AAMGA Special Section

New president shares goals

Francis Johnson seeks to broaden AAMGA's marketing efforts

By Phil Zinkewicz

“In today’s insurance climate, the need is greater than ever for marketing the professionalism of our MGA members.” —Francis Johnson AAMGA President-elect

Last year Joe Hutelmyer, president of Seaboard Underwriters, Inc., Burlington, North Carolina, and then incoming president of the AAMGA, discussed his goals for his term of office. They included increasing membership involvement in AAMGA committee activities, giving more support to the AAMGA University, educating AAMGA members about new technologies that are available, and getting the message across to insurance companies on both sides of the Atlantic that using “professional” MGAs can help grow their businesses.

This year, incoming AAMGA President Francis Johnson, president of Johnson & Johnson, Inc., Charleston, South Carolina, has similar goals in mind, but his idea is to expand upon them and then emphasize the “marketing” needs of the association.

“I think the AAMGA leadership has done a good job of putting together a strategic plan that is right for these times in the insurance business,” Johnson says. “In today’s insurance climate, the need is greater than ever for marketing the professionalism of our MGA members—marketing that professionalism to our own members, our associate members and to capital providers here and overseas. I would like to see more involvement of our Under Forty Organization (UFO) in AAMGA committees. These are the AAMGA leaders of the future. I credit my past membership in UFO with the strides I’ve made in the association. The importance of UFO members networking with their older colleagues and of exchanging ideas cannot be overemphasized. The relationships we create between members and overseas capital markets are extremely valuable.”

Johnson’s history with the AAMGA goes back to even before he was a member of the UFO. “My parents were taking me to AAMGA meetings when I was 14,” he says. “The AAMGA members became my mentors. I watched, listened and learned, and I’m still doing the same things today. That’s one of the beautiful things about AAMGA. It offers the opportunity for social and business networking and mentoring.”

Johnson says that when he talks about marketing the AAMGA’s professionalism to overseas insurance markets, he is referring particularly to Bermuda. “They have a good deal of available capital there,” he says, “and that can lead to new products for AAMGA members. Not all of our members have a full understanding of how the Bermuda market works. Some UFO members recently went to Bermuda to study the market. I will be putting together an international business symposium in August that will focus on the Bermuda market. That’s how important I believe the Bermuda market is to our members.”

Another of Johnson’s goals this year is to raise capital for the AAMGA University. “The University does a magnificent job of providing courses and updating them for our members,” says Johnson. “I cannot stress enough how proud we all are of our University’s achievements. Now we want to raise additional capital to bring on new teachers and to improve even more the University’s curriculum.”

Johnson says that education is of the utmost importance in today’s insurance climate. “Many of our younger members had never seen a hard market like the last one,” he says. “Now the market is softening, not overall but in certain lines, and many of our younger members have not experienced that kind of transition. The University’s challenge is to educate these younger members and prepare them for dealing with market cycles.”

Asked whether recent investigations into the insurance business—New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s ongoing probe and more recent investigations by various state insurance departments—have had any negative effects on the MGA community, Johnson said: “only in perception.”

He continued: “We are not really touched by the current investigations because, as MGAs, we don’t accept a fee from the client. We are being paid by the insurance companies. Bernie Heinze, our executive director, has done a tremendous job of explaining our position to regulators. However, there have been some bad apples in the business of insurance and that fact has raised questions in the minds of legislators and regulators as to the ethical behavior of everyone in the business. Here’s where we will shine at the end of the day. We have our own code of ethics that is more than words on a piece of paper. We monitor our membership’s behavior and, if a member is found to be acting unethically or illegally, that member will be forced to leave the association. We also teach ethics courses to our members.”

Concluded Johnson: “This is why I believe that it is so important for us to market the values of the MGA. Our members, as wholesalers, are professionals who are well educated and who can bring more stability to the company-retail agent relationship. Ethical behavior is our strong suit. This year, we intend to get that message out to all concerned.” *