By Josh Chetwynd
Linda Rey is practically an insurance lifer. The 49-year-old started working in her dad’s insurance office at the age of 18. While she’s branched out at times, serving as an ocean marine underwriter for a reinsurance company for a while and briefly leaving the industry, she’s always been drawn back to insurance agency work. Today, she runs The Rey Insurance Agency with her sister Laura Rey Iannarelli in their home town of Sleepy Hollow, New York.
What’s notable about their business (beyond being located in the famed setting for the literary character The Headless Horseman), is the pair’s commitment to helping new businesses as well as their use of Spanish skills to maximize service.
Q: You have a niche in insuring start-up businesses. How did that start?
A: If I had to guess, I think it was building strategic alliances with other professionals who assisted professionals who went out on their own, for whatever their reason, to exercise their entrepreneurial spirit. We also aligned ourselves with assisting a local organization who has a program to help women learn how to build a business.
Q: What are some of the elements that are unique to working with start-ups?
A: It is an absolute joy to be a part of someone’s success as you watch them build their business. The challenge is providing the education of outlining the best-case and worst-case scenarios of how and why insurance is critical to structuring their business.
Q: You’re bilingual (Spanish and English). How does that help in your business?
A: I’m embarrassed to say that [sister and partner] Laura and I weren’t even raised speaking Spanish. My father was focused on “assimilation” and my mother is American. We spoke English only while growing up. When my father headed toward full-time retirement, we began to focus on hiring bilingual individuals to assist with servicing our bilingual clients. We have been very successful finding reliable team members and really appreciate their dedication to customer service.
Q: Do you think being bilingual is of growing importance in the industry?
A: Absolutely … As an example, the Department of Labor has published statistics of Hispanic women in the workforce demonstrating that the demographic of women have doubled since 1994. As a women-owned and operated business, we are proud to be able to provide employment and services to the Hispanic population to assist them build a life in the United States.
Q: Your offices are in one of the most iconic towns in America; what’s that like?
A: Our area, the Hudson Valley Region, in New York … is filled with rich history and lush texture. Our mascot is the headless horseman, thanks to [author] Washington Irving, so with Halloween coming up, there is an abundance of spooky attractions to continue the mysterious legacy of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It is such an important part of our history that the village changed its name from North Tarrytown to Sleepy Hollow to match the essence of the area.
