Angels of the Industry 2001

The date of Sept. 11 has been indelibly etched into the minds of virtually every American. And yet, despite the tragic events of that day and their repercussions, at least one ray of hope has shone through—that is, the pulling together of many individuals, inspired to do something to alleviate the suffering of others.

It would be impossible to recognize every individual who has contributed in some way during the past months. But in honor of all who have, there are some special examples that reflect the best side of an industry not given its due in that regard.

In the days immediately after the attacks, the Independent Insurance Agents of America (IIAA) and its New York affiliate established America’s Survivor Relief Fund, set up under the IIAA Educational Foundation. Numerous Big “I” state associations and local boards have also stepped up to contribute to the fund.

Jeff Myers, vice president of public affairs and public relations, explained that the sole purpose of the fund is to provide money to needy families who lost a loved one in the disaster or a victim who survived the disaster. It also provides the IIAA’s independent agency members and other industry professionals an outlet to make contributions.

“There are no administrative costs associated with this fund,” Myers said. “Our bank, InsurBanc, is doing the same—absorbing the administrative costs so that we can pass on 100 percent of the contributions. To date we have raised just under half a million dollars.”

Myers said that the first distributions will go to two military families. In one family, the husband, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. army, was in the Pentagon when it was attacked and sustained burns over 60 percent of his body. The second family, unfortunately, lost their loved one, who was also a lieutenant colonel in the army.

Myers noted that a due diligence process is undertaken to be sure the funds are distributed to needy families and not to con artists. He said the association has worked with local churches, charitable organizations, agencies, foundations as well as the state government in New York to identify potential grant recipients.

While donations to the fund have come predominantly from independent agents, Myers said there have also been a number of contributions from other insurance organizations, including Canadian agent associations, the National African American Insurance Association, and both Allmerica Financial Corp. employees and its charitable foundation.

“We plan to keep the fund open and active as long as contributions are coming—as long as there is a financial need out there by victims and surviving family members,” Myers said.

When Sept. 11 occurred, the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies’ (NAMIC) 106th annual convention was only two weeks away. According to NAMIC President Larry Forrester, a meeting of the board of directors was quickly convened to wrestle with the question of whether the association should go ahead with the convention, or postpone or cancel it.

“During that discussion, it was obvious to the board that it would be inappropriate for the association to ask 1,800 of its members and spouses and guests to climb on an airplane and fly to Washington, D.C., for a convention,” Forrester said. “Secondly, there was a concern that we would be sitting at a banquet at the Washington Hilton, and across town they were still trying to locate people.” In the end, the decision was made to cancel the event, but Forrester said there remained a strong sense that NAMIC and its members wanted to do something to help. It was then suggested that members who had registered for the convention be asked to contribute their registration fees to a Disaster Relief Fund.

“We then realized many of our members who had not registered for the convention also wanted to…provide some kind of financial contribution,” Forrester continued. “So we sent a letter out to the companies who had not registered…and asked them to consider contributing the equivalent of one delegate registration fee.”

Forrester said the response has been overwhelming, and monies have been allocated to four different organizations: the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund; the Twin Towers Fund; the New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund; and the Salvation Army’s relief effort.

“We also were impressed and pleased to see that our friends to the North, the Canadians, immediately took up their own efforts to raise funds,” Forrester said. NAMIC’s Canadian member companies donated $40,000 (U.S.) by donating convention registration fees or making equivalent donations. This is part of NAMIC’s $476,000 contribution already donated so far. In addition to that amount, $20,000 (Canadian) was raised in a golf tournament and matched by Farm Mutual Reinsurance Plan Inc.

Forrester said there is currently no cut-off date for contributing to the fund. NAMIC will continue to accumulate donations and periodically make a contribution to one of the organizations.

“In addition to the monies which our companies already committed to attending a convention…many of these companies indicated they were also spearheading their own disaster funds through their own company employees and were going to direct their own funds to other efforts,” he continued. “It’s just a ripple effect…Just from our own constituency group here, the dollars were easy to come by, but now we’re getting to the more difficult part —how we all deal with it going forwards, not only as an insurance industry but as a community.”

On the West Coast, the American Agents Alliance, which bears the distinction of being the first trade organization to move forward with its regularly scheduled annual meeting just days after the attacks, used that occasion to initiate a fund drive, called the Victims’ Fund, with the goal of raising at least $10,000 for the American Red Cross.

