Megan Brown ARM, MIP, CWCP, CAWC
President
It is hard to believe that I am writing this at the end of 2025, where has the year gone? As they say, time flies when you are having fun and/or are busy and the staff at MTM have had a busy year. I feel compelled to list some of the highlights from 2025 giving credit to a dedicated, talented and supportive MTM team:
(more…)Donna Motley
Vice President of Claims
Starting a new year should bring new opportunities. Starting 2026 in the MTMIC Claims Department, we have a “new” adjuster handling claims. Well, she is not “new” to MTM, and she is not “new” to most of our insureds, but she will be new to the position of Claims Adjuster. Our Claims Technician, Marci Merath, will now be handling claims. Marci has been with MTM for quite a while and is moving on to the claims adjusting process. It should be an easy transition. As indicated, Marci is familiar with our insureds, reporting practices and claims procedures. You should see no difference as an insured filing a claim.
Continuing with fresh starts and changes – don’t forget about the Nurse Triage Program! An injured worker can be evaluated by a medical professional over the computer which results in immediate attention to the injured worker and their injury, the employee not missing time from work to go to the clinic (unless the Triage deems an outside evaluation appropriate) and detailed reporting of the incident within 24 hours. All with no cost to the insured! We make the arrangements for your on-site training – particularly helpful if you have more than one location. You, as the employer, are kept in the loop every step of the way. This also helps free up some time for your Human Resources Department. You can try it, use it, or don’t. No contracts to be signed, no commitments. Give it some thought, it could make your life a little easier.
Hope your New Year is off to a great start !32New Year
By Megan Brown ARM, MIP, CWCP, CAWC
President
Last month, I attended the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC) annual convention in San Diego, California. NAMIC, a 125-year-old organization that supports mutual insurance companies through advocacy, compliance, industry benchmarking, education, and networking. Recent research, presented at NAMIC reveals a notable shift in buyer sentiment and behavior within the commercial insurance market, with mutual insurance companies gaining favor and outperforming their stock counterparts across critical performance metrics.
(more…)By Ruth Kiefer, MSc, ARM
Vice President of Loss Control
The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) partnered with Michigan employers who voluntarily participated in the 20th anniversary of the Take a Stand for Workplace Safety and Health initiative, underscoring a shared commitment to improving workplace safety and health.
(more…)By Megan Brown ARM, CWCP, CAWC
President
Due to recent pending legislative changes, I thought that it would be beneficial to provide the history of workers’ compensation as well as where we are today.
Workers’ Compensation is a state-mandated insurance program that provides wage replacement, medical treatment, and rehabilitation benefits to employees who are injured while performing their job duties.
(more…)Megan Brown, ARM, CWCP, CAWC
President
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Board of Directors for the opportunity to serve as President of MTM. It is an honor to lead this dynamic organization as we celebrate our 50th year, building on the foundation of our 49-year legacy.
For those who may not know, I joined MTM 18 years ago as Director of Sales and Marketing, hired by former President Gary Wood. Since then, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing—and contributing to—tremendous growth across many areas: direct written premium, surplus, service offerings, policyholder count, and dividends returned to our customers. What’s particularly notable is that we’ve achieved this growth while retaining much of the original staff who were here when I started—an extraordinary accomplishment in today’s workforce landscape.
(more…)For the last 11 years I have talked about how MTM is different from regular insurance companies. Yes, we are required to follow the insurance company rules. We have normal insurance company departments: claims, loss control, sales, accounting, underwriting. We have an outside rating agency grade of A-. So why do I continue to say, but MTM is different. I base my comment on over 50 years of which the last 45 have been in insurance company management. The difference is staff, focus and Board of Directors. Staff, MTM stability is well known. A few notable examples: Glenda, Premium Accounting over 40 years, Donna, Cindy, Marci, and Kimberly in MTM claims all over 20 years, Megan Sales/Marketing 18 years, Chris – CFO over 30 years, Loss Control Ruth and Chris over 15 years. Pretty amazing. When you have that type of stability, customer focus becomes second nature.
