Top 50 Dealer Awards Sponsor: Protective Asset Protection – RVBusiness – Breaking RV Industry News
EDITOR’S NOTE: Now in its 14th year, the RVBusiness Top 50 program celebrates those North American RV dealerships that, in the eyes of an esteemed panel of independent judges, best exemplifies dealer excellence in customer and community service. Winning dealers will be recognized during a presentation Nov. 13 during the RV Dealers Convention/Expo at Paris Las Vegas.
The Top 50 program is made possible thanks to the generous sponsorship of the following organizations: Airxcel Inc., Brown & Brown Insurance, Cummins Inc., GE Appliances, Genesis Products, Northpoint Commercial Finance, NTP-STAG, Performance Brokerage Services, Protective Asset Protection, RV Trader, and Wells Fargo.
RVBusiness will publish a profile of each Top 50 sponsor leading up to the RV Dealers Convention/Expo.
Not all RV insurance companies are created equal.
Bill Koster, Protective Asset Protection’s vice president for the RV, marine and powersports specialty segment, highlights what he believes makes his company stand out.
“At Protective, we do what we say we’re going to do. We’re not the cheapest company out there, but we pay claims, we provide products for dealers that an RV customer would want, and we offer wealth-building programs for dealerships,” he says. “We help dealers take care of their customers, we help them increase their profitability at the dealership, and we do all of that with reputable service and integrity.”
Protective Asset Protection has been serving dealers since 1962. Today, the company serves more than 10,000 dealerships and 500 financial institutions in the automotive, RV, powersports and marine industries. As a vertically integrated provider, Protective acts as both the insurer and the plan administrator, which Koster says offers many benefits, including greater efficiencies, reduced costs and generally quicker service, because everything is handled in-house.
“It’s a rarity in our space that you find a company that’s vertically integrated,” he says of the business, which is part of the financial services holding company, Protective Life Corp., based in Birmingham, Alabama.
Notably, Protective continues to make new offerings and services available to RV dealers. Earlier this year, the company rolled out its own RV GAP coverage (previously available through a third-party provider), and Protective has partnered with MenuMetric to make the company’s F&I menu system available free of charge for its specialty dealers so they can more clearly explain F&I products at the point of sale.
Meanwhile, Koster says Protective offers dealers a robust training program, which includes on-site F&I courses, webinar training sessions and online training modules.
“Training is important because the industry continues to evolve and we want to ensure our dealer partners are best positioned to satisfy their customers’ needs,” he says, noting some dealerships prefer the face-to-face interactions of live training while others prefer remote learning, either through scheduled webinars or on-demand training.
In much the same way that Protective sees itself as a standout in the RV F&I segment, Koster says he believes the annual RVBusiness Top 50 Dealer Awards are a truly unique way to recognize the industry’s top-performing dealerships.
“I’ve seen the applications. It doesn’t just focus on the biggest dealerships; it’s a combination of many attributes. These are dealers who take care of their customers and their employees and who run a superior operation in good times or in bad. That’s why we’ve been a sponsor since the very beginning,” he says. “To me, it’s very inspirational to see how these dealerships perform, and they should be commended for that.”
