URMIA Matters

Episode 2: Hot Topics in Risk Management for small, community and technical colleges with Steven Stoeger-Moore

November 20, 2019 URMIA Season 1 Episode 2
URMIA Matters
Episode 2: Hot Topics in Risk Management for small, community and technical colleges with Steven Stoeger-Moore
Show Notes Transcript

What are the top issues for small, community, and technical colleges? Listen in as Steven Stoeger-Moore, president of Districts Mutual Insurance & Risk Management Services (DMI), shares insights with host Jenny Whittington from the perspective of his unique institutional system for collaborative risk management across Wisconsin’s technical colleges. Pssst . . .He also shares tips on how you can gain systemwide support for attending URMIA’s regional and annual conferences.

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Jenny: Hello everyone, welcome back! This is Jenny Whittington, executive director of URMIA, and welcome to our podcast URMIA matters. I am so pleased today to have our special guest Steve Stoeger-Moore, who is the board parliamentarian currently and Steve and I have known each other for quite a long time, I believe. So, Steve why don't we first start by you giving us a little bit of background about how you got into higher education
 
 

Steve: Hello, Jennifer, glad to be here with you this afternoon. I’ve e spent about 35 years in higher education in a number of capacities including: private university, large university, a small college, and then in the technical college system. I have a variety of experiences including campus operations, student affairs, residence hall, contract management and then moving into finance later in my technical college career, taking over risk management function in one of the larger colleges in Wisconsin. 


 Jenny: Terrific. I mean I think your background is super unique and Steve I got to know each other pretty well a number of years ago we co-presented at a community college’s legal conference and Steve is a phenomenal presenter and I'm so pleased that he is on our leadership team. So today we're just going to talk about some hot issues that are going on at Districts Mutual insurance and in the community college environment. So, take it away and I'll just ask you some questions in between.


 Steve: Wonderful, look forward to it. 


 Jenny: So, yeah, tell us about the hot topics. 


 Steve: I think there are several hot topics in at least the world that I work in, and that is the community and technical colleges in Wisconsin. Cyber liability is an extraordinarily hot-button and that includes things like data breach, ransomware, loss-of-use because of some issues that has to do with the lack of ability to utilize your equipment, ransomware actually freezes your equipment. So those are very, very hot topics. All the colleges, like everybody else in today's world, we rely on technology and when technology does not work, it’s very problematic. Typical operations simply aren't able to be proceeding because we rely on technology. Cyber liability probably will be number one. Second would be compliance. There’s a tremendous amount of effort that the colleges have to expend to be compliant. The Department of Education for example has a number of things that are required of the colleges, which could jeopardize financially to students if the college is not compliant. The clear of reporting for example, the drug free schools and communities act, those come to mind, which are compliance requirements. Title 7 and Title 9 requirements again are very, very significant in the college environment because those are the sorts of things they tend to find in the headlines in the local newspaper.  When there’s been some claims of discrimination, retaliation, failure to educate or improper termination, Kaiser proceedings are very problematic for the colleges because they are a PR problem. Another hot topic would be training for the “what’s next” and by that, I mean we spend a great deal of time on business continuity and business interruption planning through tabletop exercises. Preparing the colleges for that “what if” scenario. It's a memory muscle kind of an opportunity than to go through a tabletop exercise with the leadership team to prepare you to be ready to respond in the event that you have an actual emergency and we've encouraged our colleges to prepare for things like weather related events. They are all Wisconsin-based; winter is on the horizon and it's very typical to have weather-related issues. Some of the significant losses that we've experienced over the years we need Districts Mutual Insurance Company have been weather related- hail damage, wind damage, flooding related issues. When those happen and it becomes disruptive tabletop exercises prepare you for actually dealing with that event. So those are some hot topics that Districts Mutual is helping our member colleges be participant in. 


 Jenny: Tell me a little about the system. I can’t recall how many schools are in your system and tell me about how your staff is operating.


