Gearing up for growth and change
with new CPCU and IIA programs
By Elisabeth Boone, CPCU
The Executive Council for the American Institute for CPCU includes (from left): Kenneth R. Dauscher, Ph.D., CPCU, AIM, Senior Vice President; Elizabeth A. Sprinkel, Senior Vice President; Christine L. Lewis, Ph.D., CPCU, CLU, Senior Vice President and Corporate Secretary; Peter L. Miller, MBA, Executive Vice President; and Terrie E. Troxel, Ph.D., CPCU, CLU, President and CEO.
Tough times call for smart solutions--and amid the myriad of challenges that confront the property/casualty industry today, savvy professionals know that answers are neither easy nor cheap.
That's why many top-tier agents and brokers are making the commitment to pursue the most respected designation in P/C insurance education--Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter. What's more, many agency principals are encouraging or even requiring their employees to study for CPCU or for designations offered by the Insurance Institute of America (IIA), sister to the American Institute for CPCU.
With a newly revised curriculum that allows students to choose between a commercial and a personal insurance track, the CPCU program is also winning praise for its computerized examination initiative (no more writer's cramp!), more frequent exam availability, and online study option. In addition, CPCU credit is now given toward master's degrees, including MBAs, and certain other professional credentials. On the IIA side, students are benefiting from a host of programs tailored to help them fulfill their specific job responsibilities.
Long known as the preeminent force in property/casualty insurance education, the Institutes over the years have developed a well-earned reputation for adherence to the highest standards of ethics and academic excellence. The Insurance Institute of America was established in 1909 through the amalgamation of five local insurance clubs in Hartford, Boston, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. The American Institute for CPCU was founded in 1942 by industry and academic leaders at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Under Terrie Troxel's leadership, the Institutes have made strides to incorporate technology and update curriculum, as well as deepen relationships with other related educational organizations.
The founders of the AICPCU, says Terrie Troxel, the Institutes' president and chief executive officer, "required that the Institute be an autonomous, nonprofit professional educational organization that was independent of any direct business affiliation with the insurance industry. The mission that they set forth at the time of the founding was to establish professional standards for the property and casualty insurance business. Professionalism was seen as requiring three things: education, a commitment to ethics, and experience in the business. So from the very beginning," Troxel points out, "the CPCU program has required high educational standards based on rigorous national examinations; a minimum of three years' working in the property/casualty insurance business or a related field such as management or regulation; and a commitment to high ethical standards."
The AICPCU, Troxel notes, grants one designation: the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter designation. "We view this as our highest, most prestigious credential for people in the property and casualty insurance business," he says. "The IIA originally offered just one program: the Certificate in General Insurance. It now offers 16 associate designations, which are divided into two groups--those that involve specific insurance functions, such as production, management, marketing, underwriting, claims, finance and accounting, premium auditing, customer service, information technology, and risk management--and coverage-specific designations in marine insurance, crime and bonding, reinsurance, surplus lines, and personal insurance." (For a complete listing of IIA programs, see the sidebar on page 162.) "The associate programs typically involve three courses and national examinations," Troxel continues. "They're in-depth programs in specific functions or lines, whereas the CPCU program is a broad, high-level general program."
In addition to her duties as Senior Vice President and Corporate Secretary, Christine Lewis, a 22-year veteran of the Institutes, serves on the Institutes' senior policy-making group, the Executive Council.
Troxel, an experienced insurance educator and researcher, is uniquely qualified to lead the Institutes into the 21st century. He holds a master's and a doctorate in managerial sciences and applied economics, is a CPCU and a CLU, and has served as executive director of the Insurance Research Council (now part of the Institutes), as an executive of the National Association of Independent Insurers, and as director of producer education for the AICPCU and the IIA.
Riding the infotech highway
Today's leaders of the AICPCU and IIA know that their proud tradition is only as strong as their commitment to embracing change, both within the property/casualty industry and in the wider environment. Troxel and his colleagues focus particular attention on new trends in information technology as they relate to education and testing.
In fact, among the most significant changes he's witnessed since joining the Institutes, Troxel comments, are developments in information technology. "We deliver all of our exams except for a few introductory-level courses by computer today; that's something we didn't do five years ago," he says.
IIA exams consist entirely of objective, multiple choice questions and can be graded immediately by computer, whereas most CPCU exams contain essay questions whose answers must be read and graded by insurance experts. Completed exams are delivered to graders around the country via the Internet, and the days of waiting two months for CPCU exam results are over. Many students receive Internet notification of grades within two weeks, and the longest wait is usually no more than four weeks, Troxel observes.
