April 5, 2011

Dear Society of Insurance Research Member:

Thank you for your ongoing support of the Society of Insurance Research. We are writing to you today to outline many planned enhancements to the SIR Member experience, along with improvements to those Member benefits you have grown so used to over the years.

First, though, we want to ensure that we communicate some Member promises to you. Research supports insurer decision-making and the Society supports the insurance research function wherever it may exist in your organization. Society Members come from marketing, actuarial, product, finance, planning, and many other areas within their firms. The Society welcomes and supports all individuals and firms with an interest in research and business intelligence in the insurance industry.

The Society's programs focus on the Personal and Commercial Property-Casualty industry issues, and have recently been enhanced to provide significant coverage of the Health Insurance industry as well. As you review these programs, please note that we are always interested in building our volunteer base to ensure that the execution of programs is in line with Member interests. So if any of the following is of particular interest to you, please respond to sir.mail@comcast.net with your interest area and we will contact you to discuss volunteer opportunities.

Scheduled events for 2011 kick off with the premiere of the Society of Insurance Research Webinar Series. As a Member, you will have free access to this series of webcasts on various topics of interest to insurance research professionals.

The series opens on April 19th with Tom Wetzel discussing "Social Media in Insurance – What's Next".

To register for this webinar, which will begin at 3:00 Eastern/ 12:00 Pacific, simply email the SIR Vice President – Events, Richard Skyba. (If your email security has disabled the link, email Richard at rskyba@comcast.net and make the subject line of your email "Registration for 4/19 webinar".)

About the 4/19 webinar: A growing number of insurers and producers are embracing social media as communications tools. Those still on the sidelines risk lost business and a diminishing ability to protect their brands. In this follow-up to our presentation at the 40th Annual Conference last fall, this session will cover how social media is currently being used and misused; the emerging legal challenges and how to address them; what's coming next; and how to take full advantage of the medium. These common questions will be answered:

• Is social media participation nothing more than just a Facebook page?
• Can or should social media play a role for functions other than marketing, including claims and underwriting?
• What regulations may be coming for the use of social media? What critical role will SIR Members play in how those regulations will affect companies?
• What is the next big change in social media that insurers may actually like?

About the speaker: Tom Wetzel is president of Thomas H. Wetzel & Associates, Inc, a full-service, insurance-exclusive marketing communications/public affairs firm with experience across multiple insurance functions including underwriting, continuing education, loss prevention, government affairs, marketing and corporate communications, and a special practice in social media. He speaks extensively to insurance groups about social media. A board member of the Insurance Marketing & Communications Association, Tom also writes a blog on social media at www.thegoodrisk.com and a regular column in Rough Notes.

The second webcast, on May 19th, will feature Christopher Sirota of Insurance Services Office discussing telematics. Watch for more information on that webinar and others in the series, to be announced separately.

The Society of Insurance Research Annual Conference & Exhibit Fair will cap a very busy year for the Society. The Conference will be held October 16-19 at the Renaissance Long Beach Hotel, Long Beach, California. Topics on Commercial Lines, Health Insurance, and Business & Competitive Intelligence will build on our always-strong Property-Casualty focus. Of course, as a Member, you will be able to use your discount for reduced attendance fees at the program. For more information on the program, please visit www.sirnet.org/events/events.htm.

As in 2010, the SIR Board has opted to forego a separate event earlier in the year and combine that content into an extra rich program at the Annual Conference. This will help those Members and their employers who have told us travel budgets have not fully recovered and attending separate conferences would be a challenge. However, we are pleased to announce that work is already underway on a return of the Spring SIR Seminar Program in 2012. The program is being completely redesigned to be a better complement to the Annual Conference and to be more affordable for attendees.

The Society will continue to bring you research from partnering organizations that may be of interest to Members. Articles are posted to the new SIR Featured Research tab of www.sirportal.org as it is acquired, so please check back often.

Finally, we are pleased to announce the development of the SIR Listserv for internal Member communication and networking. Each year at the Annual Conference, we see conversations develop between Members, and have had many requests for support to keep those conversations flowing throughout the year, not just at the conference. We are exploring technology platforms now, and anticipate deploying the selected technology in the second quarter of this year to allow for Member requests, inquiries, and other postings to the membership group. As research professionals, we are constantly exploring the best sources for information, tools and data, and what better resource for recommendations than each other? We are excited about this technology as a resource for Members, and will be announcing details as soon as they are available.

This is your Society, and while we are pleased to confirm these 2011 programs and initiatives to maintain and build the value of your membership, we want your feedback as we move forward on these initiatives. Please email the Society at sir.mail@comcast.net to let us know your thoughts and interest areas. Thank you again for your continued support of the Society of Insurance Research. We hope you are as excited about the future at SIR as we are!

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