Allison Finney in Pursuit of Knowledge, Success

By Janna Zepp | Photos by Justin Borja and contributed

Allison Finney’s professional career began, literally, hip-deep in blood.

“I worked at a beef packing house in the Friona-Amarillo area after earning my Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Production from Texas Tech University,” she says. “My brother (Corbett) came out to see where I worked and was not prepared for what he saw when I showed him the kill floor and the blood pit. But he learned the truth about where our grocery store beef comes from.”

Finney said she used her job at the beef packing house to help collect research data for one of her former professors at Texas Tech. She was deeply interested in working with livestock, from beginning to end.

But eventually, the call to come home was too strong, especially when her parents, Woody and Jeanette Finney asked her to come back to Central Texas and learn the family insurance business. It was then that she discovered her love of helping people navigate the world of insurance coverage.

Woody passed away in 2002 and eventually, Finney and her brother, Corbett, bought Finney Insurance Agency in Belton from their father’s estate in 2005. She worked Corbett until his death in 2016. Now, she, Kathy Fritsche, Montie Elkins and Adam Foulton work together to keep Central Texans and their property protected.

“I love helping people understand the true value of what they have and how they need to protect it,” Finney says. “I sit down with my customers and explain to them what they have for coverage, what they should have and what they are comfortable with as far as coverage goes.”

She adds that there may be cheaper insurance policies available to them, but it might also be the most expensive policy a person can buy in the long run, especially if it does not offer the kind of protection they actually need.

When asked what some of the more interesting cases she handled during her career were, she quickly told the tale of the rogue bleach bottle and a brand-new carpet.

“One of our customers carried a bleach bottle in her laundry basket, not realizing the top was not secure. It left a trail of bleach across her relatively new carpet. Because she had an “all peril” policy, it covered the rather unusual situation completely. Not all do, but this one did, and we were able to help her out,” Finney says.

She also mentioned other odd cases, such as the air conditioning unit that was literally burned up by fire ants and raccoons that ate holes in a home’s air conditioning ducts.

“The insurance business is never boring,” Finney says. Because of that, she says she stays current on the latest developments in the business with continuing education.

“I am among the agents that were ‘grandfathered in’ as not being required to take CE courses under a recent insurance regulation, but I still take them because that’s the smart thing to do for any agent. It’s the right thing to do for customers,” she adds.

Finney believes in setting short- and long-term goals to achieve. She says she’s always growing and learning, an example she sets daily for her children. When it came time for them to go off to college, they chose trade schools. Her son chose to become a welder and her daughter chose to pursue a career in cosmetology.

“All a college degree really does is show that you have the initiative to persevere and a trade school shows that too. I started my career at a beef packing house and switched to selling insurance. I’ve enjoyed both. It doesn’t matter where you go to get your education or what your major is as long as you go for it,” Finney says. “The important thing is go do something you love so that it does not seem like work. That’s one of the real marks of success.”