Computer technology also is allowing the Institutes to offer online classes to CPCU candidates, Troxel says. "All of our CPCU courses, the three Certificate in General Insurance courses, and our Associate in Claims courses are available online. We also offer some multimedia educational products. We have a CD-ROM called Insurance Essentials, and a number of companies have purchased site licensing for the product to use for their new employees."
What's more, Troxel adds, "We market our test delivery service to other organizations. The Certified Employee Benefits Specialist (CEBS) program now uses our test delivery service for its exams, and our CPCU counterpart in the United Kingdom, the Chartered Insurance Institute, is experimenting with our service. The Insurance Institute of Canada is also looking at our test delivery service for use in that country."
Updating "intellectual capital"
As the preeminent property/casualty insurance educational entities, the AICPCU and IIA keep their fingers firmly on the pulse of trends and developments in the industry. A key part of the AICPCU's revision of its intellectual capital, or knowledge base, Troxel remarks, was the introduction last year of significant changes to the CPCU curriculum.
Students now can choose either a commercial or personal risk management and insurance concentration. The new curriculum (outlined in the sidebar on page 164) also provides more in-depth coverage of personal financial planning and financial service institutions.
As part of the Institutes' expansion of their intellectual capital, Troxel adds, "We also have introduced what we call Focus Series courses, which are seminar-sized educational courses that are a derivative of our designation programs. For instance, we created a unit called Workers Compensation and Employers Liability Insurance Liability and put together the educational materials for that so it can be offered in a seminar format. About two dozen Focus Series courses are available," he notes.
"We've also introduced what we call SMART Study Aids, which are review materials for selected CPCU and IIA courses," Troxel says. "These aids are designed to help students prepare in those last nervous weeks and days before exams." SMART materials include review notes, flash cards, and a practice exam CD-ROM.
The power of connecting
A third area of change and growth for the Institutes, Troxel points out, is the relationships they have developed with other entities, both within the United States and around the world. "Together with the Chartered Insurance Institute of the United Kingdom and the Insurance Institute of Canada, the AICPCU is one of the founding members of the Institute for Global Insurance Education," Troxel explains. "IGIE now has about 20 members around the world. These are testing institutes similar to our own that offer insurance courses and give exams. Members include the Insurance Institutes of India and Malaysia."
In the United States, "We're involved in articulation agreements with several colleges and universities," Troxel says. "These include New York University, Boston University, and Drexel University; and nontraditional online institutions including Excelsior College in Albany, New York, the University of Phoenix, and Walden University in Minnesota. These articulation agreements allow our candidates and designation holders to use credits that they get from us as credits in undergraduate and graduate degree programs at those schools. At NYU, BU, and Drexel, numerous MBA requirements are satisfied by completion of the CPCU program."
The science of curriculum design
Overseeing curriculum development is just one of the responsibilities of Christine Lewis, senior vice president and corporate secretary of the AICPCU and the IIA. A 22-year veteran of the Institutes, she holds a doctorate in education as well as the CPCU and CLU designations. Lewis also serves on the Institutes' Executive Council, which is the senior policy-making group. "My responsibilities are in three main areas," Lewis explains. "First, I oversee the instructional design process as well as the actual development of all of our educational materials, including textbooks, course guides, and study aids." To put this in perspective, she comments, "We have 76 textbooks, 51 course guides, and numerous study aids."
As her second area of responsibility, Lewis says, "I oversee the design and development of our national exams. Last year we administered over 73,000 national examinations, and we're projecting over 74,000 this year. My third area of responsibility," Lewis continues, "is working with a new product development unit called the Center for Educational Innovation. Any kind of training and education need that our customers have, aside from our designation programs, is developed by that unit. We provide a wide variety of products: technical skills and training models, customized courses, instructors' guides, online courses, pre- and post-instruction assessments--anything that would fall into the category of training and education." The Center's customers are insurance carriers, many of which are able to arrange for on-site CPCU and IIA testing for their employees.
As head of curriculum development, Lewis, like Troxel, views the redesign of the CPCU curriculum as a key step in the AICPCU's ongoing effort to ensure that the CPCU program meets the needs of insurance professionals for timely, relevant information. She also speaks with enthusiasm about the Institutes' conversion from paper and pencil exams to computerized testing. "This was a significant initiative for us," she says. "We had to develop the software to deliver the exams. As part of that initiative, we started offering proctored exams, under secure conditions, right at employers' sites. We have more than 500 employer sites where students can take their exams, in addition to testing centers run by Prometric, with whom we have a contract to administer our exams. This gives students a lot of flexibility in where they can take their exams."
Mary Ann Cook, CPCU, AU, AAI, Director of Curriculum, is responsible for the textbooks, course guides and two CPCU exams. She also serves as Director of the AAI designation program.
