Tough times in Tallahassee

FAIA President Jeff Grady said the attitude in Tallahassee toward the insurance industry, particularly since Gov. Charlie Crist took office and the special legislative session completed its work in January, has turned from professional to hostile.

“I feel like when talking to public officials these days that I really have the mark of Cain on my forehead — it really is a different day,” Grady told the Orlando audience. “I remember going up there and having a sense of trust and professionalism and mutual respect. Now we’re tarnished as Satan. And some of these people are ‘our friends’ or real good friends to the agent back home, but they get up here in Tallahassee and they talk about us like we’re some far off industry that they can just put on a poster board and throw darts at us — and it’s OK. And every time they do it, their approval ratings go up.”

Grady said FAIA had kept “circling the wagons” trying to convince Crist and legislators that insurers are not crooks. “It really did not seem to do a whole lot, and when you go back up the governor sits on the front row of the committee meeting calling all of the insurance people liars, thieves and cheats — and we’re right back in the same boat,” Grady said. “So we got thinking about this and wondered, who are they listening to? Well for one, they’re listening to a very popular governor and he heard all that from the people who voted for him.”

But the fact is, he added, the public and politicians are not listening to the industry.

Grady thinks subtle grassroots education might help. His staff is working on a new tool. “Our approach is to kind of back away but to provide a tool for consumers where they can enter a Web portal that allows discussion to occur between agents and clients — when the clients are interested,” Grady explained. “Education makes our plight better over the long haul.”