Jeremy Brandt has worked in SFM’s premium audit department for 15 years, starting as an Internal Premium Auditor and now serving as Premium Audit Technical Specialist. We asked him about his background and his role at SFM.

How did you get into the premium audit field?
There wasn't anything that really drove me to insurance. I was just out of college looking for a job and that's when I came across a medical underwriting job. After a short time in that role, I found an entry-level position as an auditor at SFM, and it ended up working out.

How would you describe your role in a nutshell?
As the Audit Technical Specialist, I’m the go-to person when underwriters have class code questions, or other auditors have questions about classifications or rules or anything like that. If I don’t know it off hand, I do the research and find it for them. I also do some internal, electronic and external audits and then handle any vendor audits and additional projects that the team has, so it's kind of a wide array.

Is there a time that stands out to you when your job was particularly rewarding?
Anytime I am able to help other coworkers if their workload gets too overwhelming and keep them a little less stressed about their work. Other than that, there have been plenty of times where a policyholder calls and asks for help to get something right away such as a revised audit or something like that. I enjoy just being there to help them out.

What do you like most about your job?
I’d say I like the team that we have in the audit department. Everybody really gets along and works well together. I also like the variety I have in my work now that I am taking on additional projects and stuff like that.

What’s most challenging about your job?
It’s the difficult audits where the decisions make a pretty significant impact on premium. Our goal is to make sure everybody understands the rules and why they’re applied with minimal frustration from the policyholder and agent’s standpoint.

What tips do you have for employers?
We know everyone’s really busy, but when the auditors call for additional information or send an email, it helps a lot when employers get back to them as soon as possible. The sooner we hear back, the sooner we can get the audit finalized. When there are delays, it can lead to inaccuracies in the audit or even cancellation in some cases.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
When I’m not working, I tend to be at a softball field. I help coach a 12U fastpitch softball club team, my younger daughter’s team. My older daughter is in club softball as well, so we’re basically traveling all over all the time for softball. I think in the last year we’ve gone to more states for tournaments than I’d ever visited in my entire life before that, so it’s kind of chaos, but it’s a fun chaos.

View more news about SFM