Taking Stock

As I write this, my final Chairman’s Voice column, Nanette and I are on an airplane to Boston. We will then drive to Newport, R.I., where we will attend the summer conference of our state executives, which will be hosted by their President, Mark Male, a long-time close friend. It doesn’t seem possible my term as your chairman is winding down. The time has gone by so fast—but we have accomplished a lot of things that make us a better association than we were almost one year ago.

InsurBanc evolves. By merging InsurBanc with Berkley’s larger bank, our member agents are now able to take out much larger loans and we believe the new bank will be profitable by first quarter 2014.

InsurPac continues to be a shining star. At last count, we were ahead of 2009 when we exceeded our record-breaking $1,000,000 threshold! Get those dollars in so we get back to raising $1,000,000 again.

Trusted Choice® expands state grants. Going “all in” on our national brand has enabled us to distribute more dollars to each state in the form of matching grant money. We also are offering each state a $7,500 grant per Make-A-Wish chapter with no match. At press time, all but three of our states have taken advantage of at least one of these opportunities, which is an all-time record! Thank you state associations!

CAP goes live. The portal went live on June 30, as CAP President, Chip Bacciocco, promised. Obviously, at launch there were bugs and lots of them. Chip’s team is meeting each of the challenges and concerns head on. I am confident CAP will meet our expectations as time goes on. Please sign up and join this important initiative. CAP needs our participation to be successful!

Young Agents, InVEST, Diversity continue to grow together. Young Agents, we all agree, are our future. They are doing great things and are working with InVEST, as well as the Diversity Task Force, to be more aligned. InVest is booming, as the number of programs, states and students continue to explode. I have loved working with these programs.

Government Affairs is front and center. You all know how talented our Government Affairs team is and how effective they are every single day on Capitol Hill. We are as close as ever to passage of our NARAB II agent licensing bill, which will allow us to have a “clearing house” for our non-resident licenses. Stay tuned as we see how issues play out because, as we know with Congress, each day is a new day.

Planning Committee moves forward. Made up of the Big “I” Executive Committee and the IIAE (State Executive’s) leadership, as well as Dick Poppa as facilitator, this group has already had several meetings after doing a survey of our states. We also met at the Legislative Conference in Washington, D,C, with more than 60 young agents to get their input on the association’s plans for the future. We will meet with them again in San Antonio in September. They have great ideas. Please send your young agents to San Antonio!

As our association prepares to meet this month, I will pass the gavel to my great friend, Tom Minkler, with whom I have had the pleasure of working for the past five years. Tom will do a tremendous job as our chairman and has an extremely capable Executive Committee with which to work.

It has been both an honor and a pleasure to serve as your chairman this past year, and Nanette and I look forward to our final year of service on the Executive Committee. We have enjoyed meeting so many people over these past six years and are excited about the coming year! We hope to see you in the future. I