Full Circle Karma

"Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma, chameleon

You come and go, you come and go"

              Boy George

Instant Karma Continued

·       Event  Number 3-Will the Circle Ever Be Broken?

I started my career at AIG traveling 85 miles to New York City from Limerick Pa. in a snowstorm (maybe that sparked my love of skiing?) on January 2^nd 1988.  When I arrived my new boss told me the office was closed due to weather.  It was an interesting start to an interesting “new” career.  One that was highlighted by that upward rise of income I mentioned in my last post.

 I had some very challenging assignments in my first year most of which gave me a sense that I was in way over my head.   After some very rocky run ins with several senior executives I got tossed into a job many at AIG saw as a dead end but in the coming years ended (for me anyway) very well. I was now involved with the business of Workers Compensation something very new and very unfamiliar to me.  After helping to “clean up” the administrative mess mentioned in my Instant Karma post I was offered a chance to form a small operation to administer our Workers Compensation Assigned Risk business.   By 1995 I was running a small, insignificant blip within AIG that most felt would be out of business within a year or two (In fact when we set it up there was only 1 unused Divisional number in the AIG system, 013, our controller at the time actually told me it was looked upon as the “Kiss of Death”.  I told him just give it to me instead of trying to figure out a workaround). We did almost shut down as market conditions in our business changed but we “reinvented” ourselves and sold some crazy ideas to AIG’s senior management team that maybe we could enter the regular Workers Compensation Market handling a business segment (small businesses) that AIG never touched. We stayed small for our first few years and AIG was patient.  I felt in the one or two meetings I had with our Chairmen during this time he felt what we were doing made a lot of sense.

Patience paid off and by 2005 this once tiny blip was by itself the 4^th largest property/casualty insurance company in the United States (After AIG as a whole, Liberty Mutual and Hartford). This growth was the result of many incredibly “timely” events but a few highlights for you Karmic freaks:

1.        In 2000 Reliance and Royal Insurance, those companies I quit or turned down in 1987, went bankrupt (in the case of Reliance something I thought would eventually happen) their failure resulted in a growth spurt for our business while increasing prices. Karmic justice for sure.

2.        The tragic events of 9/11/01 became a pivotal point in my business, mainly because it was an opportunity to think against the grain and against conventional thinking.  There may even be a future blog post about that and how it has influenced my feelings on bucking conventional thinking and the opinion of experts at some future date.

3.       In 2005 Elliott Spitzer’s  (The New York Attorney General) investigation of several insurance companies’ business practices turned up allegations about AIG that  included issues I worked to correct in that early assignment at AIG. As a bonus bit of Karma unknown to me one of my own senior staff members who I had worked with in those early AIG years was a key player in Spitzer’s investigation.   So as my new business blossomed I ended up spending my last years at AIG working to settle these allegations (because these allegations were about a Line of Business I was now responsible for.  There was never a question about my having any involvement in the events leading to the allegations) It was an exhausting exercise that eventually led to my decision to retire, as soon as we had “successfully” dealt with them.  My “leverage” of knowledge of the past and good relationships I had with regulators etc. enabled me to get the company to agree to my doing this from my planned retirement home in Stowe until we were done. (An aside, some believe that Hank Greenberg’s forced resignation over these these events indirectly contributed to the financial collapse of AIG in 2007 I am not so sure about that but throw it in as trivia and thoughts about Karmic justice!).

4.       I retired in 2009 as we settled with every regulator and insurance company involved except 1 and what happens?  I become a close friend and golfing buddy (and incidentally a follower of this blog by the way) with a guy who I had never previously met and who was helping to lead the charge in suing AIG because of the issues Spitzer raised.  He worked for that one company (Liberty Mutual) who refused to settle with AIG and was a big part of their team “fighting us”.  Interesting that he and his wife also had a long time connection to Stowe Vermont and we met through our wives golfing together one day.  He had negotiated a similar deal to work out of Stowe as I did.  Maybe our Karma’s are running on parallel tracks?

So who knows what would have happened if I had not got that tardy slip?  Or I had not just walked in and quit my job at Reliance one day?   What if I had taken that job in Chicago?  No matter speculating further I guess and most of the events from this post and last could probably be attributed by you readers as “chance” or coincidence. 

One of Barbara’s favorite scenes from one of her favorite movies, Miracle on 34^th Street, is at the end when you are left with “Santa’s cane” sitting in the corner of a suburban house in Connecticut.  As John Payne says, “Maybe I am not such a good lawyer after all”.

So I will end this topic with a final “grand Karmic” thought that will always make me wonder about my own path at AIG.  Back in February 1976 Barbara asked me where I was taking her on a honeymoon. OOPS that was my job? In desperation I went through a Yankee Magazine, randomly (literally closed my eyes and stuck my finger on a page full of resorts) and landed on Stowe Vermont.  I had no idea that resort we skied at in March of 76 was owned by an insurance company I never heard of until 1987 named …you got it AIG.  It was on that Honeymoon we feel in love with that magical place. This love was rekindled years later by my association with AIG and became the place where I ended my career.  I look at it as kind of “Full Circle Karma”.  

I welcome anyone’s thoughts, observations or experiences related to the idea of karma, particularly in relation to the routine decisions we make every day of our life that end up shaping our lives in ways we cannot fathom.

Next Blog or two- taxes!!