 Steve: Gladly. In Wisconsin the Wisconsin technical college system is comprised of 16 districts they are called. Each of those districts is frankly rather autonomous: has its own president, its own local board of directors, easels colleges deliver instruction up to and including an associate degree, certificates really the terminal degree for the Technical College in a 2-year degree, probably about 64 credits. There’s 54 campus locations throughout Wisconsin where instruction is delivered, there is 300, if I remember correctly, types of programs at the technical colleges are participative in, and that is a little less like going to a college where you get a bachelor's degree. The average age of our students for example something like 27; a lot of retraining and recertification done by the colleges. There's a number of colleges who have outreach kinds of business and industry related contracts for college expertise, is higher to deliver something some tangible product to a respected customer, often times that’s done at that customer’s location, so there’s a real variety of programs that the colleges offer. The Districts Mutual Insurance staff really is in place to meet the needs of the technical colleges’ membership. And each of our colleges is a member of Districts Mutual insurance; they’re the founding members. We’re not a marketing organization, we don't try and sell our product anybody else we exclusively work with those 16 colleges. So, my team provides Direct Services to the 16 colleges. We have a campus security consultant who works on all issues that are campus security related, and literally go to the college campus tell help ascertain the environment that is existing on campus and how to improve that campus security environment. We have an environmental health and safety consultant, who works on all things safety related, local compliance with any kinds of issues, that individuals as well travels to the college campuses, very (?) and provides Direct Services to them, recommendations how to make a better environment for their students, a safer environment. And then we have a business continuity crisis response consultant who does the tabletop exercises, who helps the college get ready for that perspective of a business interruption situation. And then the last consultant is really the risk management and insurance consultant, that’s the role that I play. 


 Jenny: Ok, very good. And you guys are fairly unique. I'm not familiar with another URMIA member who’s set up quite like you. Are you aware?


 Steve: Not quite as unique as what I think we are Jennifer has a really good question. I'm asked that somewhat routinely. In Wisconsin you cannot form a pool- that's against Wisconsin's insurance law but in other states you can do that. Sort of take advantage of the college’s willingness to be participative together, we actually formed a municipal Mutual Insurance Company in Wisconsin. The uniquity of that exists in each of the colleges holds a Municipal status, so they could form a municipal Mutual Insurance Company. There's a large group, programs out there that are very successful. Our uniquity lies in the fact that we are the insurance company, the college members formed us, and we serve strictly those college members, those 16 college members. A couple years ago now, maybe more like three years ago, frankly we actually changed our name to include Risk Management Services, as part of our official title because we've looked at how to best serve the colleges. We have an insurance product, but that's in joined only when you have a loss. So that's a reactive situation. We want to focus on the proactive things like doing Risk Management Services. So we added that phrase to our name, and that really became the outgrowth of all of the staff, vs. what I talked about a couple moments ago because they're really service-focused individuals. We act as an advocate for our colleges at the time of loss to help try and move them through the labyrinth of a claim, filing remediation recovery. I mean our job frankly is not only providing insurance coverage, but we help guide the colleges through that recovery as well. I think that's a rather unique approach We’re an insurance company that wants to pay the claim of our college member.


 Jenny: That sounds like a good place to be. With your student affairs background, I know that makes you unique member with URMIA, can you give us any examples of how that’s helped in your risk management career?


 Steve: When you think about higher education, the reason that we are in existence is to educate young people. And so, when I worked in student affairs, I had a very strong relationship with the student pop, the student population on campus. And as the chief student affairs officer my job was really to represent the student interest to higher management on campus. So, when student leadership had issues relative to what's going on with the students, the student affairs staff typically have their finger on the pulse and we provided the feedback then to upper management on campus. I think what it does for me on a day to day basis is it keeps me focused on why we exist. We exist to teach students, a real cumbersome phrase, but if not for students, higher education wouldn't exist. So, I think my experiences in student life, in student affairs really helped crystallize for me how important it is to have an educational opportunity that recognizes the needs of the student and puts that student need first. 


 Jenny: And did you have a relationship with your risk manager at the time?


 Steve: When I was involved in student affairs at one of the colleges with Jennifer there wasn't risk management even on the radar screen then so that goes back a couple of different generations, if you will, in my own progression in my in my higher education career. When I worked in student affairs it was really an insurance program you paid premium in exchange for premium you got claims paid. That's a reactive environment. The new environment that DMI has helped create and foster our college members has to be proactive to do all the other things that try and reduce the opportunity for loss, reduce the risk,  and if you do have loss we will try to look at ways to make sure that we don't have a recurrence of that loss. So, we’re trying to do the risk management things on an ongoing basis 


 Jenny: Very good. I mean I think when I look at URMIAs progression over the years, we just celebrated our 50th annual conference and looking back at the photos of what URMIA was 25 years ago till today, I mean if it was it was the insurance managers office and I think risk management as a discipline has leaps and bounds grown, and I hope we are a lot more proactive as a discipline.


