<B>New Prez To Grow ICPA</B>
By Chris Davis
A week away from a watershed vote of its general membership that will determine the future course of the Insurance Conference Planners Association, its incoming president hopes to expand the association's membership and offer more educational content.
Lynn Averill, director of travel and conferences for Montpelier, Vt.-based National Life of Vermont, will take the ICPA's helm at its annual meeting next week at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Colo. During the meeting, member attendees will vote on whether to broaden the association's membership policies to allow planners from financial institutions to join the ICPA, provided their companies have some connection to the insurance industry.
"The board of directors has agreed that we should open up the membership on a limited basis, as long as there's an insurance connection," Averill said. "We want to grow, but we don't want to be Meeting Professionals International. We have a nice niche. We're small enough, and we don't want to be too big."
The move toward expanding membership criteria, which has been vigorously debated over the past year, was prompted by a stream of consolidation among insurance companies and financial services firms, which left planners at both companies handling insurance meetings as well as other types of events. Realizing the controversial nature of the proposal, ICPA will dedicate a four-hour block of time during the meeting to direct interaction between the board and its membership.
"There's some really strong emotions here, and we're looking forward to having direct conversations," Averill said. "We need to discuss it openly. Frankly, a survey of the membership would have been too easy."
The financial services issue is but one facing the association. It's Web site (www.icpanet.org) has been unavailable and under reconstruction for several weeks, though it is scheduled to re-emerge by the meeting's opening ceremonies on Nov. 5. The site revamp is designed to offer more resources, educational and otherwise, to ICPA members.
"The board needs to be an effective resource for its members, and that includes investing money in the Web site," Averill said. "Technology being what it is, we should have the ability to 'wow' our members, but we're not at that level yet."
To get to that point, Averill said more involvement is needed from ICPA's Vancouver headquarters, including, for example, online information about available industry jobs or association information. She also would like to see more information and news about industry meetings on the Web site, particularly from an educational standpoint. "It's not easy to travel to meetings all over," Averill said. "So, it's a tool to be educated by your peers and industry experts on industry issues."
To that end, Averill sees "skyrocketing" rates at hotels and resorts--the latter a key component of many insurance meeting programs, which tend to be more populated with incentive events than other corporate meetings--and the state of the airline industry, given this past summer's scheduling calamities, as topics that are attracting a great deal of interest among member planners.
"I don't have the answers to what all these trends mean," Averill said. "We need industry experts to give their opinions. We have execs from hotels, destination management companies and travel agencies and consultants to help us."
Another trend specific to the insurance conference industry is the significant decline in the level of outsourcing, Averill said. "Many insurance companies are getting away from that," she said. "We're all faced with proving our worth, and we do, but there's a great deal of work associated with it. Perhaps when companies eliminated meeting departments, they realized the true cost of doing so--not just in terms of overhead expenses, but in experience and knowledge of corporate culture. Executives realized it's not much cheaper." That trend translates into fewer planners--and ICPA members--losing their jobs, "which is a great thing," Averill said.