Agent Profile: Bright Texas Star Is Light-Years Ahead in the Business

Some of us spend our whole lives hoping we will land our dream job. And just about every employer is searching for its dream employee.

In 2021, when WTW was looking for the perfect candidate to fill its newly created position as a National Physicians Broking Leader, they found just that in Laura Coombs, RPLU, CPLP.

It wasn’t just how Laura checked all the boxes in what WTW was looking for: ambitious, outgoing, motivated, goal-oriented, critical thinker, experienced in medical professional liability (MPL), and most importantly, someone who approaches a challenge with a mindset that “the bigger the challenge, the more fun it can be.”

It was also an almost indefinable quality—or je ne sais quoi, if you will—that separated Laura from the rest of the talent WTW considered hiring. She has an uncanny ability to skillfully balance her independent nature with her collaborative spirit as a team leader to consistently achieve shared goals and success. 

Take Off

Growing up on Lake Huron in Alpena, Michigan, with a history of physicians in the family—her father was an anesthesiologist and her uncle practiced as an orthopedic surgeon—Laura had aspirations of becoming an attorney rather than following her family members down the medical path.

“I was hardcore into law as a student at Kalamazoo College,” Laura explained. “I was the president of our pre-law society, and in between my junior and senior years, I took a legal internship working on intellectual property law and copyright infringement at Dylan’s Candy Bar in New York City and moved out there on my own for the summer.”

She also spent six months studying abroad in Madrid, Spain, but after graduating with a degree in political science, Laura decided to take some time to find herself before making the jump to law school. 

“I spoke to so many lawyers, and they all told me to take a break—don’t go straight to law school—go out and try something different to make sure law is really something you want to continue pursuing. So I followed their advice, picked a place on the map, and basically just picked up and moved, thinking to myself, ‘I’m going to figure it out when I get there, because, you know, why not?’”

Talk about confidence.

That place Laura picked happened to be Austin, Texas, and although she received mixed feedback from friends and family, she already had her mind made up.

“My friends said things like, ‘Texas is the surface of the sun, you’re going to melt out there—the hottest it gets here in Michigan is maybe 80 degrees.’ And my parents were supportive, encouraging me to at least go spend a weekend out there to make sure it really was what I wanted to do. So I told them I’d fly out for a weekend to see if I liked it, knowing in the back of my mind I was going apartment shopping. I found a place, signed a lease, and came home and told them, ‘Okay, mom and dad, I’m moving in a month.’”

After such a gutsy move, Laura’s first objective was to find a job—fast.

“The first job I took was part-time doing marketing and promotions for the Texas Stars, the minor-league farm team for the Dallas Stars. It was super fun! I used to tell people I pretty much got paid to watch hockey. During the period breaks we’d do sponsorship activations and promotions, like the games on ice random fans would play for prizes. It was a great way to meet new friends . . . but I also knew it was temporary until I got a real adult, full-time, career-type job.”

Stellar

Laura tried her hand at getting into the legal field, interviewing for positions like a receptionist or legal assistant, but found that her ambition actually hindered her.

“If I mentioned I wanted to go to law school or be an attorney, it discouraged them from hiring me. They didn’t want someone who aspires to become a lawyer—they wanted someone who will stay in the role they’re hired for as long as possible.”

It wasn’t until a temp agency introduced Laura to an MPL insurance carrier that it was working with—NORCAL—when a viable job opportunity as an associate underwriter presented itself. She interviewed and was offered the role, which she gladly accepted.

“I really liked it there. All the people I worked with were great. There were three of us that all started together and we went through an in-depth training program that set us up for success. The work was right up my alley—I’m very much a critical thinker, so I enjoyed analyzing all the applications and learning and understanding the reasoning behind why we were doing what we were doing.”

As soon as Laura felt she had a good grasp on the job, her relentless ambition kicked in once again.

“I’m always looking to what’s next—what can I do to get to the next level? So I was constantly having those conversations with my manager about how I could get promoted to an underwriter. I wanted it to be known that I am not here to be stagnant. I’m here to make moves, make that growth, get to the next step—so what does that look like and how can I get on that pathway?”

After a couple years, the Chief Underwriting Officer took notice of how Laura was becoming mentally adept at more of a rapid pace than most associate underwriters, and offered her an underwriter position in custom accounts underwriting.

“I was ecstatic,” Laura said. “It sounded like fun—and more of a challenge—joining the excess and surplus team, which meant you get some really out-of-the-box type of risks to work up. Things that you haven’t seen before; you’re not, for example, looking at a run-of-the-mill physician group that requires standard coverage. You’re looking at million-dollar, multistate, complex risks and different structures that you can work with. So that was really fun to me because it was much more of a challenge than I was used to writing and it helped me grow a lot more.”

In due time, Laura promoted to a senior underwriter and was on top of her game when a twist of fate occurred.

Phenomenon

During the COVID-19 pandemic, NORCAL was acquired by ProAssurance, and the combination of being in an acquisition period and going a bit stir crazy from being trapped at home so much led Laura to think deeply about what she wanted her next move to be.

“I decided to do a complete 180 and become a broker. As much as I loved where I was working and the job that I had, what WTW offered me was just too good to pass up. They were looking for someone to join as a National Physicians Broking Leader; and of course, I’ve done physician insurance my whole career, so it was an incredible opportunity to take on and challenge myself with something new that sounded really exciting—it was a brand new position that nobody had been in yet, and it was something I could make my own and build out this new role leading the physician-broking piece of their national healthcare practice program.”

But the position is not a typical sales/producer type of role; in fact, Laura doesn’t do sales at all.

“We have producers that do the sales part of it, and they work directly with our clients. I am much more involved in market relations. I’m our lead point of contact for our carrier partners and I work directly with our market. So our producers will bring me the business, and then I turn around and go take that out to the market and do the negotiations, and the coverage terms, and so forth.”

With nearly four years under her belt in her national leadership role, and only in her 30s, Laura has a long, bright future ahead of her in the MPL sector. And what’s truly remarkable is how this well-balanced, talented individual keeps a balanced, veteran outlook on the business:

“My favorite part of my everyday work is having those face-to-face interactions—meeting with the market and building those relationships. It’s the most important aspect of what I do. Because in my mind, our carrier partners are just as much our clients as our clients are. They’re an equal part of our business and why we’re successful. When it boils down to it, our clients wouldn’t get the exceptional service they expect from us at WTW without the strong relationships we have built with our carrier partners.”