Onward & Upward

Sandra Glaser Parrillo, 2011 Insurance Professional of the Year Award Winner

Donald F. Vose, President of the Board of Trustees for The Insurance Library Association of Boston

I'm afraid this blog languished while we worked on the Education Fair in September and the Insurance Professional of the Year Event in October. November is suddenly upon us and we're shocked at how quickly our annual meeting is approaching.

I mentioned last year that after The Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony it often feels like a new year around here (perhaps it's no coincidence that our event occurs in the same season as Rosh Hashanah). So I'm sure you'll pardon us as we reflect a little.

A lot has happened in the last year:

1. We've worked harder on maintaining our website and blog. We've started a LinkedIn profile for the library and we're exploring ways to make our library even more available electronically.

2. We've added more items to our adopt a book program, and to our wishlist (and we finally got the laptop we'd put on there several years ago!).

3. We held our first ever Education Fair (with a lot of support), and had our 10th Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony (which included a lot of firsts as well).

4. We put on our first ever (though, not last) silent auction during the social hour at The Award Ceremony -- thanks to a lot of support for that, we raised about $6,300 for the library!

Some staff changes include:

1. Our Director, Jean Lucey, changing her schedule to working three days a week.

2. Our "other" Jean, Jean Osborne, increasing her hours to three days a week (we don't ever want to be short a Jean).

3. Meagan completing another two CPCU tests on her way toward earning the designation.

It really does feel like a whirlwind, but we are glad that you were here for the ride!

Board?

We're overwhelmed with preparations for two big events this fall. The first is our Education Fair,scheduled for Thursday September 8th. We'd love it if you stopped by the Library to explore some of our course offerings, get education counseling or just to take a look at some of our spruced up classrooms. We'll have refreshments and drawings for some great prizes as well as insurance-related items free for the taking!

We're also working on preparing printed invitations for The 10th Annual Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony printed this week so that we can mail them out next week. We have 26 tables already reserved, leaving 9 still available (if you're interested, you should probably act soon!).

Since we’re so busy and I’m finally making a blog entry, you might think I would be popping in to discuss hurricane-related subjects-- a lively wind vs. water debate, perhaps. You'd be wrong though. I saw something interesting on the web and thought I would share it here for those who are interested. This spring, I wrote on earthquakes and one of the earthquakes mentioned was the one in New Zealand which damaged Christchurch Cathedral.

They've come up with a unique solution for an interim church. They're creating a cardboard cathedral. The architect has built similar structures in Japan, following their earthquake. You can read more about the solution here, here and here. I think (though I might be misunderstanding the model) that they'll even have stained glass windows. It's not a cheap solution, but it is supposed to last for a decade, at which point they hope to have a suitable replacement.

For those of you disappointed we didn't talk about hurricanes this time, I leave you with a link to this article. It reminds me of a scene from Low and Behold, an independent film dealing with claims adjusters in post-katrina New Orleans. There's a point in the movie where the main character attends a claims adjuster conference and the leader says:

I used to lay in bed at night and pray to God that he would bring a natural disaster on this country, a disaster so large as to bring massive property damage. No one would get hurt or die. But it would yield the largest claims the industry had ever seen.

The director said that he'd actually heard this speech given when he was training to be a claims adjuster but that no one believed him. Perhaps he wasn't making it up. . .

Still disappointed? How about this article from the New York Times which mentions:

While insurers have typically covered about half of the total losses in past storms, they might end up covering less than 40 percent of the costs associated with Hurricane Irene, according to an analysis by the Kinetic Analysis Corporation.

Annual Meeting Recap

This year's annual meeting was fairly eventful. We said a sad farewell to several of our trustees. Trusting that they'll remain stalwart library supporters.

Paula Gold Vice President and Chief Regulatory Counsel for Plymouth Rock Assurance, has been replaced by Charles (Chuck) C. Hewitt, III Executive Vice President of Guy Carpenter.

John Donohue CEO of Arbella has been replaced by Jim Hyatt, also of Arbella. In June, Jim Hyatt became the Vice President of their personal lines group.

Philip J. Edmundson, CEO and Chairman of William Gallagher Associates, who was brought on as an associate treasurer mid-term 1989 and then as a full board member as of the November 1989 meeting, also passed the torch. Patrick J. Veale, President of WGA, has taken Phil's place (he brought up some excellent points during the meeting and we're eager to see what other ideas he brings to the board).

Though his term was not up, Josiah D. Hatch, president of H. R. Hatch Insurance Agency, has stepped down. He was a special appointment to The Board in December of 1995. The Board voted to make him a Trustee Emeritus for all of his hard and exceedingly productive work over the past 15 years. A new Trustee will be appointed to fill Josiah's place.