When the Institutes made the transition to computerized exams, Lewis continues, "We also expanded the number of sessions during which students can take the exams. Before, we offered them three times a year. Now we have four one-month windows in which students can take our exams. Students' ability to schedule their learning is greatly increased because of our move to computer exams."
As Troxel mentioned earlier, CPCU exams are now graded by computer. "We still maintain a very rigorous process for developing a fair and complete grading key," Lewis emphasizes, "but once that key has been developed, it is available on a secure site to our graders, who can access the key, access the CPCU exams and download students' answers, and--if a student has done exceptionally well--send the grade to the student the next day." This rapid turnaround isn't the norm, Lewis notes, but it has happened.
Wisdom from the agency ranks
When it comes to practical nuts and bolts knowledge about the workings of a property/casualty agency, there's simply no substitute for experience. That's exactly what Mary Ann Cook brings to her position as a director of curriculum for the AICPCU and the IIA. She is responsible for the textbooks, course guides, and examinations for two CPCU courses dealing with personal risk management and property-liability insurance and personal financial planning. She is also director of the Accredited Adviser in Insurance (AAI) designation program, which is undertaken by many independent agents and brokers. Before joining the Institutes in 2000, Cook served in executive positions with brokerages in personal lines, commercial lines, and account management. She holds the CPCU, AAI, and AU (Associate in Underwriting) designations.
To Cook, her position is truly a dream job. "It's exciting to take courses like AAI, which are so relevant to the agent and broker market, and develop them in a customer-focused way," she says. "It's a great way for me to use what I've learned on the agency side and take it to a higher level." In the agency environment, Cook says, "Every day is about change--not just how to respond to change and manage it, but how to anticipate it and indeed be the driving force behind it. Here at the Institutes, we do the same thing: We're constantly evaluating our course content for relevance and timeliness. We feel very strongly that our compact with our students requires us to provide them material that is current and that also alerts them to possible future changes in the social or regulatory or legislative arenas. Here at the Institutes, we don't make those changes," Cook says. "What we do is review our texts on an ongoing, regularly scheduled basis to make sure our students have the most current, reliable information available about the environment of insurance."
High praise from agents
Speaking of driving forces, the agent and broker community is a staunch supporter of both the AICPCU and the IIA. Albert R. "Skip" Counselman is president and chief executive officer of Riggs, Counselman, Michaels & Downes, Inc. (RCMD), a Baltimore brokerage established by his forebears in 1885. Counselman serves on the board of trustees of the AICPCU and IIA and is a past chairman and director of the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers.
Counselman received his CPCU designation in 1977. He says proudly that one of his daughters has been working in the agency for four years and is pursuing her CPCU designation to carry on the family tradition. "One of the proudest moments in my life was when I received my designation," Counselman says. "It's always stayed with me."
Within his firm of some 225 employees, he says, senior management targets certain employees and requests that they undertake either CPCU or specific IIA studies. "We do everything we can to encourage these people to pursue the designations," he says. "We pay 100% of the costs, and we reward them by sending them to the CPCU Society annual convention to receive their designation. We also send at least one and often two people to the convention every year, whether or not they're getting their designation. We have about 25 CPCUs on our staff, and we encourage them to become involved in chapter activities; we pay their dues. We've had three or four chapter presidents within our organization; the current president is one of our senior executives."
The Institutes' Program Directors are each responsible for developing the curriculum, textbooks, course guides and examinations for two to five Institute programs. They are (from left): Connor M. Harrison, CPCU, AU, ARe, Director of Curriculum; Donna J. Popow, J.D., CPCU, AIC, Director of Curriculum and Intellectual Property Manager; Arthur L. Flitner, CPCU, ARM, AIC, Assistant Vice President; Mary Ann Cook, CPCU, AU, AAI, Director of Curriculum; Martin J. Frappolli, CPCU, AIS, Director of Curriculum; Ann E. Myhr, CPCU, ARM, AIM, Director of Curriculum; Lowell S. Young, CPCU, CLU, APA, Director of Curriculum; and Karen K. Porter, J.D., CPCU, ARP, Assessment Development Specialist.
To enhance clients' awareness of the value of the CPCU designation, Counselman says, his firm includes it with other professional credentials in proposals for both new business and renewals. "We use a standardized template with a section on professional credentials, right up in the front of the proposal," he explains. "We explain what those credentials are, and we tell our prospects, as well as our current insureds, how many people within the organization hold each designation. We want our prospects and clients to know they're dealing with a professional organization that values continuing education, and that we employ many people who have the CPCU, the CLU, and the ARM, as well as many who have law degrees, MBAs, and CPAs. We believe all of these credentials tell the insured RCMD is committed to education and professionalism."
