PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

ONWARD & UPWARD

By Jason Ernest, Esq. IA&B President & CEO

It’s nice to see the spring sun and the warming weather. It was a difficult winter in many ways, and this spring seems to have more rejuvenation to it. At IA&B, we begin a new fiscal year and a new set of strategic initiatives.

One of those is technology. It is a persistent topic raised by our members, and one we are choosing to deliver tailored assistance on. First, we now have a dedicated Technology Advisor at IA&B – Paul Kapadia. You can learn more about Paul and read his timely article in this issue. We are good at a lot of things at IA&B – but we also need to know our limitations. Paul brings a wealth of knowledge and experience when it comes to technology, and he will be offering this to members.

This includes our Cyber Security Vulnerability Assessment tool (CSVA). Each week, we are reading more and more instances of insurance agencies being targets of cyberattacks. They are becoming more sophisticated, more frequent, and more damaging. IA&B’s CSVA tool helps you identify deficiencies that could allow for these attacks to happen. After completing a short questionnaire about your agency, the assessment is completed behind the scenes, with a comprehensive report of concerns, and ways to address those concerns, delivered to you. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that applies here. Paul assisted in developing this resource and can work with you in getting your agency assessed.

While on the topic of cyber, I also want to mention one of the new partner carriers on our Independent Market Solution (IMS) platform. Cowbell Cyber is a very unique, cutting-edge cyber insurance carrier. Continuous analysis of data (including inside-out proprietary data) generates factors for risk exposures, enabling accurate coverage selection and optimized premiums. You have the ability to offer your clients this protection by writing through IMS. And, IA&B’s own agency now offers Cowbell Cyber for our members. We feel that conducting the CSVA assessment, combined with a comprehensive cyber insurance policy, is the best course in protecting your agency. If you currently don’t have a cyber insurance policy for the agency, please reach out to our sales team for an analysis of needs and a quote.

Finally, as you may recall, IA&B has been undergoing a significant technology build of our own. Over the last two years, with the help of Paul, we have built a custom software system that replaces our association management system and our agency management system. This has been a monumental task, but we are going to come out of it with a software system that works for us. For the member, it will result in a much better user experience when interacting with IA&B. However, beyond just that, Paul and I have noticed how the efficiencies we are creating for IA&B can be translated to the member. We are in the pilot stages of developing dashboards for members, like what we will be using at IA&B. These dashboards can provide members with a different way to look at the agency – with a focus on revenue. Stay tuned.

Enjoy the spring weather, and make it a point to look at how technology can help with your 2021 goals. IA&B is here to help, as always.