(more…)Brady Schlesener is Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Gemini Group. He is responsible for overseeing all commercial activities for the company’s 18 locations with $300 million in annual revenue. He has over 23 years of professional experience in the automotive industry and has been with Gemini since 2007. Additionally, he serves on the Manufacturing Technology Mutual Insurance Company Board.
Schlesener holds a Bachelor of Arts, Finance and Marketing, from Cedarville University as well as a Master of Business Administration from Michigan State University. He is a member of various professional organizations including Motors & Equipment Manufacturers Association (MEMA), Aluminum Extrusion Council (AEC), and the Forging Industry Association (FIA). Additionally, he volunteers with the High School Youth Ministry at Highland Park Baptist Church and the Seaholm Football Booster Club.
We have expanded our Sales and Marketing Department and are reaching out to you to introduce Marcy Savage – our new Marketing Manager. With an impressive 20 years of experience in the insurance industry, including over 10 years specializing in workers’ compensation, Marcy brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise that will greatly benefit our organization and our clients.
Marcy’s extensive background in both underwriting and marketing workers compensation and her commitment to providing exceptional customer service make her a valuable addition to our team. Her passion for helping others and her dedication to staying current with industry trends will undoubtedly enhance our capabilities.
After 53 years of insurance management, it seems time to turn the MTM helm over to a “new” manager. After lots of discussion, assessment and planning meetings, the Board of Directors over the last year came up with a transition date of 6/1/25.
(more…)In March, the Annual MTM Members meeting was held. This was the second year of the meeting to be held in March. Prior to the last two years, the meeting was held in October. At the October meeting one of the presentations was the company profitability for the current year and the ‘likelihood’ of a members’ dividend at the end of the year. After holding the meeting for many, many years in October, our Marketing Department discussed the advantage of holding the meeting in March at which time, instead of discussing the possibility of a dividend, we could actually hand out checks at the Annual Members meeting. This review and suggestion was made to the Board of Directors and the Board agreed to move the October Annual Members meeting to March.
(more…)January and February are an important time for MTM staff. It’s when we put together all the documentation that leads up to the printing of member dividend checks in March. Let me give you a rundown of what happens. On New Year’s weekend, Chris Doebler our 28-year veteran CFO puts together all of the claims detail and payroll information for 2023. This immense amount of detail is sent to an outside actuary to do loss valuations required by the Michigan Insurance Department. This review takes close to three weeks by the outside actuarial firm.
On January 29th Chris Doebler, Megan Brown, our VP of Sales/Marketing, and myself head to Nashville to meet with our actuarial advisors to discuss the results. We review the 110-page document to evaluate the proper reserves that are necessary to make sure that all the money necessary to pay those claims is put away. It is a challenging balancing act with the legislative and judicial changes, inflationary impact, and the loss trends of our members.
(more…)I hope your Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were relaxing, joyous, and shared with family. Mine was and, as a bonus, it appears I made it through the family get-together without picking up a cold from the grandkids. In my limited grandparent experience, I have been unsuccessful at staying healthy after visits with grandkids. It also appears that grandkids, until the age of six, have a constant runny nose and some sort of cold. After thorough research, I find that no one has solved this dilemma.
Since claims and loss control expenses take nearly 70% of every premium dollar, most of what you hear from MTM is about how to reduce accidents and when an injury does occur, how we manage each claim dollar in the most effective way possible. With that said, MTM conducts an audit each year when each workers’ compensation policy expires. To complete these audits, we have used an outside audit service and many of you will recognize Aprise as the firm that visited your shop or conducted your internal email/phone audit. They have done an excellent job, however COVID changed the audit process significantly by greatly increasing the number of audits that were done by email/phone with the number of field audits considerably lower. When the audits are processed internally by email/phone, it appeared that that process could be handled at a reduced cost by MTM staff. We conducted a research project and determined that somewhere between $80,000 to $120,000 of savings could be realized by moving this to an in-house function. On August 1st, we implemented a gradual conversion to an internal MTM process. Many of you know Glenda Moyle, Premium Accounting Manager who has been producing audit invoices and processing the collection of MTM audits for more than 40 years. In the past, she would send the audit paperwork to Aprise to conduct a field audit or an email/phone audit. Glenda’s function is unchanged. What we have changed is that the audit assignments will be done internally, and the internal email/phone audits will be conducted by MTM staff. We will still use Aprise when a field audit is the appropriate audit method.
