Valuable Tool Released for Higher Ed Risk Managers by the URMIA Affiliates Committee

Back in the host chair, URMIA Executive Director Jenny Whittington talks with guests Amy Daley, an URMIA Board Member from FM Global and Chris Duble, the Chair of the URMIA Affiliates Committee from Fred C. Church. These two guests have led the URMIA Affiliates Committee in producing the URMIA Affiliate Services Directory which has been recently mailed to URMIA members. This valuable tool will also have a digital version and something higher education risk managers will come to cherish.

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Transcript

Show Notes

Affiliate Services Directory Digital Version coming soon

 URMIA Member Benefits 

 *Affiliates 

 *Institutional 

 *Students

 URMIA Shorts [member login required]

Guests

Amy Daley, 
ARM, MBA, Education Practice Leader, FM Global

Chris Duble, 
CEO, Fred C. Church Insurance

Host

Jenny Whittington, CAE
URMIA's Executive Director

Listen to URMIA Matters Podcast - Season 2, Episode 18 here:  https://urmiamatters.buzzsprout.com/687161/9097043

Transcript

Jenny: Hello everyone. This is Jenny Whittington. URMIA’s executive director. Welcome to URMIA matters. I'm pleased to be your host once again. So today I have two wonderful people with me. We have our affiliates committee chair, Chris Duble from Fred C Church. And then we have Amy Daley from FM Global, our affiliates board member.

So first, I always like to kick things off and have our uh, special guests do a little introduction about themselves and how they got involved with URMIA. So I'm going to turn it over to You Chris, tell us a little bit about Chris Duble and how you got into higher education, risk management.

Chris: Thank You Jenny a long time ago in the early 1990s. Uh, We started working with K through 12 independent schools and we now work with over almost 300 of them, but along the way, we figured out that higher education was even more full of risk than independent school and even more in need of good risk management.

And as our stable of higher ed clients grew. It became clear that you would not want to be working in that world without being part of URMIA. from a, from a business standpoint, from a client relationship standpoint, it's just invaluable for us too to be part of URMIA. And the second reason is that my colleague, Jeff Olson co-founder of our education practice told me that the URMIA people are really fun.

Jenny: Well said, and I totally agree with you. URMIA people are really fun. Thank you, Chris. Um, So let me turn it over to Amy Daley. You have been on the podcast a few times, but give us a little, little summary about you, Amy, please. 

Amy: Hi, Jenny and Chris. Thanks for having me. Yep. Amy daily here with FM global, FM global, has been a member active member with URMIA for decades. Um, as we've been insuring many universities for a very long time. And, um, I guess I could have just started with what Chris said.

URMIA is fun, but also highly, highly educational. And we really want to be a part of it so that we truly understand what our clients, you know, university clients, are going through so that we can support them the best that we can. So thanks again for having me.

Jenny: Awesome. And Chris, I mean, for, for those out there, that that don't know much about Fred C Church, will you explain just a little bit about your structure? 

Chris: sure. We've been around a long time since 1865. We, we have about 165 people. I would call us a large regional Broker. Um, Most of our business is in the Northeast but we have clients all over the country and we have about a dozen people, totally dedicated to educational institutions, insurance risk and risk managers.

Jenny: Perfect. Well, thanks to you both for being. So today, our topic that we're going to be discussing is our brand new product. It's called the URMIA Affiliate Member Services Directory. 

Chris: That’s a mouthful.

Jenny: Yeah, we, you know, it took some time to develop that title, but we did it thoughtfully. So it's exactly what it says.

It's are URMIA members services in a, both a printed directory and soon to come a digital directory. So hopefully all the members listening to the podcast today have received a copy in the U S mail. We did send one to every member in our database that was accepting mail. And we will send a copy to all new voting members as they join the organization.

So if you haven't gotten your copy, I'd be happy to send you one. If you want extra copies to share with your family and friends, I got a few spares, so I can, I can send a couple extra copies to folks, just reach out to Jenny at the national office, and I will take care of you. So, Amy, I wanted to ask you um, if you can recall um, what you remember about how this project came to fruition cause it's been a bit - it's taken a little bit of time. 

Amy: Well, it's been. Um, really great affiliate committee project. Um, I did take us a little time, but to be honest, I think it was Really fun. It, it opened the doors to a lot of us working together that didn't know each other very well. So I'll, I'll give a plug for that right there for the affiliates committee that, you know, this was a cool project to work on, but as, as URMIA has always been so wonderful about having a nice balance between institutional members and affiliate members.

This project really provided some great opportunities to help showcase the affiliate members. And, you know, we really appreciate that. I think that it was an especially a great idea in the middle of a more disciplined market where folks are looking for options to have this in their hand.

Jenny: Awesome. So what I recall about it, and I mean, for everybody, Listening who doesn't know much about my history. I've been with URMIA since 2005, and we've gone through several iterations of our database in that time. And over the years we've had we've had a directory online where you could see some information about our affiliate members, but at this time our technology, you can see the contact information for our affiliate members, but can't really see much about the organization.

So we really wanted to find a way to let our affiliate members share more about their services. So we found this company Naylor that we partnered with to bring this directory to the membership. And each affiliate member was asked to, to supply a 50-word description about their services, you know, like what sets them apart and really, really speaking to the risk managers needs, you know, what, what they do.

So, Chris, I know you, you just got your copy in the mail. What are your initial thoughts about the directory and, and the process that the affiliate's committee went through.

Chris: yeah, the, as far as the directory itself, but what struck me and I, I did just receive it today. So the, our, our mailing system works. It's really well organized. uh, You can find someone by their individual name. You can find someone by their firm's name. You can find someone by what, what their business is.

