NU/PC360s' Editor-in-Chief Shawn Moynihan met with Gil Hine, the incoming president of NAPSLO, to discuss how he got into the insurance business, what attracted him to surplus lines and his priorities for NAPSLO for the next year.
Shawn Moynihan: How did you get into the insurance business, and what are some of your career highlights to date?
Gil Hine: After I graduated with an MBA from the University of Texas in 1974, I joined the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of a large Houston-based international food company that owned an insurance subsidiary. The first few projects I worked on were insurance transactions. I jumped at the opportunity to move to the insurance company to be a little closer to the action. They were underwriting some very heavy catastrophe casualty and auto business. They also owned an excess & surplus [E&S] lines agency. I was able to gain valuable underwriting experience, and it wasn't too long before I knew I wanted to return to my hometown of San Antonio and start my own agency.
In 1982, I left Houston, returned to San Antonio and partnered with a recently retired agency executive and one of the finest men I have ever met to start McClelland and Hine. We struggled for the first five months, turned a profit the next month and never looked back.
The highlight of my career is watching a management team coalesce and grow as the agency has grown. Key managers and my partners, some of whom started at entry-level positions, have built a successful independent wholesale agency through loyalty, commitment, and hard work.
Probably the most memorable event was the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Our Houston office was knocked out of commission. Our claims department saw the open claim count climb from a few hundred claims to thousands in a matter of days. My home became a boarding house for Houston underwriters whose homes were not severely damaged who temporarily transferred.
The entire team pivoted from underwriting and production to assisting people whose lives and properties had been turned upside down. With our carrier partners we advanced funds, settled claims and comforted those in distress. It was an incredible effort and underscores the value of what we do as an industry.
Shawn: What appeals to you about the surplus lines sector, and what are some of your (and your firm's) specific areas of expertise?
Gil: I love the never-ending sense of urgency, the commanding need to be entrepreneurial and to balance the objectives of our carriers with the needs of our retail agents and their clients. Even with all the mergers and acquisitions and consolidation, there is still room for independent wholesale agencies to grow and prosper by being nimble and disciplined.
San Antonio was never a hotbed of heavy E&S business. To grow our agency had to adapt to the needs of our market. Small is beautiful. We are committed to being able to profitably produce and underwrite small commercial and personal lines business by investing heavily in proprietary information and communication systems. We have focused on agencies serving smaller commercial clients and provided them a broad array of products that can be accessed either online or via our underwriters.
Shawn: What are some of your priorities for NAPSLO this coming year?
Gil: NAPSLO's priorities do not change year to year and are the result of the collaborative work of NAPSLO committees, the board of directors and the executive committee. Over the past decade, NAPSLO as an organization has grown in stature and value to our members as our industry has prospered. We have invested the resources to build an impressive staff and to expand initiatives across a broad front that have increased the value of NAPSLO to our members. Without a doubt, NAPSLO is one of the premier national associations. It represents the top firms, both carriers and agencies, who are committed to the specialty insurance marketplace and the wholesale distribution system.
More specifically, I think it is important for NAPSLO to continue to work with the NAPSLO Foundation to aggressively expand its footprint on college campuses across the nation to increase the size of the pool of potential candidates to join and eventually lead our industry. We are competing with other industries and other companies. We have to win our fair share. We have an exciting story to tell.
We must also build on our initial outreach to London regulators, underwriters and managing agencies to ensure an effective and efficient regulatory and compliance regime for our members.
NAPSLO also will continue to strongly support the state-based regulatory system. In June 2014, NAPSLO's Legislative Committee and Board of Directors approved Guiding Principles on Uniformity in State Surplus Lines Regulatory Requirements. The document is available on the NAPSLO website, and the principles affirm NAPSLO's dedication to a uniform, national state-based regulatory system.
We will continue to make sure that Hank Haldeman's efforts to enhance our involvement with state advocacy continues and that the resources we have committed are adequate and effective. We must remain actively engaged in key states and on key issues with all stakeholders.
I remain as excited today as I did when I first joined the NAPSLO board on the future of our industry and our association.
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