Marechal takes over father-in-law's Florence insurance office

FLORENCE — Erik Marechal has taken over a Florence Nationwide Insurance office from his father-in-law, Bob McLean.

The office now is known as McLean/Marechal Insurance. It moved to a new location, 112 Cherokee Road, in January.

“Erik has done super well,” said McLean, who has been in the insurance business for 40 years. “He’s made the president’s level several times with Nationwide. Very few agents in the state do this.”

Marechal said the new location “gives us more visibility and more space. We’ve been fortunate enough to have growth, so we wanted to be as accessible as possible to our customers.”

Marechal has been with Nationwide for five years and in the insurance business for 17 years. He moved to Florence from Charlotte to work with McLean in 2004.

“One of the key things I want to make clear is that Bob is still a partner,” Marechal said. “He still gives me guidance and we talk about customers all the time. He remains a key figure in the agency.”

Marechal/McLean is a full-service agency. It does all the personal lines, property, casualty, home, auto and life insurance. It is also focusing on commercial lines.

“We’ve been recognized for two years in a row as one of the top five producers of farm/agriculture business insurance in the United States,” Marechal said. “We have a real focus on farm insurance.

“One of the reasons for this is we just have so much agriculture around us and Nationwide is the leading producer of farm insurance in the country. That was a natural market for us to get into.”

The agency is proud of the financial services it provides.

“When you say ‘full service,’ we have property and casualty, which would be personal lines and commercial,” Marechal said. “Then we have the property and casualty in what we would call life, health and financial services.”

Both McLean and Marechal’s mantra is customer satisfaction.

“We stress this every day,” Marechal said. “We have a team meeting once a week. The customer comes first. Our job is to protect customers with solutions, so that’s really what we do.

“If there’s one thing I would say is our customer service rule is that we treat our customers just like we would like to be treated if the roles were reversed. We know that insurance isn’t something that most people are comfortable with or like talking about. That’s why it’s very important for us to be approachable and take all the time we need with our customers.”

McLean told Marechal that he has never had an issue come up with a customer that he felt he couldn’t handle.

“We will take care of all our claims and expedite them with the utmost professionalism,” Marechal said.

And the agency has expanded its hours to do this. It is open from 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays. They have also added an office in Darlington on Cashua Street.

There are nine licensed insurance professionals in the Florence and Darlington offices.

Marechal has taken up where McLean left off regarding community service. The office closed Wednesday afternoon to participate in a Habitat for Humanity project. Marechal was also named the Board Member of the Year in 2008 for the Boys and Girls Club of South Carolina.

Both McLean and Marechal are members of First Presbyterian Church, where the latter teaches a Sunday school class for young adults.

Marechal is a native of Waynesboro, Va. He is an honor graduate of Virginia Military Academy.