My experience at the 2025 IIHOF Induction Ceremony was amazing. It was an unexpected honor that I will always treasure. Below is my short speech, we are only given five minutes. I knew from my time on the board and attending over 15 ceremonies that the best speeches were entertaining and especilly good when people would laugh. So, I tried to inject some humor into it and mostly succeeded. Below is the speech followed by the thank you I sent to the IIHOF Board of Directors.
My Speech:
Thank you, Abby-Jaye, that was really, nice of you to do that and I greatly appreciate our long friendship.
I'd like to thank the Hall of Fame Board of Directors for the excellent job they did voting this year. And I appreciate the many hours of work that the board members provide to make this event possible.
Congratulations to the other 2025 inductees.
And many thanks to all of you for showing up tonight and making this a special night for me and I'm sure for the other inductees and their families.
I would take more than five minutes to thank the people that helped me in my career, from Jim Ketring who brought me to Des Moines in 1979 to my friend the late Ted Lussem.
I also thought about using this time to give unsolicited advice to industry leaders, emerging leaders, scholarship winners, friends and family, and my grandchildren. But I wont even though I think I am qualified to give advice due to my long career in our industry. I was born into the insurance industry. My father was an agency manager for State Farm in Kent Ohio. My parents went on to have three more children – destroying any chance I had at being an only child.
Insurance in the 1950s was very paper-intensive. My siblings and I were taught to alphabetize dec pages and billing statements, to file documents, and stuff envelopes before we could walk. By the time we learned to talk we could take a proper phone call message. There is nothing cuter than a 4-year-old taking a change of auto request….. and then doing a cross-sell pivot to life insurance. My sibs and I suspected our parents of participating in a State Farm sponsored breeding program to create cheap labor for the industry.
All the Conroy kids and most of our spouses went into the family business. Over the years we were producers, CSRs, underwriters, claim adjusters, a claims attorney, a loss control engineer, an IT executive and several agency owners. When we get together it is less like a family reunion and more like a Big I convention….or even a Ruble institute since there is no test.
The reason I'm up here tonight is in large part because of my last 14 years with the Iowa FAIR Plan. For those that you don't know what a FAIR plan is, FAIR is an acronym for Fair Access to Insurance Requirements. The federal government in 1968 passed legislation that encouraged states to establish fair plans to provide insurance in underserved areas. Some FAIR Plans are multi- billion-dollar carriers but most of the FAIR Plans are small and medium sized as is Iowa’s.
When I arrived at the Iowa Plan 14 years ago it functioned, but it was not optimal. The way I saw it with Iowa as a major insurance center with strong carriers, professional agencies, and an insurance department that is the envy of the nation, and even world, we should have a model Fair Plan. The governing committee agreed, and I am happy to report that that has been accomplished. Our Plan is the “best practices” model for the small and medium sized Plans.
Because there's an Iowa FAIR Plan, people can qualify for mortgage to buy or repair their home or secure a grant to repair their home as most grants require insurance coverage.
And people have a place to turn to after a storm.
After 2018 Marshalltown hit the courthouse and the area around it we settled every claim before FEMA set up an office.
The 2020 Derecho gave us one year of claims in one day. We settled every claim in a few weeks.
After that devastating tornado hit Greenfield, many homeowners were losing coverage due to the tight market and were unable to quickly replace coverage with existing property damage. We provided that necessary coverage during the repairs.
If you have worked though massive changes in workflow or worked through software conversions, you know have difficult that be. Fortunately, the employees of the FAIR plan, past and present, believe in the FAIR plan’s mission and have worked above and beyond to accomplish our goals. I would like the following people to stand:
Vicky Barr | Amy Miller | Kathy Lewis | Angie Woodsmall | Denna Morgan
These are the people that did the hard work to give Iowa the best FAIR Plan in the country. Please give them a round of applause.
So that unsolicited advice I threatened to share is this: “do or do not, there is no try”
Again, thank you making this evening so special.
The Thank You:
It has been a couple weeks since the 2025 Iowa Insurance
Hall of Fame event. I finally have had time to sit down to put my thoughts
together about it. First and foremost, I want to thank you and the entire IIHOF
board for this incredible experience that I'll always appreciate. Thank you for
your long and faithful service to the IIHOF. You did a wonderful job at the
podium!
Since my selection as a 2025 inductee, I have heard from colleagues,
friends, and relatives from all over the country. The consistent message was
that that a kind word, a timely encouragement, or an opportunity that I
provided them had made a positive difference in their lives. They wanted to
make sure that I knew that they appreciated those things. I may never have heard
those stories, except for being inducted into the Iowa Insurance Hall of Fame.
Many friends and relatives from many corners of the country traveled
to Iowa to attend the ceremony. The event brought us together as a family including
my grandchildren that were in attendance too. What an incredible privilege to
be able to demonstrate to my grandchildren that hard work and staying the
course while doing the right things can be recognized by people that I respect.
As you know, I was on the IIHOF board for about 15 years. I
know the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to make the event successful.
I have no material suggestions on how to improve the event. Brenda Krueger made
it easy to work on reservations and seating arrangements. Chris Murphy had
clear instructions for the inductees, and the event ran on his schedule without
any issues. The audio-visual crew was excellent and added an extra professional
touch to the ceremony.
Again, please let the entire IIHOF board know that I
appreciate the work that they do to make this such a significant event for the
inductees.
Best Regards, Bob