Strong customer focus
Equally enthusiastic about the Institutes' work is John Pryor, CPCU, ARM, AAI, AIS, principal in KIA Insurance Associates, Inc., of Bakersfield, California. Founded by Pryor's father, the agency dates back to 1926 and serves California's heavily agricultural Central Valley as well as the oil and manufacturing risks of Kern County. Like Counselman, Pryor serves on the AICPCU/IIA board of trustees. He also is a member of the Associate in Insurance Services (AIS) Advisory Committee, a former member of the Accredited Adviser in Insurance (AAI) Advisory Committee, and a member of the CPCU Society's National Board of Governors.
Pryor received his CPCU designation in 1960. "Next I pursued ARM (Associate in Risk Management)," he says. "The ARM concept is so customer focused; it really made sense. AAI came later, through my work in the agents association, because there's a correlation between the Big I and the AAI program," Pryor continues. "AIS came last, and from a management perspective it's the most valuable because it teaches organizational and leadership skills that we really need to hone in the business today."
"I see the value of the Institutes' programs to brokers on two distinct levels," Pryor says:
1. "Technical knowledge-- to serve customers effectively and professionally and to 'out-compete' other brokers."
2. "Leadership knowledge-- and skill sets--to build a great staff and help them understand the critical elements of customer focus, continuous process improvement, and professional development--which goes full circle back to technical knowledge."
"The various IIA programs and the CPCU program help brokers understand not only how we do what we do in insurance transactions but, equally as important, why we do it," Pryor asserts. "That's the fundamental difference between training (how) and education (why)."
He offers an example: "When I started in the insurance business in the late 1950s, I had a pretty good array of products on my 'shelf' to sell to customers. My focus was on selling those products. Since working through the CPCU and IIA programs, I've turned my focus around 180 degrees.
"Now I start with the needs of my customer and work back, using my technical knowledge. I supplement this knowledge with the highly customer-focused risk management process I learned in the ARM series, together with the quality principles I learned in the AIS series. The technical skill sets we learn in the Institutes' educational programs are critical in helping customers perceive that we're competent. They also help us avoid E&O litigation. At the same time, the leadership and quality skills we learn in AIS help us graphically demonstrate our technical skills.
"Our challenge," Pryor asserts, "is to convince agency principals of the value to themselves of the Institutes' educational programs that teach these technical, quality, and leadership skill sets. Once they see the value, they take the courses and encourage employees to take them as well."
The lamp of learning
Surely no institution could hold the lamp of learning higher, more proudly, or with greater integrity than the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters and the Insurance Institute of America. Both their impressive past achievements and their bold new initiatives evidence an unshakable commitment to excellence in property/casualty insurance education at home and around the world. *
* Accredited Adviser in Insurance (AAI®)
* Associate in Claims (AIC)
* Associate in Commercial Underwriting (AU)
* Associate in Fidelity & Surety Bonding (AFSB)
* Associate in Information Technology (AIT)
* Associate in Insurance Accounting & Finance (AIAF)
* Associate in Insurance Services (AIS)
* Associate in Marine Insurance Management (AMIM®)
* Associate in Personal Insurance (API)
* Associate in Premium Auditing (APA®)
* Associate in Regulation & Compliance (ARC)
* Associate in Reinsurance (ARe)
* Associate in Risk Management (ARM)
* Associate in Risk Management for Public Entities (ARM-P)
* Associate in Surplus Lines Insurance (ASLI)
* Associate in Management Programs (AIM)
Under the new curriculum, 11 courses are offered. To earn the CPCU designation, a student must pass a minimum of eight courses (five foundation courses, plus three from either concentration).
Five foundation courses
CPCU 510: Foundations of Risk Management, Insurance, and Professionalism
CPCU 520: Insurance Operations, Regulation, and Statutory Accounting
CPCU 530: The Legal Environment of Risk Management and Insurance
CPCU 540: Business and Financial Analysis for Risk Management and Insurance Professionals
CPCU 560: Financial Services Institutions
Three courses in either the personal or commercial insurance concentration
Commercial Concentration (with personal survey)
CPCU 551: Commercial Property Risk Management and Insurance
CPCU 552: Commercial Liability Risk Management and Insurance
CPCU 553: Survey of Personal Risk Management, Insurance, and Financial Planning
Personal Concentration (with Commercial Survey)
CPCU 555: Personal Risk Management and Property-Liability Insurance
CPCU 556: Personal Financial Planning
CPCU 557: Survey of Commercial Risk Management and Insurance
For more information:
AICPCU/IIA
Phone: (800) 644-2101
Web site: www.aicpcu.org