When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade!

The February monthly meeting was held on Wednesday, 1^st of February where we once again packed house in Casa Juancho.  We would like to thank GMAC Insurance for supporting us once again as our event sponsor.   For more information on GMAC Insurance, visit their website.   We had a different kind of speaker at our meeting this month.  Monica Borbely, is a Life and Business Developmental Coach and she spoke to us about how to turn adversity and challenges into opportunities in our personal and professional lives.  Monica has traveled the country as a Senior Mentor for the internationally known Peak Performance Coach, Anthony Robbins.  If you wish to contact Monica, please visit her website at www.monicaborbely.com.

Don’t forget to mark your calendar for our next event on March 7^th, where will be join the Independent Insurance Agents of South Florida, Miami Dade Association of Health Underwriters and Professional Insurance Agents of Florida in the 2012 All Industry Day from 9am to 4pm at the Doubletree Miami Hotel, 711 NW 72^nd Avenue in Miami.  Please contact Soraya Regalado for exhibiting opportunities at this event at 305-477-1442 or via email at Soraya@laaia.com.

Other events out and about town:

·         BLAAIA – Citizens ACP Class– February 15^th, 2012 from 2pm to 5:30pm at Signature Grand in Davie – 6900 W. State Road 84.  Monthly meeting following class!  Register at www.blaaia.com.

·         CPCU Society – So. Florida Chapter Industry Day – February 16^th at Don Shula’s Miami Lakes.  Take advantage of 6 CE credits, Continental Breakfast and Lunch all for the great price of $40.  Contact Alina Larraz at 305-807-3207 or alarraz@thflorida.com and tell her the LAAIA sent you!

Until next time…Remember that belonging to the LAAIA makes good business sense!

2010 Anuual Christmas Celebration

A time of year to celebrate. We celebrate the year gone past. We anticipate the year coming up. We take time to leave the work behind and just celebrate the friends, colleagues and partnerships we’ve made.

This is what the 2010 LAAIA Christmas Celebration was all about.

We enjoyed the cocktail hour with live music and lots of laughs.

The always elegant, Rudy Valdes-Diaz CPCU, emceed the dinner program, where we took time to present our annual Man of the Year and Woman of the Year awards.

For the Woman of the Year of award we recognized Marsha Watson. Marsha is Outreach Manager at Citizens and before that at FPRCJUA. For over 14 years she has been assisting over 8,000 agents with issues related to doing business with the largest insurer in the state of Florida. She helps provide training for agent across the state, assistance during the appointment process and help on a daily basis to agents with many questions and if she can’t help you she will go out of her way to find someone who can. She has worked very closely with the LAAIA all these years. Marsha’s favorite pass time lately is being a grandmother, the latest addition arrived just before Labor Day 2010.

For the Man of the Year award we recognized our very own Past President, Nestor Rivero, for his unfailing dedication to improving the insurance industry. He showed it be by teaching highschools students about insurance, to raise awareness of our industry through the InVest program. By his many trips to Tallahassee to sit with legislators to help them see the needs of the consumer, and how the independent agency system is the best way to educate consumers and help them reach their goals. Or by his dedication to the LAAIA and it’s message “United We Serve as a Voice for Independent Insurance Agents”. Nestor, exemplifies the true meaning of “Serve” in our motto.

The highlight of our event was the annual presentation to the Jackson Memorial Foundation of the check for $5,000 from our Toys For Children raffle campaign. Santa was their with the gift for the children. Thank you to our Gold Sponsor for the raffle, Fidelity National for helping us make some very special children smile.

We would also like to thank the sponsor without whom the Christmas Celebration would not be possible:

GOLD SPONSORS

AFCO Premium Finance



United Automobile Insurance Company

SILVER SPONSOR

Security Premium Finance Inc


BRONZE SPONSOR

AmTrust

Finally, we’d like to mention those associate members who went above and beyond and sent separate donations to the Jackson Memorial Foundation along side us QQ Solutions Inc and AccuAuto.

August 2010 Montly Meeting

What better way to get insurance agents attention than to drop a frying pan from the podium to the floor to make a point about "tile chip" claims. That is exactly what Tony McCarty, Senior Vice President of Claims for Florida Family Insurance, did in his informative presentation regarding the current state of claims in South Florida. He went further on to explain some of the most common non-catastrophe claims plaguing insurance companies today and provided good insight on simple questions agents could ask to become better "field underwriters".

Congratulations to Luis De Gongora in presiding over his first Monthly Dinner Meeting. In his words "I have big shoes to fill", but we all know that with his leadership the LAAIA will have it's strongest year ever.