A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting the father-daughter team of Jim Papastathis & Angela Papastathis of Kosmos Insurance Agency and the chance to speak to them and learn a little more about the insurance industry. I had met Jim and Angela at the occasional Greek-American event a few times and I always thought that the Kosmos Insurance Agency Team consisted of just them. When I walked into their office, I was surprised to see an entire team of people working. Their operation was much larger than I had initially assumed. I was also impressed to discover that Kosmos has been established for longer than I thought, with its employees having a combined experience in the insurance business of almost100 years.

Jim is a veteran in the insurance business with over thirty years of experience as an insurance broker. He started in 1978 working with another AHC and active AHEPA member, previous honoree Alex Rigopoulos, at Global Insurance and after becoming experienced, he branched out on his own and started Kosmos Insurance Agency in 1981.

Since then, Kosmos has specialized in commercial lines, worker's compensation, employer's liability and general liability, but it also offers personal, home, auto, boat and other (individual) policies.

Being an immigrant myself, I always had a difficult time believing in insurance. In Greece as kids we were taught that you just need to save enough to face the hard times. However, after working in the corporate world for a few years, I started to trust in insurance, especially after a major data failure at a business I used to run. Jim correctly pointed out that over 85% of businesses that face a catastrophic loss do not survive, and by then it's too late to become a believer.

We have all heard the horror stories of going with the least expensive policy and then when the time of the unforeseen, devastating event happens, we wonder why our policy does not cover us. On that point, Jim and Angela were able to quickly and effortlessly make me see the value of a good insurance agent, why having someone you trust is so important and can end up saving you money and unnecessary headaches in the long run. Jim stressed to me that the important thing when buying insurance is that I need to know what I am buying, and who I am buying it from and the only way to do that is to have an insurance agent I trust.

And they are right. Most of us don't know how, or don't want to bother, reading the legal lingo of an insurance contract. When saying this, I, like most people have in mind my car insurance, probably the most common insurance policy. Imagine reading the coverage exclusions for a commercial policy of a restaurant!