FAIA Targets PIA of Florida: Claims It Took Credit for ‘Big I’ Accomplishments While It ‘Gave Away the Playbook’

During two “Big I” conventions held in Florida in June, speakers accused the Professional Insurance Agents of Florida of taking credit for Florida Association of Insurance Agents accomplishments, while actually “giving away the playbook” to the opposition.

The accusations were leveled by Bill Stiglitz, IIABA president-elect at the Alabama Independent Insurance Agents Convention in Destin, Fla.; and by FAIA President Jeff Grady at his organization’s convention in Orlando.

“Recently PIA put out a bulletin to members and a lot of non-members in which they took credit for several things the PIA had nothing to do with and I am tired of it,” Stiglitz told AIIA’s general session. “We have a member of the press here and he is probably going to quote me, but I don’t care.”

Stiglitz said “Big I” is doing all the work for independent agents-period, and commented that he is tired of PIA taking credit for things they have nothing to do with.

“PIA has no concept of comparison, zero,” Stiglitz said. “They have never been a part of SMART Act discussions, which have been principally a coalition of IIABA, CIA, AIA and PCI. They are now part of that discussion, they can say all they want about the SMART Act, I doubt if they have even read the SMART Act.”

Grady commented on the situation at the FAIA Convention in Orlando and in subsequent comments to Insurance Journal, said:

“My position is that the reason these two entities were originally formed is because FAIA would not allow agents who represented mutual insurance companies to be a member, only those that represented stock insurance companies could be members. PIA became an agents association for agents who represented those mutual insurance companies.

“Today it’s hilarious to even think about it, because no one knows which company an agent represents and how they are owned or whether it is stock or mutual,” Grady said.

Grady said the reasons for two associations are now gone, there are no distinctions and they represent independent property/casualty agents, as do we. There has been this other machination of that reason has gone away, so he picked another area: The one over the last decade has been, “We do a better job of representing the little guy.”

Grady said 80 percent of “Big I’s” members are the little guy with most of its programs focused on education.

“It’s the smaller agent who needs the leverage in the marketplace, and that’s who we are,” Grady said.

Grady said agents need to “stop this nonsensical behavior of competing with one another in front of policy makers because it is detracting from the work we are supposed to be doing for agents.

“If they (PIA) don’t see it, we have asked them to see it, and we are going to force it upon them and make a strong appeal to their membership about the merits of only supporting one association because of the strength that can be gained by us speaking only through one voice, that’s what this whole convention theme was about,” Grady said.

“We want them to see the merits of having a strong, unified voice for agents because we believe in today’s legislature, particularly in an era of time limits when time is so precious we have to speak succinctly and together or else your message gets mixed up and they just forget about you and decide they will do something with you that you in effect can’t agree on,” Grady said. “This happened twice this year.”

“We were in the legislature trying to battle it out for agents and the chairman looked across the hearing room and said, you know if you guys can’t sort this out, we will just let the CFO name that person. That happened a couple of times.

“Up there, when you are in the heat of battle and time is precious and you are ready to put your message out and there is this little guy over your shoulder who represents the agents, it is a problem, so that is why we have to get rid of this whole notion of two P&C agents associations,” Stiglitz said. “If they don’t want to merge, we are going to appeal to their members to support one agency association because that is what is needed for agents to get what they need in the public forum, whether in front of lawmakers, policymakers or consumers.”

PIA of Florida’s position

Mark O’Connell, PIA of Florida’s executive vice president told Insurance Journal that the argument that there are too many organizations is ridiculous. He said the FAIA president continues to believe he speaks for our members when he says there is no need for two associations.

“The fact is that there are several agent associations in the state but his only target has been PIA,” O’Connell said. “Less than 15 percent of our members also belong to FAIA and the majority of the remaining members have indicated they are not interested in joining FAIA. If we didn’t exist then most of those agencies would either not belong to an association or not have a choice. We provide them with a voice and a choice.

“I’m not going to respond to the ridiculous assertion that PIA constantly takes credit for accomplishments carried out by ‘Big I,’ other than to remind anyone who has read ‘Big I’ releases over the years that they seem to believe they have single-handedly solved every problem, including world peace.

“For some reason, that’s important to them. Our focus is and always has been on providing the support our members need to help make them successful professionals. We have never pretended that we could do that entirely on our own. It is the height of arrogance to presume that any one individual or one organization can be all things to all people yet FAIA professes to be the one answer to all agents.”

O’Connell said that perhaps the most ridiculous comment he keeps hearing from the FAIA president is that PIA is hurting the agents legislatively.

“Other than the argument about who actually represents agents, it is insulting to even suggest that our focus is on anything other than the best interest of agents,” O’Connell said. “We’re not the ones that are running around the halls of the Capitol crying about the “other” association or continually throwing out false accusations about us for public consumption. The fact that there is even any disagreement between the two groups would be unknown if the FAIA president didn’t keep bringing it up.”

O’Connell said he has been contacted by a few agents who expressed dismay over the “war” that currently exists between the two organizations.

“Our response is that it’s not a war; it’s a siege because we’re simply not willing to expend our energy or our resources on a misguided turf war,” O’Connell explained. “We have consciously avoided responding to their continued attacks against us, even when most have of them have been false and misleading.

“Despite their accusations, we have not spent one ounce of energy trying to undermine anything that FAIA does,” O’Connell concluded. “The fact that they continue to claim that our efforts adversely impact their efforts speaks volumes about what FAIA really is. “The Power of One”: whether you like it or not.”

Topics Florida Agencies Claims