ravelers Insurance Claims University, based at the Travelers Insurance Co.'s headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut, may not have a professor with a flamethrower and a giant lint ball, but it does have the industry's first heavy-equipment lab.

Joe Grant, an insurance agent with Wildoner Insurance Agency in Jim Thorpe, said, "It is also the first insurance training facility to receive a Chief Automotive Fuzion Vehicle Repair and Sectioning System as part of the auto appraisal lab."Grant was one of 50 agents across the country selected to attend the Travelers Insurance Agent Leadership Program in July."You're never too experienced to learn something new that you can take back with you," he said.According to the insurance company's website, the Claims University includes a 110,000-square-foot facility with 10 classrooms and a 400-seat auditorium.It also includes a Property Lab containing two full-sized, furnished homes with integrated smart-home technology and a convenience store; a multistation medical laboratory with medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, anatomy and physiology, and medical office administration simulations; and an auto lab with about 50 damaged automobiles demonstrating electrical, mechanical and body system problems."It was indeed a privilege to have been chosen for this," Grant said. "Claims University provided a better understanding of how and why things happen.""We were ecstatic that they chose him," said Charlene Wildoner Grant, agency principal and his wife. Grant joined the agency in October after a 30-year career in consumer mortgage lending."He's helped lighten Charlie's load," she said about her father, Charles Wildoner, who co-founded the agency with his late wife more than 70 years ago. At 92 years old, he still comes to work every day.Grant was chosen to participate in the weeklong leadership program by a regional sales executive. Selection was strictly based on a recommendation, he said.The program focused on "sales strategies and initiatives ranging from improved property and casualty products that will soon be rolled out," he said, as well as adapting business to the digital consumer.Millennials are the largest growing demographic in the insurance industry, Grant said."People don't want anything now, anymore. They want it yesterday," he said. "They are tech savvy socially and now they can do it for themselves for business transactions."The digital consumer and online access to do-it-yourself insurance coverage is hurting the bricks-and-mortar offices."Ultimately it's going to be a disservice to them," Grant said about picking insurance coverage without the guidance of an agent.Wildoner Insurance is an independent insurance carrier with products from 15 providers and some niche companies. Its agents can help clients find the right coverage to fit their needs.By going it alone online, a customer isn't developing a relationship with his or her insurance provider. If something should happen, there's no one from the insurance company who knows the person.But if a customer has met with the insurance provider in person, then there is a comfort knowing the agent knows who you are."We're the conduit between the insured and the carrier. It's our job to make the experience as painless as possible," he said.