Three generations of Millers have built a 75-year legacy offering Battle Ground and area residents insurance from a local office.
Bryce Miller is the third family member to provide insurance to locals out of the Battle Ground office. He follows in the footsteps of his grandfather Chris Miller and father, Dave Miller, to lead the Farmers Insurance company out of their old family home in Old Town Battle Ground.
“I feel very blessed,” Bryce Miller said of continuing the family insurance legacy. “... I’d say a lot of it, too, comes down to being blessed by our clientele in the community. We have a lot of clients, for instance, that grandpa wrote — they’re still in the books today … They have perceptions of how insurance should work or whatever because they’ve been around the block for so long.”
With a lasting clientele and a constantly growing customer base, Bryce Miller said the Farmers Insurance Miller Agency is one of the larger agencies in the country. He thanks his clients for their loyalty and his staff for helping make the company successful.
Bryce Miller has been selling auto, home, and life insurance among others for 21 of the 75-year family legacy. He has expanded the insurance agency to a staff of three full-time service agents with one running the Woodland office with 30 years of experience under her belt.
“This is the same house that grandma and grandpa started the agency in,” Bryce Miller said of the Battle Ground office location.
Bryce Miller’s grandfather Chris was born in Portland in 1916 and started selling insurance in 1949. After 32 years, Bryce’s father, Dave, bought the insurance agency from his father.
“When my dad was ready to retire, I had been an agent for 10 years at that point and built a pretty large agency, and so I purchased him out and then I moved us back to [the house] because at that point I was expanding in Medicare and other stuff, so I needed a bigger office space. So that’s how we got back to the family house …”
In 75 years of insurance, a lot has changed, especially during Bryce Miller’s last 21 years. He has seen insurance change from paper to S400 dot printers to everything being online with the way that information is processed.
“I think that nationwide, you’re seeing all kinds of crazy changes as the insurance industry is struggling with profitability issues and stuff and them having to try to do right by the client but still stay viable,” Bryce Miller said. “I think we’re in that moment of change where the characters are just trying to figure out how to do their best through the changing environment.”
Through the changes, Miller is thankful for the local clientele, especially residents in Woodland, who he feels enjoys working with insurance agents in an office versus remotely.
Looking toward the future, he hopes he will not be an insurance representative for the business’s 100-year anniversary, but maybe his two sons, ages 16 and 14, will take over the Miller agency together, Bryce Miller said.
For more information, visit agents.farmers.com/wa/battle-ground/bryce-miller.