“The tragic events on the 11th touched all of us, thousands and thousands of miles away,” said Lorelle Kitzmiller, executive director of the Alliance. “We felt helpless. We were calling [the Red Cross], trying to give blood, but the telephone lines were busy. We decided that the next best way would be giving money.”

Over the course of the Alliance’s conference, its goal was met, and members who were not present were also given an opportunity to send donations. While a great part of the donations came from the Alliance’s membership, there were also significant contributions from companies.

According to Kitzmiller, $10,931.25 was officially distributed to a representative of the Red Cross on Nov. 29. She noted that the distribution would have been made sooner; however, after being inundated with monetary donations, the Red Cross went through a well-publicized turmoil with respect to allocations of the donated monies.

Kitzmiller said when that happened, the Alliance wanted to be absolutely sure that the monies it had raised would be utilized to help the victims and their families. So the Alliance held off distribution until it received assurance from the Red Cross that the money would be picked up and channeled to Sept. 11 victims.

“We realized that money is not going to bring back anyone’s loss—anyone’s loved one,” Kitzmiller said. “But hopefully it will…somehow make this terrible tragedy a little bit more bearable.”

In response to the attacks, Scott Hauge, president of CAL-Insurance Services in San Francisco, did two things. One was to work with the IIAA and its fund, making some matching contributions for agents that contributed to the IIAA’s fund. However, his major focus was a campaign for small business disaster victims in New York. To that end Hauge worked with the San Francisco Small Business Advocates, a political action committee, and the San Francisco Small Business Network, an association representing about 19,000 small businesses in San Francisco.

“We’ve raised about $75,000 for small businesses in New York working with United Way Sept 11th Fund,” Hauge said. “The contributions for the most part are going to the World Trade Center Small Business Relief Fund.”

Hauge, who is also on the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) National Advisory Council, recently visited New York City to deliver money and to see what was going on with small businesses in the area. “We talked to a few of the businesses close to the Ground Zero area, but what we really focused on were the resources that were available to small businesses,” he said, adding that he also attended meetings with the SBA, the Small Business Development Center and the economic development department for New York State.

According to Hauge, there were 2,500 small businesses in the World Trade Center buildings alone, and an estimated 10,000 more small businesses located in the surrounding blocks.

Hauge said he would most likely continue fundraising through Dec. 15, with the goal of raising $100,000. “But we certainly will keep the linkages open with the small businesses and the groups we talked to back there,” he said.

Karen Chin, CEO of the Insurance Industry Charitable Fund (IICF), discussed the one-time donation of $25,000 made by IICF in direct response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

“That did not come from our general grant money,” Chin explained. Chin said that many nonprofits, not only in California but throughout the nation, are finding themselves “in dire straits…The nation has been so generous, which is wonderful, but much of that has gone to the victims of Sept. 11. And the nonprofits are worried that [the public is] not going to support charities that they have in the past. We didn’t want to put our charities in that position. So we are making donations as we normally do, but for this specific thing the board voted to actually take $25,000 from the endowment.”

Chin said the IICF plans to collect donations until the end of December and will make distributions soon after that. She added that the money will be directed to the educational needs of the survivors, including scholarship funds that have been set up by both Marsh & McLennan and Aon.

Chin also discussed the contributions in response to the World Trade Center attacks of one of the grant areas IICF has supported for many years: WOOF, a group of about 30 search-and-rescue dogs and their trainers.

“WOOF is among the most highly trained groups of volunteers certified by [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], based in California and trained for both urban and wilderness searches,” Chin wrote in a background piece about WOOF in the aftermath of Sept. 11. “By the second day, the first of the WOOF dogs and handlers was at the World Trade Center, others rotated in, and others were on standby to go. Although they were not successful in finding survivors, what they did find was vital in bringing closure for some families, at least, of the thousands of victims.”

Chin noted that last year, IICF sponsored an international training conference for canine search units. “That’s why we feel that the California insurance community helped that whole process by having provided this international search training,” she said.

Chin also has been heartened by opportunities to share with others the industry’s unsung heroes.

“People are always making, frankly, negative assumptions about the insurance industry,” Chin said. “It made me feel good to distribute that information to the greater community.”

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