PLUS Special Section

Bringing PLUS initiatives to fruition

By Phil Zinkewicz

At next month’s 21st annual PLUS International Conference being held in San Francisco, attendees will be given a registration brochure whose cover reads: Prospects For The Future: Golden Opportunities or Fool’s Gold?

What exactly does that mean? Rough Notes asked outgoing PLUS President Stephen J. Sills that very question. “It connotes a professional liability insurance marketplace that is uncertain at present. The market is competitive, but the claims environment has been very benign. We in the business have to decide whether it is time to expand and take advantage of the favorable claims situation or whether to wait and see if we are in the darkness just before the storm.”

Sills said that premium rates in the professional liability arena are dropping, in some cases, in the double digits. “However, even with the lower rates, if claims experience remains favorable, will that work to our advantage?”

Changing regulations in the United States regarding corporate disclosure requirements, changing exposures in the errors and omissions and directors and officers arenas as more U.S. companies consider expanding internationally, and changing trends in the property and casualty insurance marketplace in general are adding to this uncertainty, Sills said.

Sills, an expert in specialty liability insurance, until recently was chairman, president and CEO of Darwin Professional Underwriters, the company he founded in 2003. He also founded and is the former CEO of Executive Risk and was the catalyst for the company’s growth over its 13-year history. Under his leadership, Executive Risk grew from a small, private D&O reinsurance facility into a publicly traded $600 million specialty lines insurance carrier.

He was featured in the Fast Company magazine article titled “These Executives Love Risk.” The article discussed Executive Risk’s entrepreneurial, responsive and innovative atmosphere. He also has been quoted extensively in numerous insurance periodicals and major business publications and has been featured on CNN Financial News Network’s show “Business Unusual.”

Last year, as Sills took over the leadership of PLUS, he said he intended to spend his term building on past initiatives rather than starting new ones. “I didn’t think it would be fruitful to build a mile wide and an inch deep,” he says. One area Sills intended to build on was PLUS’s international posture.

“There is no question that PLUS is increasing its international activities to keep ahead of this changing world,” says Sills. “This year, we hosted a symposium in London — as we did the year before — to exchange ideas between the U.S. insurance marketplace and the London marketplace. We have nominated a London insurance market representative to our board. In addition, we hosted an executive meeting in Toronto. We have talked about increasing PLUS’s international reach. We have decided it’s better to do it than talk about it.

“Also,” continues Sills, “this year, PLUS strengthened its position as the quintessential source of information for our members. In that regard, we have expanded our university and made significant changes in our RPLU program. Some years ago, PLUS unveiled a master plan to create new materials for our RPLU program. That project has now been completed with all 23 modules of the new curriculum finalized.”

Over this year, according to Sills, PLUS has continued in its efforts to attract young people to the professional liability marketplace. “For the young people who are in the insurance industry, we want to educate them as to the relevance of professional liability. For those not in the industry, we want to build bridges with other schools and universities to attract them to the business,” says Sills.

Finally, Sills notes, PLUS has worked to do more to help local chapters. “The local chapters are the lifeblood of our organization,” he says.