Business Profile

Lyndsey Cumberland, the owner of Farmers Insurance in Niwot's Cottonwood Square, purchased the Farmers Insurance agency from Leigh Suskin in October of 2022. The new owner of Farmers has been licensed as an agent since 2009.

Cumberland was born in Minnesota and moved with her mom to Colorado in 2002. After graduating at the top of her class from high school "on the Western Slope," Cumberland said she had many adventures and interesting careers, including selling insurance and serving as a regional manager for a furniture manufacturing business.

Cumberland graduated from Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, where she majored in political science and environmental affairs. She started selling insurance in college "to pay for my college education," she said. She went on to work for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, where she "assisted with making maps for recreation trails."

When her husband was furloughed from his company, he began to travel frequently as a consultant. And when Cumberland's contract with the Bureau of Land Management expired in 2016, she said she decided to return to her previous career and take advantage of her long expertise in the insurance industry.

"With my prior background understanding lobbying and governmental construction contracts," she was hired by Farmers in 2020, she explained. "I was still a stay-at-home mom and was also applying to graduate school to earn a masters and PhD in political science. I planned to teach."

Cumberland said, "I was accepted into a 'protege program' to become a Colorado agent. Then I had the opportunity to buy a book of business that Farmers controlled, and I purchased the agency in Niwot."

Buying a business as the Covid era was winding down and being the mother of a small child with a husband whose work takes him away for weeks at a time is not easy. But Cumberland has risen to the challenge.

Cumberland said she tries to be in her Niwot office three days a week and works remotely the rest of the time. She said her agency is small – about 300 clients – and that the most challenging task has been to find and hire good help. "The biggest struggle I've had," she explained, "has been finding reliable staff who are educated."

She also said that "the bar is lower now for insurance jobs," and that, often, a high school diploma rather than a college education is enough for employees who, she said, are now "more salespeople than advisors."

Cumberland said she is interested in supporting the local community and local businesses. The president-elect of a local Kiwanis Club, Cumberland said, "I am who I am. I like to support the local community."

Cumberland described what she considers "the biggest disruption in years in the insurance industry." "With hazards such as inflation, car accidents, fires, floods, legal fees and other factors, some insurance companies are going out of business," she explained. "It's important that clients do their research about the financial health of the company they choose to sign up with and also to make sure they are adequately insured."

But she isn't worried about the community she serves. "Niwot, though, is a collection of highly intelligent people and critical thinkers," she said, and she is certain they will choose the right agency.

A resident of Thornton, Cumberland and her husband, Christopher, an engineering consultant, are the parents of a five-year-old daughter, Quinn.