capitalizing on an established expertise in emerging technologies. For Rutherfoord it means leveraging Faulkner & Flynn, its environmental-management consulting subsidiary, to help clients analyze and reduce their “carbon footprint” just as Rutherfoord has done for itself.

Rutherfoord appears to have been the first U.S. broker—and perhaps the first company in the U.S. insurance industry—to establish a “carbon neutral footprint” back in mid-2006 by mapping its energy use and emissions and then buying emission credits from Carbonfund.org. Rutherfoord is also the only broker on the list of EPA Climate Leaders, joined there by insurers Hartford, Travelers and ACE. To become an EPA Climate Leader, the company has committed to staying “carbon neutral” and adopting practices to minimize carbon emissions.

“Now that we’ve used ourselves as a guinea pig, we’re getting calls from clients expressing an interest in how we can help them,” says Rutherfoord President and COO George “Shad” Steadman. “It’s not like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon right now because they’re not. But we think it will grow.”