I am Joseph F. Menschik, CPCU, the new chairman of the Agent & Broker Interest Group. I am a past CPCU Society governor and have been a member of the Agent & Broker Interest Group Committee since 2001. At that time, I and two other outgoing governors, Dean L. Middour, CPCU, CLU, and Richard Gerrond, CPCU, were asked to assist Richard C. Lambert, CPCU, our then-new chairman with the rebuilding of Agent & Broker Interest Group Committee just after 9/11. Lambert has done a fabulous job in that regard and I want to extend my appreciation for his leadership, inspiration, and hard work that molded a great group of people into a cohesive and effective committee to serve you.
The Agent & Broker Interest Group exists to serve you, its other members, and should continue to exist to be relevant to our constituency. In this regard, I ask for your participation and input. We have a wonderful group of members who meet twice a year in person, many of us at our own personal cost. We want you to join us so we can be more effective. The sum of our whole exceeds our individual units. We are volunteers thus we all have limited time and other obligations. Keeping this in mind, what are your reasonable expectations of how we can better serve our membership? Please post them on our web site, http://agentbroker.cpcusociety.org.
The CPCU Society, by its charter, is non-political but that should not stop us from being active, proactive, and vocal as individuals, or through other groups, on political issues. We should also be cohesive as a group for ethical and non-political issues through the CPCU Society that will make for a stronger CPCU Society and a better and more professional insurance industry. The Society itself has to be non-political as it represents individuals from all segments of the insurance industry, and their employers on occasion have differing agendas.
We have put on one seminar at our Annual Meeting and Seminars each year in the past, and try to make them reflect meaningful topics for agents and brokers. This coming year we will tackle three. The first will deal with attracting new employees to our industry; the second will deal with structuring agencies to be accountable to the expectations of employees; and the third is dealing with E&O, and we will partner with the Claims Interest Group. What would you like us to consider in the future?
We welcome and seek your input. We publish at least four newsletters annually. If you feel you can contribute to their content, please send prospective articles to our editor, Ellen M. Clements, CPCU, ARM, CIC, CPIW, at ellen.clements@hrh.com. If you want us to address issues of interest, let us know what they are. We welcome your involvement on any level that you can commit to. If there is something of particular interest to you and we form a subcommittee for that topic, you can participate without a three-year commitment by volunteering to serve virtually on one of our subcommittees. The subcommittee chairmen I will appoint will welcome your assistance. We maintain an active web site. If you have issues you want addressed, post them on our bulletin board.
The insurance industry is changing at an accelerating rate, and staying involved and connected helps keep one ahead of the curve. My involvement in the CPCU Society has been invaluable to me. In the mid-1970s when I wanted to open my own agency, it gave me the connections for three agency appointments to build an agency from scratch. In the intervening years it has given me credibility with many markets, other professionals, and clients of all sizes, some of whom are publicly traded. The personal contacts I have made during Society service have been more than I expected. I have formed strong personal friendships that have grown over the years, and have developed resources and connections for my business where clients or referrals caused me to get involved in interesting and/or strange areas. Three examples are as follows:
• I am currently working on a new client who has an office in Shanghai, China and who has recently bought a major stake in business there. The CPCU Society has provided me with the resources to refer him to a qualified local insurance professional.
• Five years ago, a different client acquired a U.K. subsidiary. The Society gave me the resources to understand the coverages that were in place through the Chartered Insurance Institute and to verify the qualifications of the then-local representation.
• Some years ago, a licensed international arms dealer in Latin America was referred to me for kidnap and ransom insurance by an internationally prominent client of mine. I was familiar with the coverage from the 1970s when I was working on a national account with it but real insight had been garnered later at a CPCU Society Annual Meeting and Seminar program where I had learned the mechanics of what goes on in a loss situation, who were the on-the-ground people. I knew not to recommend a carrier that used retired British S.A.S. negotiators. As a result of the Falklands War they would not be effective in Argentina and my then-client appreciated that information.
Getting involved gives back multiples of what one puts in. Try getting involved in our interest group. We are particularly seeking new members from the west and middle portions of the United States, as we are weighted disproportionately with east coast members, but we really will welcome everyone who wants to participate. The more people we have, the more we can and will do for you.
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