On August 1st, we implemented the program and got the conversion underway with the goal of being fully converted by 12/1. With good procedures in place, forms and management support, this conversion has gone very well and with the large number of members in January you’re likely to see correspondence from the MTM Internal Audit Associate, Faris Saleem.
In the meantime, one of the important parts of this project is to make sure that you know that we take the stewardship of MTM premium seriously. We are always looking for ways to reduce our costs, which increases the dividend value for our members. With the MTM Board of Directors made up of 11 shop managers, that remains a primary focus from the Board to the President and to the employees of MTM.
Until next time, have a wonderful fall.
For the last ten years I have avoided jumping into the legislative process. Like most of our shop leaders, I view my job is to work hard and get the best results possible in the environment that surrounds us. When legislation would change matters, my job would be to adjust and figure out how to succeed and represent our members with the best results possible. I think that’s probably what most of our shop managers do. However, things change and all of a sudden it appears that we have no choice but to be more involved.
As I look at the legislative changes for our shops in just the last eight months, there have been dramatic shifts in policy that effects our businesses. As many of you are aware, we have been active partners with the Michigan Manufacturers Association. They have a strong legislative arm. MTM is also a member of the Insurance Alliance of Michigan (IAM). That is a group of insurance companies that also has a legislative presence. For the most part MTM and myself individually have attended but not been active in those legislative efforts. With the introduction of House Bill 4390, it is obvious to me that we must be more involved and encourage our members to be involved also.
(more…)June 30 – a good time to review our results and see if we are on target or if we need to make adjustments to reach the company goals. An important part of that review is a study of claims losses. Insurance claims are the primary driver of financial results. No other expense category comes close to the percentage impact of claims loss payouts.
Our June 30 review looked at the first six months of 2022 and compared it with the current six months of 2023. We will want to review the differences and see if there are any trends that can be identified. In looking at the aggregate loss payments for 2023, we found those were higher than both 2022 and 2021. We pulled 2021 into the review to see if any trend lines could be identified. Interestingly, we found the claims frequency has remained virtually unchanged for 2023 compared to 2022. The frequency difference was 1%.
(more…)By Chris Demeter, Senior Loss Control Consultant
MIOSHA requires companies to train on any hazards their workers may encounter. Knowing, understanding, and interpreting MIOSHA rules and regulations can sometimes be confusing. This is why our Loss Control team is here to assist you through the process. Help is only a phone call or an email away and will be answered by one of our Loss Control Consultants. This support is an integral part of MTMIC’s service because we know that safety and health questions are inevitable.
f you are not the person that handles the safety walkthroughs with your Loss Control Consultant, let me introduce you to our Loss Control Team.
(more…)Every time I think about a busy time at MTM, I remember many of my recent visits to our MTM shops. Our members are undergoing massive changes all the time. There are shortages of raw materials. There are shortages of personnel. The changing product line and the markets in which they serve all create a tech environment where every minute of the day is filled with important decisions. That always helps me keep a perspective for the busy times that MTM has. February is one of those extraordinarily busy times.
In actuality it starts the last couple days of January when Chris Doebler, MTM CFO, and Megan Brown, VP of Sales and Marketing and I meet with our actuarial team to discuss year-end results and loss reserves. It is a lively discussion/debate where we take many unknowns of future medical costs, future court decisions, and try to apply that to the over 500 open claims that we are presently working on. Once an agreement is reached for that, then we start plugging those into the expense categories and revenue of 2022 for a final financial statement. All of that needs to be completed in just a few days. On February 9th we presented our findings to the MTM Board Finance Committee and MTM Board Marketing Committee. These committees are made up of MTM members.
(more…)Every time I think about a busy time at MTM, I remember many of my recent visits to our MTM shops. Our members are undergoing massive changes all the time. There are shortages of raw materials. There are shortages of personnel. The changing product line and the markets in which they serve all create a tech environment where every minute of the day is filled with important decisions. That always helps me keep a perspective for the busy times that MTM has. February is one of those extraordinarily busy times.
