Meanwhile, Back in the Heartland…
As of this writing, most of the United States is sitting here holding its collective breath and waiting for Hurricane Rita to touch down on the already devastated Gulf Coast, even while the experts are still toting up the damage from last month’s Hurricane Katrina.
But meanwhile, back in the Midwest Heartland, life goes on. At last month’s annual convention of the Professional Independent Insurance Agents of Illinois in Springfield, Ill., attendees seemed more interested in analyzing the ongoing DOI investigations of agency commissions, the impact of workers’ comp reform, or the evergreen agency concerns of perpetuation, cross-selling and their own businesses. Katrina was definitely on the radar, but it wasn’t the preeminent issue under discussion.
Not that we don’t care about what’s happening in Mississippi and Louisiana. It seems safe to say the insurance industry, and our country as a whole, will continue to feel the impact of Katrina for a long time to come. Every community seems to have its share of displaced families in our schools, nursing homes and neighborhoods. On a more mundane level, we worry about the cost of gasoline and heating fuel as our notoriously wicked winters approach. But beyond that, it’s admittedly hard for us flatlanders to comprehend what it must be like to live in disaster-prone regions like the Gulf Coast, California’s earthquake belt, or even the New England seaboard with its destructive Nor’westers.
It’s ironic that all of these risky places–Florida and the beauty of the Everglades, New Orleans and its Old World charm, cool and lovely San Francisco–are the places we Midwesterners love to visit, but don’t necessarily want to settle down in and call home. More than 20 years ago, one of my cousins from the tough Chicago Back of the Yards neighborhood (stockyards, that is, back when it was still alive and stinking) made a bold and unprecedented move to California. She’s been there ever since, but I’m sure some of us who stayed behind are still wondering when she’ll come to her senses and move back to Chicago. After all, they’re all crazy out there.
Last month I wrote about how states like Illinois and Ohio are attractive to insurance companies. While sources spoke of friendly legislators and sensible regulatory systems, I couldn’t help but think that the real draw is our weather, or lack thereof. Yes, we get tornadoes and sometimes droughts in the summer, and infamous snowstorms in the winter. But even the worst of these “catastrophes” can’t hold a candle to what is now looking like an unprecedented $60 billion insured loss from Katrina–and Rita is lurking in the wings.
So while you read this week’s issue of IJ and ponder upon the business-as-usual topics of fraud, lawsuits and the softening market, be glad that these are the kind of problems we in the Midwest have to contend with. To quote another girl who had developed a real appreciation for the comparatively tame world of Kansas, “There’s no place like home.”