As we go to press, we anticipate the appointment of Jim Wrynn as Superintendent of Insurance. By now, it may be done. We were pleased to have featured Jim on the cover of our June publication when he assumed the role of Executive Director of the New York State Insurance Fund. We have come to know him as a solid, well organized executive who brings legal and administrative expertise to his role. We look forward to covering the new Superintendent.
Meanwhile, Kermit Brooks as Acting Superintendent did a fine job picking up quickly and effectively where Eric Dinallo left off. In this issue, Peter Molinaro summarizes and praises Kermit’s speed on the uptake. We wish Jim Wrynn all the best…Raul Rivera and Sheila Wyse of National Benefit Life have advised that NBL will be leaving its West 34th Street headquarters and moving over to One Court Square, 44th Floor, Long Island City, New York. Their new telephone number is (718) 248-8787. National Benefit Life, a long time presence in the Insurance Advocate will move into the beautiful City Corp building that corner-stoned development in Long Island City…We goofed with the name of Al Moss’s daughter, I guess because we were concentrating so much on her beautiful picture.
Mimi Michaels (not “Marilyn”) has been making it on TV and in LA in the movies so often that most Americans will surely learn her name… We are pleased to learn that Mark Yavornitzki long time quarterback of the NYSAIFA, who tutored with legendary lobbyist Ben Brewster, will be moving into private practice, with his principal client being the very enterprise for which he has advocated so effectively these many years, the NYSAIFA. Mark will be looking at strategic alliances that will be announced very shortly. The Association with its numbers down following the track of the entire financial services industry will be managed by the office that currently manages the New York City chapter of NYSAIFA. The New York City chapter has long constituted about 50% of the total number of members and is very well managed by an extraordinarily good organization. This move enables Mark to concentrate on the legislative agenda of the thousands of insurance agents represented by the association and enables him, as well, to grow a business. We have known Mark since his days with Senator Ron Stafford and always found him a creditable, hardworking, intelligent advocate for life underwriters. We wish Mark the best of luck…Cooperstown, New York has so much more to it than the Baseball Hall of Fame that if you have not been it is an ideal 48 hour get-away. We had the pleasure recently of attending a meeting of the New York State Historical Association held at the Fenimore Cooper Museum and were greeted by the most cordial hosts imaginable, both at the Otesaga Hotel and at the Museum and were able to catch the dress rehearsal of an opera, some extraordinary fine dining, and some of the most beautiful vistas in New York.
Members of the Clark family have made preservation an art form. The lake is not developed in the pejorative sense; in fact the entire village and surrounding area have a quiet elegance that surpasses much of the east end of Long Island and many of the other lakes we have visited in upstate New York…While there, we enjoyed a breakfast with Jim Potts of New York Central Mutual who is dedicated to fighting fraud and offered us some insights into his company’s approach to marketplace problems. Jim is a straight shooter and we hope that the insurance community will hear more from him as time goes by… Another point of interest, on our way back from Cooperstown was one of the three routes one can take to avoid the monotony of superhighways, namely Route 28. We noticed that LICONY has scheduled its annual meeting September 28th – 30th in Cooperstown and has recommended three alternative ways of getting there from New York; to those who are attending, we also recommend LICONY’s third choice for some of the most scenic vistas available…In a way, we were pleased to hear from so many of our readers over a mistake we made in the last issue; it was a clear demonstration of just how well read this publication has become.
On the other hand we regret the inadvertent omission of the lines that were left off the article we ran that picked up the now famous Stella Awards for presentation. Our idea was, on the heels of the President’s healthcare and reform package, to remind everyone that tort reform is at the crux of the problem and represents an enormous cost savings to the consumer and to the entire body of healthcare and insuring problems, from medical malpractice insurance all the way to the simplest healthcare fraud and other schemes. Our disclaimer was inadvertently left off at the bottom of the page. You will notice that there was a great deal of white space there. We presented these venerable old examples of the absurdities to which our system can easily come, for their very believability and effective delivery of the tort reform message.
We regret the error. Frankly, in an age where the very best printing—which we do enjoy—goes directly from our computers to plates on press, an error like that is often hard to catch before the final products delivery. We take pride in the fact that there are very few of these, but nonetheless regret this one which drew fire from some readers… Some of the news coming in lately has been quite sad including the passage of two friends in the business for many years who distinguished themselves in a number of ways. The first is David Twomey who wrote for this publication (“Upstate Update”) for many years, who was president of the Independent Agents of New York and Chairman of the enterprise known as Brace, which battled bank deregulation. Dave held many other positions with the Independent Agents of New York Association and was a very thoughtful, clearheaded leader during his tenure…The other sad news was the passing of Joe Lombardo of Yonkers at 87 years of age, who was past president of the Yonkers Independent Agents Association and a long time member of the Westchester Association’s board. Joe was a distinguished marine veteran who served in the South Pacific in WWII in Okinawa. He was known as an outstanding agent during his tenure as President of Lombardo and Erling and later Lombardo-Scotti. We will miss them both...
The empathy thing…
If it’s true, as the President and others have held, that empathy in leaders is an important characteristic, one would think that those representing certain Assembly and Senate districts in New York State would want to live as close as possible to their districts so they would be able to understand with great immediacy the concerns of their constituents i.e. the people who elect them and who pay them and whose futures depend to an extent upon them. It comes with great surprise that such empathetic legislators as Assemblywoman Carrozza of Queens and Senator Spada of the Bronx have chosen to live in areas that are more upscale than the districts they were elected to represent. It is some time ago since Sanford Rubinstein of Ramapo had his residence in Bridgehampton but represented the Rockland County community… and the list goes on and on of individuals who violated this public trust and, who, like Espada, have denied and defended it based upon loopholes in the law. We believe the loopholes should be closed. While it is not logical to assume that someone can necessarily do a better job of representing a district simply by living in it, on the other hand, if empathy is to be a characteristic of leaders, then it would be implicit that they look to this kind of “on the level” representation. Again, the corruption in almost everything surrounding Albany these days seems to be eating away at voter trust.
Perhaps that same sentiment will find its way to the ballot box and eat away at the roster of the current, rather permanent legislature…Dick White joins First Rehab as its new President. We will be preparing an interview with him to talk about the company’s direction. He succeeds John Baldwin who moves up in the company. More on this in a future Insurance Advocate…Data Life, Inc., under the leadership of Simon Jacob has landed several new international accounts together with its U.S.
accounts in the creation of formulae and applications for the assessment of Life Settlement portfolios. As investors in this area become skittish while holding on to lots of properties, their valuable new tool called SAVE ™ which stands for “scale of actual value index” will prove a priceless tool. The company is based in Verona, New Jersey…The Demetriou General Agency always in our centerfold, has taken another step in its growth. This company is trying to strike a balance between becoming big enough—yet not too big—for agents and brokers. We salute the upbeat approach of Michael Demetriou and John Mavroukas and their staff has taken and plan to take a deeper look at this company in an upcoming issue of the Insurance Advocate…Robert Benmosche no stranger to those of us in New York after his great stewardship at Metropolitan Life, has taken the reins at AIG and moved into the job with speed and care, brightening up the summer a little bit for the giant insurer. We wish Robert and the AIG team the best of luck in bring back into the private sector and to serious profitability this great institution.