Outgoing IIAT President Focused on Creating Value for Membership

When Bill Harrison Jr., IIAT president and president of Coleman Company Insurance Services in San Antonio, hands over his leadership responsibilities to incoming IIAT president Randy Reynolds, Harrison expects the association to be in good hands. Harrison congratulated Reynolds on his new leadership position and said Reynolds “is a proven leader” with a “clear, set plan” for guiding IIAT in its mission in the coming year.

In an interview with Insurance Journal, Harrison reflected upon his IIAT presidency and said he’s looking forward to continuing to serve the organization as past president, engaging in the business of his own agency and spending time with his wife and three young daughters.

Following are excerpts from that interview:

Insurance Journal: What issues are important to independent insurance agents now?

Bill Harrison: There are a number of them. They are some of the issues that have challenged independent agents forever, and those are the issues of growing and managing their agency operation, managing the marketplace, and dealing with and successfully executing the perpetuation challenges that face every member of our organization. …

New issues have come about this past year, specifically, transparency–with the Eliot Spitzer investigation and those in other states. Transparency has become a buzzword in our business and has been an issue that independent agents have had to deal with and will continue to have to deal with. That’s transparency specific to our compensation.

There has been legislation introduced to help solve the transparency issue with consumers and with independent agents in the state, and IIAT played a large role in negotiating language on behalf of our membership for that bill.

IJ: What were your goals as president of IIAT and what progress have you made toward achieving them?

BH: There were several specific goals I wanted to address. One was to make a diligent effort to continue to create value for the members of IIAT, and also to enhance our brand both with our membership and with the marketplace.

We did that a number of different ways. At the beginning of my term, we offered InfoCentral free to all of our members in good standing. InfoCentral is our Web-based proprietary information tool; it’s got technical reports; it has specific issues and comparisons. There’s a wealth of information captured within that database that prior to my presidency was a service one paid for in addition to the membership. We opened that up free of charge to members, and it’s helped tremendously in engaging our members in the heart and soul of IIAT.

Our staff and our executive committee traveled this past year more than I have seen them travel for the past five years. We traveled within the various local independent agent associations across the state, we met with boards of directors in local communities and we made most of the Big “I” days. …

I charged both my board of directors and [IIAT Executive Director] David VanDelinder and his staff with making sure that we got out of the office this past year. We made sure that we were in front of and dealing with all of the members across the state, in communities like Amarillo, El Paso, Texarkana, and Paris, Texas. …

Another goal I had was to try to energize and engage our grassroots legislative efforts. We had a very busy legislative session.

Thanks to the hard work of Bo Gilbert and David VanDelinder, we had a great showing at our Legislative Day in the spring. We’ve made significant strides from the grassroots level in making sure that our message was heard by our legislators as we addressed a number of different issues–from transparency of our compensation to school finance to a premium finance bill to a number of different business issues that would affect our members. We did one heck of a job in making sure that legislators heard from our members on issues that were important to them. …

Our board of directors is very sensitive to making sure that IIAT is providing the types of support and services to the membership they expect, and that we are providing that to all members–not just the large members of that organization and not specifically to the small members of the organization, but to make sure that we are providing products and services and support to members of all sizes, and all types of communities. And we were successful in several regards.

IJ: What remains to be done?

BH: As our business changes so should our association, to make sure we stay in tune and in line with the needs of our members.

With the legislative challenges that face our industry, we still have a lot of work to be done. … We will be back again in an effort to level the playing field in regard to independent agents and E&O liabilities. The bottom line is, members of our association pay too much money for E&O insurance in this state when compared to comparable states, and we think it is because there is an imbalance and an inequity in some of the state’s statutes, so we will be back to fight that battle again in two years.

IIAT is the largest Big “I” state association in the country, and in my opinion we are the best in the country, as well. We are the best at what we do, and I give credit to David VanDelinder for his leadership and his vision and the team he has assembled in Austin. Along with being the biggest and being the best comes a lot of responsibility. … We need to make sure that we continue fulfill the expectations of the membership.

In some of the workshops we’ve put on and the management-specific data that we’ve provided, we have seen a real change in the last few years. … We have had to reach deeper into an organization to make sure we were providing the necessary tools for our members to succeed.

For example, many of our members now have CFOs or a similar position at their agency. We have a number of agency owners that have IT managers, or IT staff on their payroll to deal with the challenges of the IT marketplace. We have a number of members that have HR managers, or people that have assumed a dedicated HR responsibility. We have to make sure that IIAT changes [so] we are providing both the education and management resources necessary to help those positions prosper and to help them succeed in those specific areas. That’s a big change from … 10 or 15 years ago.

IJ: What do you feel are some of the benefits of being a member of IIAT?

BH: The education products and services we provide are the best that are available in the market place. Our legislative efforts and our legislative strategy benefits every member of our organization, and is an important part of what we do–making sure that we are well connected with the legislature and that we clearly communicate the needs and the concerns of our members.

From a management standpoint, there’s no better place in my opinion to be able to obtain published information, or to have the opportunity to interact on a social basis, at a function or at an IIAT event, with the best leaders in our business. The most successful independent agency operators in the country are members of our organization, and the opportunity for a member to be able to interact, share, talk and learn from other members, in my opinion, is invaluable.

IJ: What advice would you give to young or new insurance agents?

BH: First, I’m going to tell them is, congratulations, this is a great business to be in, it’s a great industry to be in, and from a timing standpoint, it is great to be one of us these days.

Second, the sky’s the limit in terms of opportunities in both wealth creation and from a leadership standpoint in this business

I would remind young people getting into this business that there has been a great advancement in the development of technology in the last five and 10 years. [We are] doing business through e-mail and over the Web, utilizing PDAs and voicemail. … While all of those tools are terrific tools to help us be more efficient and to help us to better manage our business affairs–at the end of the day, your independent insurance agency business is a people business. The best way to build a book, and to prosper and to succeed, is to use technology to its advantage to help you become a better-managed, more efficient individual.

Never forget that this is a people business and doing business face to face is the best reward of being in this business, and the best way to build a book and to continue to be successful.

Finally, I would say: Get involved in your local and state association. It will be the best investment of time you’ll make in this business.