 Steve: I absolutely agree. I attended my first URMIA conference in San Antonio, pardon me, a number of years ago, and I was brand new to higher education risk management and my role with Districts Mutual Insurance, that experience was very, very influential. I became a very strong proponent of URMIA and certainly recognize the wonderful opportunity for the collegial relationships that URMIA really prides itself on. The contacts that I made at URMIA that have continued over the years have been wonderful resources and URMIA is one of those organizations that’s very open, inviting and wants to be sharing. There's no copyright in anything that URMIA does. If you ask somebody if they have a particular procedure, they're glad to share. If they have had a particular problem, how they address it, what's the solution, they're just delighted to share. I've seen the growth over the years relatively speaking in terms of not only the numbers of people who attend, but the diversity of the people that attend There's an opportunity out for some significant inclusion that frankly in 2006, I’m not so sure I made that same observation. People of color, women, younger professionals and now the emphasis on having students be participative as well to try to provide an avenue for student to get the business of insurance. I read where our industry clearly has been a wonderful, wonderful growth opportunity for URMIA to get the younger people involved.


 Jenny:  Absolutely and I know over the years, I mean DMI has been very generous and I believe your governing body okayed a certain number of people to come to the conference every year , Can you share a little bit about how that how that went over and how the campus members benefited from that? 


 Steve: One of the big pleasures I have is to serve on the Districts Mutual Insurance board of directors and I made a recommendation to the board that we support, through a stipend, attendance at the 50th conference, which was in Boston just this last fall, and our board of directions sponsored four individuals, each of them got $1,500 as a stipend to help defray some the cost of attendance. In our most recent board of directors meeting at a shoot for the 2020 conference in Indianapolis and while the board has not taken formal action Jennifer it appears that they're going to make a stipend available to more attendees for 2020.


 Jenny: That's terrific. I mean a great idea for all of our members, who especially like the system level, I mean just planting some seeds there though that might grow to have other members have the same model, which would be wonderful from my perspective.


 Steve: And one of the opportunities that I've had because our group has a quarterly meeting culture, is get to talk about the regional programs URMIA has sponsored as well as in Nashville for the annual conference program, and through those conversations we've had an opportunity for several of our college members to attend, that was at their expense prior to the stipend that we did this year for 2019, but DMI has also provided some stipend in smaller amounts of dollars for some reason of programs that have allowed our colleges to participate and with a couple of other risk management groups as well and maybe brought in their opportunity for other professional contacts. 


 Jenny: Yeah, you just brought back a memory. I believe we work together on the medicine conference a number of years ago and then Milwaukee a few years after that. We try to get our regional conferences moved around the country and it's always great, and when we go to a state like Wisconsin and get the support from the whole system, I mean we I believe on the first one I did work with the University of Wisconsin system and then in the second one I believe you were the chair of that conference. And we had the regional conferences are a great way to get involved with URMIA and there are much lower price point it's usually one overnight stay, which can in a really make your budget go a lot farther in the education is terrific. We usually offer between 5 and 7 sessions at those Regional conferences and I know you're the local group was really active in the second one.


 Steve: And it's a wonderful entrée to URMIA and its services going to a Regional Conference because it is very focused, it's a day and a half as you said it's much less the expense, so it's a wonderful opportunity to get familiar with the organization. 


 Jenny: It's much smaller environment. We usually have between 50 and 150 people, it's really good networking, so the Regionals are great place to get involved with the organization. 


 Steve: Yeah, a much more personal experience with the regional conferences.


 Jenny: Well Steve, this had been such a delightful conversation. Thank you for being my guest today, on our podcast URMIA Matters. So, I think now is a good time to wrap it up. Thanks again for being our guest and I'm sure we'll be working together soon. 


 Steve: I’ll look forward to it Jennifer, thank you so much. 


 The URMIA Matters podcast is brought to you by the university risk management and Insurance Association subscribe to the podcast on any podcast app and while you're there www.urmia.org that's www.urmia.org to check out our wealth online resources thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.