Updated: October 26, 2020
2020 outstanding women in business
Outstanding Women in Business: Branscombe never saw failure as an option
Photo | Matthew Wright
Karin Branscombe
By Grant Welker
When Karin Branscombe looks back on the founding of her own insurance brokerage agency almost 40 years ago, she jokes now she’s fortunate to have had some ignorance back then.
“I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and that was a good thing,” she said.
Branscombe did know a few things, of course. She had enough of a business sense and the determination to start her own office in 1981, what is today Quaker Special Risk, an agency in downtown Worcester helping insurance agencies and brokers develop specialized plans for their clients.
The 45-employee office, with about 3,000 clients across New England, was sold this year to Jencap, a New York-based group of independent firms. Branscombe, Quaker’s longtime CEO, has now settled into a slightly less intense role as chairwoman.
“I can only now, after 40 years, be reflective, and I’m grateful that this country gave me an opportunity,” said Branscombe, who grew up in Germany and came to the United States after college. “If you told me 40 years ago this would happen, I would have said, ‘Never.’”
Branscombe had insurance experience before starting the Worcester office, a second location to an existing one in New Jersey run by a business partner, Frank Walsh. If Quaker’s Worcester office failed, Branscombe was confident she could find work. But she didn’t think about it that way.
“In my mind, failure was not an option,” she said. “I was going to figure it out and make it work.”
Quaker works as an intermediary of sorts between insurers across a range of industries – from health and automotive to business and casualty – to find coverage if a major firm won’t provide it because of high risk, for example, in what’s known in the industry as surplus or surplus lines. One of its regular partnering firms is Sullivan Garrity & Donnelly Insurance in Worcester, whose president, Tom Sullivan, has known Branscombe since at least the founding of Quaker’s Worcester office.
It’s no mystery why Quaker and Branscombe have been successful, Sullivan said, describing her as having the intelligence, thoroughness, and work ethic to keep the business growing.
“If you put those three things together, that’s usually a good barometer for success,” he said.
Quaker, as a small office, has benefits, Sullivan said.
“If I have a problem and it’s Friday afternoon at 4 o’clock, if I’m dealing with a national broker, I might not get a hold of them,” he said.
“But she’ll pick up when you call.”
The Worcester resident has made time to serve in areas of passions for her, including as a trustee at the Worcester Art Museum and on the Worcester Country Club board, where in 2019 she was named the club’s first female president.
Branscombe has worked to mentor both men and women, and made it a priority to value workers as she would have wanted to earlier in her career. The average tenure of an employee at Quaker's Worcester office is 20 years, she said.
“I was an employee once,” Branscombe said, “and I knew how I wanted to be treated.”
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