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

We'll Trade

We'd like to take this opportunity to share with you some teaser photos from The Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony (all photographs courtesy of Emily Photography). In exchange for the pictures, we'd love to get 1,000 words (we'll settle for your two cents -- we are a non-profit after all).

As mentioned in our most recent newsletter, we're interested in people's memories and reactions to this year's event. Any suggestions for next year's event would also be welcome including recommendations for possible nominees (though we can't promise that they'll win). Please post your responses in the comments section below!

Michael J. Sabbagh, 2010 Insurance Professional of the Year Award Winner

Name Tags

Acceptance Speech

Presentation of the Portrait (provided each year by Commonwealth Auto Reinsurers)

Award Winners Past and Present

(from left to right)

Daniel J. Johnston, 2006 winner

William F. Hofmann, III, 2002 winner

David J. Lane, 2004 winner

Richard W. Brewer, 2009 winner

Michael J. Sabbagh, 2010 winner

John K. Golembeski, 2007 winner

Ralph "Buddy" Iannaco, 2005 winner

John B. Connors, 2003 winner

Not pictured: Ronald Mariano, 2008 winner

Annual Meeting

Following close on the heels of the Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony every year is the Annual Meeting of the Association. This year the Annual Meeting has been scheduled for Tuesday, November 16, 2010. All members of the Insurance Library are encouraged to attend (as an incentive there is a light breakfast served at 8:00am) and hear about current initiatives at the library, take a look at the library budget, and hear about new library business.

If you are a member and are unable to attend, please feel free to fill out the proxy form found here.

We hope to see you in a couple of weeks!

Products Liability Vertical File

Look two posts in one week! Remember when I said we might pop in with something brief but of interest? Here we are. The library has a number of "subject files" in our collection. These are hard copy files where we put news clippings, brochures, pamphlets etc. on various subjects related to insurance.

Today, The New York Times had an article that will likely end up in our products liability file. They also had this lovely graphic showing big settlements in drug cases:

Source: New York Times 10-27-10

New Year's Resolution

When you're in school you follow the academic calendar, with the year starting in September. When you're in business your year starts with the new fiscal year. Here at the library, it's not official, but I feel like the year starts again after The Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony is over (I might be the only one here who feels that way).

We just completed another busy start to our fall season and had a very successful (we think) event on Friday. So I feel it is time to make some new resolutions about our coming year. I vow that the library blog will no longer sit sadly neglected. We will attempt to post at least once a week, if not more.

While I cannot promise that each post will be long and descriptive, we would like to see this space be a place where we discuss current happenings at the library and in the insurance field as a whole. It might be that we just pop in and mention a great article in the New York Times that describes Insurance Exchanges (with a helpful image for clients); that we announce that the library has started an insurance fiction section (we have the entire set of Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone Mysteries); or we might ask you to respond with suggestions/comments on events and offerings from the library.

Did You Miss Us?

The blog went on a short sabbatical last month. Between holiday closings and staff vacations, the library was busy just keeping up with requests!

Speaking of requests, The Library gets a number of interesting requests each year. We highlight some of the requests in our newsletters each quarter and provide a number of them online in our Q & A section of the website. But did you know that the library was featured in Star Magazine December 29, 1987? That's right, On the Front cover is "Jeane Dixon Predicts for 1988" and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore were hot honeymooners (not to mention Michael and Bubbles, and Charles and Di) and inside is an article entitled Wild & Wacky Insurance Claims for which we provided the fodder.

This week an instructor was asked what type of policy insured Liberace's hands and Bette Grabel's legs. He replied that it was a surplus lines policy, probably a disability policy in particular. Slate.com discussed just that three years ago when Mariah Carrey also apparently insured her legs.

Perhaps, considering all that's gone on in Haiti in the past week or so, you think this blog post is full of fluff? Maybe you'd like answers to more pressing questions? Are you wondering about insured losses in Haiti? According to a National Underwriter article citing AXCO Insurance Information Services, Haiti is "one of the smallest markets in the Americas with a total non-life premium income of just under $20 million." To put that number in perspective, total non-life direct premiums earned in the state with the lowest dpe,Vermont, is 1,094,361,000 (according to the NAIC 2008 Market Share Report by State and Countrywide) or nearly 55% more.

Insurance Journal has an article that does bring some hope to the situation, at least as far as re-building efforts. Haiti is a member of The Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) and it appears they will give about 8 million dollars to Haiti after a 14 day waiting period so they can hurry the process of rebuilding along. National Underwriter cites Eqecat as saying the property damage is in the hundreds of millions.

Every little bit does help, though and those in the insurance industry have not neglected Haiti. According to another article by the National Underwriter, many companies have sent donations to a number of relief organizations over the last week. The Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation, gives details on at least four of the donations. The CPCU Society has also set up a matching program for individual CPCUs and Chapters of up to $25,000 for the Clinton/Bush Haiti fund.

If you'd like to contribute to help Haiti, there are many organizations out there ranging from rebuilding projects, to health and human welfare organizations, far too many to list. The FBI issued some guidlines to make sure you donate to reputable organizations.