<B> ICPA May Open Membership</B>
By Chris Davis
The Insurance Conference Planners Association, meeting this week in Boca Raton, Fla., is considering whether to expand its rules of membership to include planners from financial institutions. A steady stream of mergers and increased financial-world dealings by insurance companies have resulted in many planners dealing with far more than strictly insurance meetings.
There's no consensus as to what the ICPA will do, said incoming president Shirley Mertz."It's probably about 50-50," Mertz said. "Some of our members want to offer membership to financial meeting planners right now, others tell us we should forget about it entirely. Still others couldn't care less."
The issue, publicly broached for the first time late this summer, is likely to be discussed at some point at the ICPA's annual meeting, which runs through Thursday. There, Mertz, meeting services manager at Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Insurance Enterprise, will take the organization's helm from outgoing president Kathy Kaskiw (<I>Meetings Today</I>, Oct. 26, 1998).
The current wave of mergers and acquisitions affects the insurance meeting industry in far more areas than ICPA's membership guidelines, Mertz said. "We always hear about the downsizing that occurs after a merger or acquisition," she said. "New companies sometimes don't feel the need for a meeting planning department, until they benchmark third-party costs and want everyone back."
As a consequence, the issue of justifying the existence of the meeting planning department has become a hot one for insurance planners, Mertz said, and the ICPA will offer several workshops and sessions at the annual meeting that will focus on the topic.
The ICPA (www.icpanet.com) also will offer more educational sessions that target the experienced planner. While the organization's membership increased slightly this year to 440, Mertz said, and sports a sound 75 to 80 percent annual retention rate, some members who haven't renewed cited the group's educational offerings as a reason.
"We've listened to those comments," Mertz said. "We'll focus on technology with a meetings software mini-trade show, where attendees can receive a hands-on demonstration and a solution-sharing session, where planners and suppliers can go into a room and talk about their problems in an open forum."
Other issues the ICPA will consider include the revision of meeting registration rules for suppliers, currently first-come, first-served and perhaps some consideration of allowing members not attending the annual meeting to vote for its board of directors, which is now permitted only through an in-person vote.