The Professional Insurance Agents Western Alliance said that after a year of operation, recruitment has soared above its expectations, noting that 238 agencies and companies have joined the group in the past 11 months.

PIA Western Alliance includes the states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington.

Western Alliance Executive Vice President Clark Sitzes said his organization had budgeted for 100 new members over the year, but the increase in membership more than doubled.

"We only count agencies and not the individuals who work for them or their satellite operations," he said. "The statistics we have say that our agencies average six employees. With the 238 new members, and following that formula, we can say that there are around 1,428 more agents, [customer service representatives] and others that now belong to the PIA."

PIA West said its most impressive growth is in the group states of Arizona, California, Nevada and New Mexico with 142 new members and most of that increase is due to growth in California.

The group gave as reasons for its membership increase the availability of "more and better products and services," as well as the fact that the organization battled hard to defend the business practices of "Main Street agencies" in the fallout of the probe by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer into bid-rigging and contingency fee abuse by large brokers such as Marsh.

"The purpose of the formation of the Western Alliance was to take advantage of strength in numbers," Mr. Sitzes said. "With several thousand agents in our nine states we have been able to go to companies and get products and services that we couldn't access before."

Mr. Sitzes noted that PIA nationally has grown "by somewhere around 800 members in the past year, and it's the first time PIA has shown positive growth in 17 years."

NOT FOR REPRINT

© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.