It’s all in the family for Allstate agent on Hill

Mt. Airy native Bruce Howard has opened an Allstate office at 15 W. Highland Ave. to meet the insurance and financial services needs of area residents. (Photo by Len Lear)

By ED MAHON

Bruce Howard’s mother, Delores N. Wells, has worked as an insurance agent in the Olney section of Philadelphia for the past 20 years. Bruce, also an insurance agent, often talks shop with his mom. She’ll call him for advice or for the latest info, he says. When asked if he calls her for advice, Howard chuckles. “When I first started, not now,” he says. Wearing a light blue golf shirt and sitting at his desk in his new Chestnut Hill office, Howard pauses for a moment, grins and adds, “She calls me more.”

It may not be his mother he always turns to, but Bruce isn’t afraid to ask for help. Three years ago, he needed help for the most delicate issue. Bruce had to deliver a $100,000 death check to a man whose wife had died. Bruce had been an insurance agent since college and an Allstate agent for three years, but had never had to personally deliver a check to a grieving husband. He called some friends in the business, but they hadn’t done it either. He then called the Allstate main office for advice. They offered to take care of it for him, but he said, no, he should learn how to do it himself.

The delivery turned out better than Bruce though it would. The widower invited him over for dinner, and the two have maintained a close relationship since. He’ll often come to Howard’s office, not to talk insurance, but just to chat.

More than he likes hanging awards on his wall or being his own boss since college, “talking to people” like the widower is the part of his job Bruce enjoys most.

A Mt. Airy native, Howard, 38, graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School, where he was an All-Catholic in track. In 1988 Bruce graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania with a degree in sociology, which he says helps him with customer relations.

Bruce has been his own boss ever since. “I’ve never had to answer to anyone,” he says. “You’ve got to be disciplined. It doesn’t mean you go on the golf course five days a week.”

After college, he started his own insurance tag agency. There weren’t many in Philadelphia at the time, so he was able to easily break in to the business. About six and a half years ago, Bruce applied to become an Allstate agent, and a few months later he was approved. Before opening a new office in May, Bruce managed an office on Wadsworth Avenue in Cedarbrook. (“The sign hasn’t been taken down yet,” Howard says.)

The new office, located on 15 West Highland Ave., right off Germantown Avenue, provides banking and financial services and various types of insurance such as car, home, life and accident, among others. “This is really a one-stop shop,” Bruce says. “Nowadays we offer so much more than just insurance, and at least here in Chestnut Hill, people understand the financial products and services we offer. At my previous office, many people did not.”

Bruce lives in Wyndmoor with his wife, Valerie, and children, who attend school in the area. His son Bruce Jr., 7, and his daughter Brooke, 6, attend Chestnut Hill Academy and Norwood Fontbonne Academy, respectively.

Although his office has only been in Chestnut Hill for a few months, Bruce hopes to increase his involvement in the community. He’s sponsored children’s soccer teams in Wyndmoor and plans to do the same in Chestnut Hill.

But if he does sponsor teams, he’ll need to find more space for their pictures on his walls, which are already filled with pictures from other teams he has sponsored, not to mention top-seller awards he won. Pictures of his children and wife fill the office. There’s also an odd-shaped trophy, titled the “1999 Allstate Wizard Award.” Bruce picks it up, looks at it as if he never noticed it before, laughs and puts it back down. “My kids play with it,” he says.

For more information, call 215-242-6100.