Um, It, it would be hard not to find what you're looking for. I think it's really, it's really laid out. It's also efficient, you know, nobody wants a 200 page booklet. I, I think there's very little wasted space, but there's also very little unnecessary information. It's really, really well streamlined.

And I think the ads, which are an opportunity for the affiliate members to go beyond the 50 words are really tastefully done.

Amy: I was going to mention the advertisements as well. A really neat opportunity for us to get our names out even further. So that was open to everybody. and this is just one more step to making those connections. So it's a great resource. 

Jenny: Absolutely. And coming soon, is it a digital edition of this great um, directory? So, this will come to the URMIA website in coming weeks, if not already on the website, when we launched this podcast. The digital version will be fully searchable. So if you're looking for cyber insurance or you're looking for very, some specific line of coverage or a specific kind of broker, and they included that in the searchable directory, you'll be able to find that.

So I think that's going to be excellent for the members. Like Chris said, It's easy to see the directory cause it's organized by member organization and by people. Do you guys have any, any thoughts on the digital edition? I know we did a tutorial of it, but that was like six months ago. 

Chris: Well, I think that the evolution is interesting in that in one of our many committee meetings, we said to the Naylor folks who by the way, were great to work with very patient through COVID-19. We said, gee, we're modern, sophisticated high-tech people here. We don't need a paper version. Digital will do it and they insisted if I remember correctly, Jenny, they insisted on a paper version and I think they were right. I think, you know, there's certainly plenty of people who are just as happy to have a guide like this on their desk as they are to have it on their computer.

Amy: Yeah, we were just saying there's so few tangible things these days, it was, it's actually kind of nice to, to feel and look at something in your hands. 

Jenny: Yeah. You know, it's funny. It kind of brings me back to a moment in time. 

So when, when I first started with army in 2005, we did use to print a full directory, you know, with the board of directors and the bylaws and the committees. You know, that's just the way things were done back then. But in probably the first five years I was here, we saw that was a kind of a dated kind of an antiquated practice because it was, just better to have, you know, all the information on the website, but I think things have come full circle. Cause I really enjoyed getting, I was anxious to get it in the mail and that kind of leads me up to the next part. I want to, talk about, we did um, take the opportunity to include a section in the beginning of the directory about the member benefits.

And part of our strategic plan is really working on engagement of our members, making sure that they're taking advantage of all their benefits. So we took a few pages in the front of the directory to outline the institutional benefits, the affiliate benefits, the student benefits, and then the retiree benefits.

So I know you guys have had just a short chance to, to look at the member benefits section. Do you have any thoughts on, on that section? 

Amy: Oh, yeah I think it's great. I think it's again, a nice reminder to all of us, what all the great benefits are that URMIA offers us. I also really love, you know, kind of the senior leadership, you know, Chauncey, included a letter in the beginning, which was great for all of us to read, to just kind of show our partnership together. And then the other piece along with the benefits is just to see really clearly and concisely what the strategic goals of URMIA are for all of us. So I know that was in there too, and I love it.

Jenny: Yeah, absolutely. And I know in the affiliate section we specifically mentioned the URMIA shorts and I know Chris, you were involved. The affiliates committee was, was a big participant in developing our URMIA shorts. 

Chris: uh, I was fortunate enough to work with Gary Langsdale former risk manager at Penn state in an URMIA legend. And he and I went out and, and talked to a few people and some really knowledgeable insurance people were ready and willing to help out developing the URMIA Shorts.

Jenny: I know Amy, you were a tiny bit involved in the shorts as well. Do you have anything you want to share about that? 

Amy: No, again, just a great opportunity and another way that URMIA really makes it special for the affiliate Members to be involved. So it was great. Um, just along, along with this directory, just another neat opportunity.

Jenny: Well, I think we're, we're close to the end of our podcast today. I wanted to thank you, you two both for being a huge part of the success of this project, a huge shout out to the entire affiliates committee for overseeing it a special thanks to all the advertisers for supporting this directory. Also a thanks to Naylor for working with us on this publication. This is an absolutely no cost directory to the URMIA office.

Um, It is really brought to, to the members by the advertising that is done. So we want to hear feedback about this product. So if you can please give us a shout out, send Chris Amy or I, any feedback on the directory. I'd really appreciate that. And then Amy, do you have any closing comments as we close things up? 

Amy: You know, um, I'll just kinda follow through on your comment about feedback.You know, one of the things that we spend a lot of time on, and I know Mike Hughes was really involved in this is putting together the services that we wanted to include because we didn't want a million options, but we kind of wanted to narrow it down to specific service groups or industries. So I think we'd love to see feedback on that for the future additions as well. You know, whether you're a broker carrier, a restoration company, you know, are we missing anybody? We don't want to miss anybody. So look forward to that.

Jenny: Absolutely. And for those of you who have your printed directory, that is on the very last page of the directory. It's on page 45. And it is really, it's a nice summary of the categories that We used. But yeah. Please tell us if we're missing special categories or if you'd like to see more, more definition there. I think that'd be great. And how about you, Chris? Any closing comments?

Chris: Just to one in, in that, uh, accurate and lengthy list of contributors to this project. The true driving force was you Jenny. So a big thank you from us. Um, as usual. Secondly, I would encourage, um, especially the institutional members, just take three minutes and kind of leaf through and get yourself familiar because you will use it. And, uh, I think it's, it's worth just taking a few minutes and kind of familiarizing yourself with the directory.

Jenny: Absolutely. Well, thanks, so much to you two, for spending a few moments on URMIA Matters with me and that'll be it for this URMIA Matters.