Other changes to the board included the election of a new Board President, Donald F. Vose Vice President of The Andover Companies. He seems eager to become familiar with all of the committees and has already sat on an education committee meeting.

A good portion of the meeting was also devoted to discussing the many Massachusetts and New Hampshire insurance continuing education classes which the library provides and the future of those classes. This included highlighting our foray into webinars with "Coverage Review of the Business Auto Policy" slated to start in January. See our website for current and upcoming class listings!

The Frank W. Humphrey Award

The Frank W. Humphrey Golden Anniversary Award was established by Maurice H. Saval (after whom our education arm is named) in honor of Frank W. Humphrey, his mentor. Mr. Humphrey was at the agency Boit Dalton & Church, later Frank B. Hall & Company and now Aon Risk Services of Massachusetts. The prize was first awarded to commemorate Mr. Humphrey’s 50th year in the insurance business and is intended to be a special tribute to his contribution to our industry by his guidance and assistance to young people entering the business.

The winner each year is chosen from among those students who have successfully completed the course in Property and Liability Insurance Principles taught by Joe Sciacca. The student with the highest grade on the national exam that year earns the award. The presentation each year takes place during the Library's Annual Meeting.

This year's winner was Michelle Mozzicato from Crum & Forster. Michelle Mozzicato has worked at Crum & Forster Insurance for the past 11 years. She began her career with C&F as an Executive Assistant, and held that title for nine years. She was promoted to an Operations Supervisor in 2008, and most recently promoted to Operations Manager in 2009.

Prior to Crum & Forster Michelle was an Executive Assistant at BankBoston for 14 years. Michelle is married with two teenage boys, and resides in Stoneham, MA.

The picture below of Joe congratulating Michelle was taken by her husband at this year's meeting. You can expect more information on the annual meeting in tomorrow's blog post!

Joseph Sciacca & Michelle Mozzicato

Welcome to the Library

We thought it might be nice to start our first blog post ever with a virtual tour of the library. Because we're librarians though, and not videographers, this will be a low tech virtual tour. One of the membership benefits is acess to the library's conference and meeting rooms. While many members take advantage of this benefit, we wanted to be sure that all members were aware of it. This resource is especially useful for our members based outside of Boston who can use the library as a place to arrange meetings with clients and others when they are visting Boston.

The first stop on our tour is the Joseph Moore Room (it is sometimes also referred to as the A. M. Best Room Because of the number of Best publications housed there). The Joseph Moore Room is on the main floor of the library. Among other books, we keep in this room the NAIC Proceedings going back to the late 1800s, The Best Insurance Reports for Property Casualty and The Best Insurance Reports for Life Accident and Health both dating as far back as the early 1900s. This room also comfortably seats about six people at the table or ten including the surrounding area with a door that can be closed for more privacy.

Next up follow the beautiful spiral staircase down to the Board Room. This room has many of our historical publications including, Massachusetts Commissioners' Reports dating from the mid-1800's to the mid-1960's, bound journals, and other older reference materials. This room also has some beautiful fire insurance artifacts. On the walls are various fire marks (click here for more information on fire marks -- please note that this takes you away from our website and that we do not have a special relationship with/or necessarily endorse organizations that are linked to on this website) and we have plaques with firemen, along with a lovely three foot statue of a fireman. The board room sits twelve people around the large conference table very easily, but up to twenty people can be easily accomodated in this room including seating outside of the table.

Just off of the Board Room is the room often referred to as the Sanborn Map Room. The Library has a collection of Sanborn maps for all of New England. Our maps were last updated in the mid 1960's, but depending on the particular map they may be older or newer. Formerly, updates to the maps were done by gluing any changes over the older map. They are fascinating maps to examine and are used by fire insurers, architects, and surveyors, even today. The Sanborn Map Company is still in business, though they've updated their mapping techniques as technology has improved. The Map room can be used for small meetings: like the Joseph Moore Room above, it fits about six to ten people. Often, people will use the map room if they are having a catered lunch in the board room (though we do ask that people be extremely careful around the maps).

The Library occupies the basement, first and second floors at 156 State Street. The classrooms, where we offer our continuing education classes on site, are located across the hall, on the first floor, from the board room and in the basement. These rooms are also available for use by our membership if they are not already being used for classes. Below you can see two examples of the four rooms we have available. Each classroom has a white board, a screen for a projector and a podium. Depending on the classroom they can acommodate anywhere between fifteen and twenty people.

This concludes the tour of the library for today, but, hopefully, we will have many more posts in the future that will highlight what the library has to offer, both to the public and to the membership.