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It would be strange if Kristin Wall didn’t spend the early morning hours forwarding a blitz of news items to her executive team. The LWCC president and CEO starts every workday devouring local and national headlines, trade journals and industry reports, hitting ‘send’ on anything she finds relevant to LWCC’s mission—which is a lot.
Economic forecasts and technology trends catch Wall’s eye, as do site selection wins across the state that signal fresh fleets of Louisiana jobs. Natural disasters and calamitous events are also on her radar. In countless stories—even ones where it’s not obvious—she spots an insurance throughline.
“That’s the kind of stuff that makes my brain fire,” Wall says. “I think about the jobs, direct and indirect, that flow from companies moving in. Or if I’m reading something about a disaster, I think about the risk side of things. Insurance companies are only as good as their planning and their financial ability to pay.”
Wall sees information as a divining rod that could help her chart where the notoriously turbulent industry is heading. She’s a disciple of the Wayne Gretzky maxim to “skate to where the puck is going,” part of a worldview that balances big picture thinking with acute market awareness.
Her strategies have worked.
Under Wall’s leadership and career-long involvement, LWCC has become the state’s largest workers’ compensation carrier, providing coverage to 18,500 Louisiana businesses, many of which are considered high risk. Sound fiscal stewardship has enabled LWCC to return more than $1.4 billion in dividends to its policyholders since 2003.
And while premiums have soared across the insurance industry in Louisiana, LWCC’s rates have declined by 68.8% since it opened in 1992. The insurance credit rating agency A.M. Best has assigned the company an A rating for 22 consecutive years.
One of Wall’s biggest recent accomplishments was leading LWCC’s 2024 acquisition of Precient National Insurance Company, a North Carolina-based high-performing workers’ comp insurance company.
LWCC has been one of Louisiana’s success stories. Prior to its 1992 establishment, workers’ compensation in the state had become completely unaffordable. The fledgling organization, created by constitutional amendment, rebalanced the workers’ comp marketplace and offered stable rates for employers and protections for workers. Simultaneously, the state Legislature made the process for employees filing disputes more efficient by removing them from district courts and establishing an administrative law process.
Wall was one of LWCC’s first hires in 1992, then a young lawyer working in insurance defense. Four years later, she became the company’s general counsel. By 1998, she was tapped as executive vice president and chief operating officer. In 2006, she was named president and CEO.
Decades at the same organization have only made Wall double down on fresh enthusiasm. She seeks out new ideas and processes, networking with fellow CEOs and worldwide experts through a yearlong executive leadership program at Harvard Business School.
“I’m curious, a little bit curious to fault, but I also don’t believe I have all the answers,” she says. “At some point, you get comfortable enough in your own skin to be able to say that.”
A proud native of Jena, Louisiana, Wall earned an undergraduate degree at the University of Louisiana Monroe and a law degree from LSU. She embraces her small-town roots and still draws from the straightforward life lessons they provided. And while it’s easy for a state with so many problems to absorb negativity, Wall refuses to believe exemplary ideas can’t thrive here.
“Louisiana deserves world-class learning,” she says.
That line of thinking has made establishing an innovation culture at LWCC one of Wall’s top priorities. She has pushed her teams to help member companies find better ways to deploy safety, reducing risk to employees.
The drive for innovation also sparked a new building design for LWCC’s Acadian Thruway corporate headquarters, which earned a U.S. Green Building Council Climate Champion award. The 2020 renovation added a 200-person meeting room that has been used to host national speakers like Blue Ocean Strategies co-author Renée Mauborgne and Ranjay Gulati, author of Deep Purpose, The Heart and Soul of High Performance Companies. The new design also includes an employee fitness center that is run by renowned Dallas workplace wellness expert Cooper Wellness Strategies. It’s available to the company’s 200 employees.
LWCC’s recent accolades under Wall are extensive, including being named to the 2024 Ward’s 50 list as one of the highest-performing property and casualty companies in the U.S. Only the top 1% of insurers make the list, and LWCC has made it 19 times. It also earned a top 10 national ranking in a Catalyst survey of how well carriers support agents, which factors in such aspects as ease of doing business, providing the needed tools to maximize efficiency and being forward thinking.
“Insurance companies are not known to be innovative,” Wall says. “But you better be innovative, or you’ll be in the buggy whip manufacturing business someday and you won’t even know you’re heading there.”
