IIABA New President Eyes Regulations, Technology

The group also installed William G. Stiglitz III, an account executive with Louisville, Ky.-based Hyland, Block & Hyland, as president-elect and elected J. David Daniel an at-large member of the executive committee. Mr. Daniel is president of Daniel and Eustis Insurance in Baton Rouge, La.

In an interview with National Underwriter, Mr. Grau, who is a sales executive with Cogswell Agency in Great Falls, Mont., said that he plans to concentrate on four main issues during his one-year term as the association's president: being a strong advocate for the Trusted Choice independent agent branding program; working toward greater improvements in the area of technology for agents; insurance regulation modernization; and re-energizing the role of the Standards Committee as a voice for the consumer.

He said the Trusted Choice marketing program is still in its infancy but is an important asset that independent agents can use to gain market share. The program emphasizes the independents' advocacy role for the consumer and their ability to offer choices they will not find among exclusive and captive agents.

"We have to make that point and make that point clear," he said. "We want to focus on the 87 percent of the consumers who don't see a difference between [captive and independent] insurance agents and gain back the market share captive companies took away from us."

The measure of success would be to see 5,000 agent participants by the end of the year and four more company partners. He said critical mass for the Trusted Choice program is to grow to 7,500 agent members in the next three years. The current membership is at 3,800.

But the real success of the program will be when customers seek out Trusted Choice agents, which he said is the long term perspective.

On technology, he said while there is still a lot of work to do, companies are on their way toward making it easier for agents to work within their agency management systems, but it will be up to the independent agent community to reward those carriers who have made strides toward that end. Agents can do that by using those carriers who provide that technology.

"What we see happening is companies are working to create greater functionality, but we are not seeing agents use it," he noted. "We want agents to use the functionality companies have created, and as they use it, more carriers will bring on more capabilities."

Generally, Mr. Grau said he was pleased with the direction technology trends are going in, that overall there have been tremendous strides made.

He said by companies and agents working through the Agents Council on Technology, the industry will achieve the needed improvements that will drive down the cost of doing business.

On the issue of insurance industry regulation, Mr. Grau said there is no disagreement on the need for modernization of the industry, the only question is will it be federally regulated or remain the domain of the states. From the discussions and bills currently being crafted in Congress, federal legislators appear to be leaning toward the IIABA's middle road position of federal regulatory standards that are enforced by the states.

He said it will take "grass-roots activism" on the part of the members to ensure passage of favorable legislation, which would serve to control expenses and bring sense to the industry and provide licensing reciprocity.

"We don't need a radical departure from the current system," observed Mr. Grau. "The current system has some onerous regulation and needs to be fixed. It is expensive and drives unnecessary costs for carriers, and companies have every right to ask for change and modernization."

He said independent agents "have not maintained their focus of our role as the voice for the consumer." Mr. Grau said he would look to re-energize working with rating bureaus and state regulators as a voice for the consumer in the development of forms and regulations.

In her remarks Sunday as the outgoing president, Louise "BeBe" Canter, senior vice president of Patterson-Smith Associates in Falls Church, Va., said, "The goal of every president is to leave office a little bit better than when they came in."

During her one-year term, she said the association's committees have been reinvigorated. The association's political action committee, InsurPac, has grown to $1.3 million, made strides toward insurance modernization and streamlining of the system, greater technology modernization, grown Trusted Choice, and improved the curriculum of educational courses.

A more diversified group of agent members and a new energy of ideas, she said, have helped to benefit the association and keep it "the premier agency association we are today."