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 put out a bulletin to members and non-members in which it took credit for several things the PIA had nothing to do with and I am tired of it,” Bill Stiglitz, IIABA president-elect told said during the Alabama Independent Insurance Agents Convention’s general session in Destin, Fla.
“PIA has no concept of comparison, zero,” Stiglitz said. “They have 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 commented on the situation at FAIA’s annual Convention in Orlan-do, Fla., and subsequently commented to 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 now gone.
Grady 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 we are going to force it upon them and make a strong appeal to their membership about the merits of only supporting one association because of the strength that can be gained by us 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 else our message gets mixed up and 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 trying to battle 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 agency 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 the argument that there are too many organizations is ridiculous.
“The fact is that there are several agent associations in the state but his only target has been PIA,” O’Connell said. “Less than 15 percent of our members also belong to FAIA and the majority of the remaining members have indicated they 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 help make them 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.”
O’Connell said the most ridiculous comment he keeps hearing from FAIA is that PIA is hurting the agents legislatively.
“Other than the argument about who actually represents agents, it is insulting to even suggest that our focus is on anything other than the best interest of agents,” O’Connel said.