Published: San Antonio Express-News
By: William Pack
Date: March 29, 2011

While its state-of-the-art campus is just breaking ground in Northwest San Antonio, Nationwide Insurance already is in hiring mode with plans to nearly double its local staff.

Nationwide officials said Tuesday that job applicants need not wait for the 300,000-square-foot customer sales and service center to be completed in Westover Hills to pursue employment with the financial services firm.

“We're hiring new associates now,” said Michelle Premo Koehler, Nationwide's vice president of customer sales and solutions.

Nationwide has openings in the four facilities it leases in the area and will be adding new insurance agents in the area along with positions at the new center, officials said. It could mean close to 900 jobs for the area over three years.

“We're taking it to the next level,” said Terrance Williams, regional vice president of Nationwide's Central Plains and Southern Regions based in Richardson.

The new facility, scheduled to open in the summer of 2012, means the creation of 838 jobs, most of them call center-based, customer service positions but also some supervisory positions and sales positions.

Nationwide already has more than 900 employees currently in San Antonio. They, too, will be moved to the new facility, an environmentally sensitive complex that can hold up to 2,000 employees.

In addition, Nationwide is aiming to expand its presence in Texas, which should bring more than 160 new Nationwide agents by 2013. Williams said San Antonio is one of the key markets in that initiative.

The company's plans drew applause from County Judge Nelson Wolff and Mayor Julián Castro, who said new jobs are “the sweetest music any community can hear.”

Castro called the $500,000 in cash incentives and the 10-year tax abatement the city provided the Nationwide campus a sound investment because it both allows the city to retain hundreds of jobs and to produce hundreds more.

The county provided similar incentives to the project, and the Texas Enterprise Fund gave Nationwide $2.5 million in incentives.

Initially, workers at the new facility were projected to earn an average salary of $38,000 a year.

Whether that still holds is uncertain. While once more than half of the new jobs were expected to require investment or financial licenses, most of the new positions now are projected to be customer service jobs, only a portion of which need licenses.

Officials said entry-level jobs in the new center will earn $12 an hour, while some employees will earn $40,000 a year.

Williams said a major reason that drew Nationwide to San Antonio is the large number of workers who can speak English and Spanish. Hispanics are a rapidly growing customer base, and Nationwide wants to serve that population in the language the customer prefers, the vice president said.