The insurance consumer has an open choice between dealing directly with an insurance company or through an independent agent who represents many insurance companies. Columbia’s Betsy Porter and her First Carolina Insurance Associates, Inc. offer the complete range of insurance services as an independent agent, representing many companies. As such the customer gets full exposure in the insurance market, methodically moving to the ideal match for risk coverage and financial standing.

Porter, born in Columbia Hospital, attended kindergarten at Emily Douglas Park on Wheat Street. Following McMaster Elementary, Rosewood Elementary, and Hand Middle School, she graduated from Dreher High School in the same class with Columbia Star editor Mimi Maddock. Porter attended both Winthrop College and Limestone College, graduating magna cum laude with a liberal arts degree.

She soon started a family, having two boys. One son practices law and the other, medicine. Stephen Porter is the lawyer, and he’s with Columbia’s Ellis Lawhorne & Sims, while his wife Susan is a criminal prosecutor with SC Attorney General Henry McMaster. Son Allen is in pediatric residency at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

Jennifer Dinkins, Shajvania Watson, Betsy Poreter, and Barbara Clyburn in front of First Carolina Insurance Associates in Columbia. Photo by John Temple Ligon Porter began her insurance career in 1980 with DuBose Stuckey, a Columbia insurance agency run by Jack Stuckey.

Stuckey had a management bias in favor of women and their natural skills in managing insurance service. Porter’s early niche was personal comprehensive protection, a combined home/automobile package. From there she moved into commercial customers, also, after considerable professional education. She became officially certified as an AAI (accredited advisor of insurance) and as a CPCU (certified property and casualty underwriter).

In 1986, Porter went with a Columbia commercial insurance firm, and by January 2001, she was a partner at First Carolina with offices in both Columbia and Charleston. She and her Charleston partner are the only shareholders, and together they have about 30 employees. She is the agency’s vice president and manager of the Columbia operation in their Middleburg office building off Forest Drive. Partner Jed Suddeth is president and manager of the Dorchester Road office, just north of the Charleston neck.

In medical malpractice, First Carolina covers all the markets, one of the few agencies in SC with such scale in the coverage of medical practices.

First Carolina participates in the Bridges to Community house building program in Nicaragua. This year they contributed enough money to fund a house, and next year some of Porter’s people may well go to Nicaragua to build their second house.

First Carolina’s Web site is www.firstcarolinains. com and includes detailed descriptions of their offerings, which include real estate/construction, commercial property and casualty, manufacturing, health care, and a proactive workers’ compensation program.

Porter may have the window at the head of her suite of offices, but she insists the weight of the work and the company’s capabilities are fairly evenly distributed all the way down the hall.

Betsy Porter