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November 6, 2020 Women Who Mean Business

In business as in life, Pursell guided by her own version of the Golden Rule

PHOTO | Michael Bingham Mary B. Pursell, President & Principal, Abbate Insurance Associates Inc.
By Michael C. Bingham

When Mary B. Pursell began her full-time professional career with Abbate Insurance Associates in 1982, fresh out of college, Ronald Reagan was still pretty new to his job, too.

Actually, Abbate may have had more time on the job than the Gipper; she began working at the New Haven agency while still a business student at Southern Connecticut State University. She joined full time upon graduation, soon rising to vice president of the small independent agency.

In 1998 she bought the company with a partner (whom she bought out in 2012). In January Pursell begins her 24th year as president and principal.

Even in a fiercely competitive and imperfectly understood industry, Pursell is among the most capable and respected insurance executives in Connecticut.

“She is a most incredible woman” and a “loving boss,” according to Ed Horehlad, whose wife Gada has worked as an accountant at Abbate for three decades.

“Loving” and “boss” are two not-always-compatible concepts in the world of commerce. Another incongruity in the 21st century is the concept of a professional remaining with the same organization for an entire career — cradle to grave, as it were — with a gold watch and a tidy retirement at the end of the rainbow.

If Abbate is the only place Pursell has ever worked, she has also lived in the same Westville neighborhood her entire life. The oldest of four children, she and her lawyer husband raised two now-grown daughters there (who, like their mother, attended high school at Hamden’s Sacred Heart Academy). Talk about your Land of Steady Habits.

Pursell, 56, exhibits classic oldest-child traits of drive, hyper-responsibility and inexorable persistence.

“I’m a fighter,” she allows. Nevertheless, asked to cite her strongest quality as a business leader, she offers a different answer: “Compassion.”

Going it alone

Abbate Insurance was founded in 1975 by Pasquale (Pat) Abbate. In 1998, with Abbate (whom Pursell credits as a “great mentor”) in declining health, Pursell and a 50-50 partner, Rocco Forte, purchased the company for just over $1 million. In 2012 Pursell bought out Forte for a similar sum.

Was sole ownership scary?

“What scared me the most was having responsibility for so many people’s lives,” she says of her 15 employees. But, “I never let fear overwhelm me.”

“I have aligned myself with a lot of good people — IT consultants, telecom consultants, general management consultants — so that I have plenty of resources to go to and make a decision about what was right for the agency and my people.”

What differentiates Abbate from other agencies that peddle home, auto, life, etc.?

“We’re a community-based small business. We really develop relationships with our clients, and we are advocates for them. You have to do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” she said. “I like working with customers, working with people, and developing relationships — and that’s what an independent agency does.”

“So many people don’t like insurance, don’t understand insurance,” Pursell added. “People don’t like to pay a lot of money for insurance that they don’t always use. But when you need it, you’re glad you have it. What I love about insurance is it’s developing new relationships all the time — whether it’s customers or companies or colleagues.”

Pursell is involved with and has assumed leadership roles with multiple professional groups.

“I don’t just deal with insurance,” she says. “I deal in sales, in marketing, in accounting, in legal. It never gets boring.”

This year she drafted a five-year plan for the agency that included filling new roles in the company, leveraging new technologies and anticipating succession.

“I want the business to be perpetuated,” she says. “My goal is not to sell the agency when I’m ready to retire and walk away; my hope is to bring in someone I can mentor and pass the business on to.”

The plan is to double revenues. Abbate’s premium volume (the sum paid by clients for policies, most of which goes to the carriers) in 2020 is about $10 million, Pursell says. Revenues are up 12 percent this year to around $1.2 million. It’s a small business — but an effective and efficient machine that touches many lives. 

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