FAIA Says PIA of Florida ‘Gave Away the Playbook’ to the Opposition

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

“Recently PIA sent a bulletin to members and non-members taking credit for several things it had nothing to do with and I am tired of it,” Bill Stiglitz, IIABA president-elect told the Alabama Independent Insurance Agents Convention in Destin, Fla.

“PIA has no concept of comparison, zero,” Stiglitz said. “It has 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 mentioned the situation at FAIA’s annual conven-tion in Orlando, Fla., and subsequently told Insurance Journal:

“These two entities were formed 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 mutual insurance companies.

Grady said the reasons for two associations are gone. He said agents need to “stop competing with one another in front of policy makers because it detracts 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 are going to make a strong appeal to their membership about the merits of only supporting one association due to the strength that can be gained by 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, we have to speak succinctly and together, or our message gets mixed up. Legislators 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 battling 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.'” Grady said that happened a couple of times.

“We have to get rid of the 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 agent’s 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 FAIA’s argument about too many organizations is ridiculous. He said, “There are several agent associations in Florida but the only target has been PIA. Less than 15 percent of our members also belong to FAIA and the majority of remaining members are not interested in joining. If we didn’t exist most of those agencies would either not belong to any 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.

“Our focus is and always has been supporting our members to be successful professionals. We have never pretended we could do that entirely on our own. It is the height of arrogance to presume that any one individual or organization can be all things to all people, yet FAIA professes to be the one answer to all agents.”