Another Monday, another work week. Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the United States and only federal and state workers and a few corporate entities recognize this day as a true holiday. Several companies dropped Good Friday, an absolute Christian holiday, and replaced it with MLK Day when Congress passed the resolution making the Monday after January 15th a federal holiday. Darla (the good social worker) is lounging on the sofa watching cooking shows on one of her umpteen days off and I try to stay focused here in my office, finally stealing away to the comfort of my blog to while away a piece of my day. Most of my agents are working today, but when you live in the vicinity of a State Capitol on a state and federal holiday, it is hard to get motivated in a work sense.

My weekend was tremendous as usual and made even better by a rare victory at work on Friday. As I've mentioned in previous postings to this journal, the Underwriting side of my company has been turned over to a woman with whom I have a very diverse underwriting philosophy. We have tangled more than a few times on work related issues and the largest has had to do with a very large agent that we have in Southern California. He represents about 8% of our total policy writings and has a life-to-date loss ratio of 114%. Another way to describe that would be to say that for every $1 that we've collected from this agent we have paid out $1.14 in losses. That does not take into account the commissions that we pay this agent nor the cost of business associated with issuing policies and servicing those policy holders. This agent also is a very poor paying agent and represents about 80% of our past due premiums. In other words, the agent is in violation of his contract and, worse yet, a blight on our profit picture. As the head of the Agency Management department of our company, I have lobbied for the better part of a year to have this agent terminated due to the obvious profitability concerns that this agent poses as a stand alone entity and as an excellerant on the downside to our overall profit picture as a company. Time and again, I've been rebuffed by our AVP in my efforts to have this agent held accountable for his results. She personally took over the underwriting, marketing and accounting functions for this agent. That alone is a violation of every tenant of an insurance company. Checks and balances are put in place to guard against the same person who is writing the business from collecting premiums and handling marketing responsibilities. It is a system of checks and balances that prevents collusion and ensures that the entire system works free from any dishonesty or fraud. I finally convinced the CFO and Underwriting Vice President to allow me to approach this agent and give them a "drop dead" date for sending us the $450,000 in late premiums that are due us. (The AVP was allowing the agent to pay last year's premiums with current year commissions, a violation that is unheard of in any insurance company that I've ever been associated with). The CFO was not aware that this had been going on and endorsed my plan. I met with the agent in early December and gave him until December 20th to pay us. To make a long story short, the AVP stepped in after December 20th when we did not receive a check and held off the termination. The CFO came down on her HARD and said that we cannot give an agent a deadline and look the other way when he does not meet the deadline. She continued to argue and I FINALLY got a call last week and was told to cut the agent's throat. I contacted him on Friday and he is history. Wow. Victories have been hard to come by lately and I will savor this one for awhile. Truth and justice does still win in the end.

I played poker on Friday night and brought a bottle of Bacardi Rum with me to celebrate. I found that I felt much better on Saturday morning after drinking Rum and Coke versus beer, which I normally drink. I'm not in any way a heavy drinker, in fact, since marrying Darla who does not drink, I drink very little at all. Beer sits in my refrigerator for months on end. I tend to occasionally drink after golf games...a pitcher of beer and a large basket of french fries for $9 at the clubhouse is a deal hard to pass up. I about broke even at poker, actually turning some of my $60 in change into paper money in the process.

Darla was good enough to give me the nod to play golf on Sunday morning. Mark Konrad, our webmaster at the golf club and a friend had a 7:24 tee time which would allow us to play golf and have the afternoon free to watch football. I had to miss church, which is not something taken lightly in our household. It was a wet, cold and foggy morning, but I brought my game and shot 39-41=80 with ten pars and eight bogeys. Not stellar golf, but certainly consistent and good enough to beat my rivals. Mark shot 86, Bjorn shot 89 and Victor, who is a 9 to my 10, also shot 80. I enjoyed the football yesterday and look forward to seeing Jon Gruden and Tampa Bay take on his old team, the Raiders. I will be rooting for Tampa Bay, as I'm a died in the wool NFC fan (unless the Niners are in it and then I pull for anyone to beat them.) My favorite image in the playoffs so far this year was watching the Bucs dismantle the Niners and shutting up Terrel Owens.

Well, that's it for this week. Be good to yourselves and cherish your friends and family.

Ken