New York’s Alex Giordano Sets SIIA Agenda

Chairman Leads National Group
Alex Giordano gladly accepted the responsibility of chairing his trade association, the Self-Insurance Institute of America, Inc. (SIIA), even though his duties would take time from his day job as one of the nation’s leading marketers of stop-loss insurance for sponsors of self-insured employee group health benefit plans.

“That was an easy call to make,” he says. “All of my business over the last three decades has resulted from my associations with SIIA members. This was my chance to begin to pay back for my good fortune.” Giordano is V.P. of sales and marketing of stop-loss insurance for Elite Underwriters of Exton, Pennsylvania, believed to be one the nation’s largest family-owned managing general underwriter. Alex spearheads the company’s stop-loss coverage from offices in Indianapolis and New York. He was among the pioneers in making stop-loss insurance a major line of coverage that actually enabled the dynamic growth of the self-insurance industry. Established by the passage of ERISA in 1974, employee- sponsored self-insured benefit plans now cover more than 75 million people constituting about one-third of all health insurance.

“And SIIA was where it all began for me,” Alex recalls. “I attended a SIIA conference in 1983 where I met people I’m still doing business with today.” Often described with adjectives including passionate, enthusiastic and loyal, Alex now exerts his industry leadership to serve SIIA’s broad public policy goals. “This industry is not all about networking and writing business,” he says. “We now must work hard to preserve and protect the legal and regulatory structure of our industry.” “This is exactly the right time to have an Alex Giordano at the head of our volunteer leadership team to rally support of SIIA members for our current government relations campaign,” says SIIA Chief Operating Officer Mike Ferguson. One of Giordano’s upcoming duties will be to lead SIIA’s 27th Annual Legislative and Regulatory Conference in Washington, D.C. on March 7-9.

That won’t be an unfamiliar event for Alex, who believes he has attended every one of SIIA’s Washington conferences. “This year the stakes are higher than ever, as national health care reform begins to be implemented in ways that could adversely affect the self-insurance industry,” he said. Alex says that at the SIIA conference top level government figures from Congress and the administration speak on legislative and regulatory issues that could affect – for good or ill – the self-insurance industry. And he says he specially enjoys SIIA’s “Walk on Capitol Hill” when attendees rally en masse at the Capitol to visit their senators and representatives to present their perspectives on how anticipated legislation could affect their districts.

“There is nothing as effective in influencing members of Congress as hearing how their decisions will impact the lives of people and jobs of their constituents,” Alex says. SIIA lists four principle legislative/regulatory goals for 2012 on its website, www.siia.org. Briefly stated, they are: Expand the Risk Retention Act. SIIA supports a bill introduced in the last Congress to amend the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1981 to enlarge the scope of permissible insurance coverage offered by risk retention groups (RRGs) and risk purchasing groups to provide additional lines of coverage.

Curtail state regulation/taxation of stop-loss insurance. SIIA has long maintained that stop-loss insurance is not health insurance and any attempts by states to regulate it as such would affect the administration of self-insured group health plans and would be lawfully preempted by ERISA. SIIA opposes efforts by states to tax stoploss insurers.

Protect the employer-based health care system. Preserving the employerbased health care system is a legislative priority of SIIA. In light of national health reform there has been a continuing public debate whether it is better to have individuals continue to obtain group health coverage through their employers or if it would be more desirable to move to an individual- based health care system.

The employer-based group health care system has been effective in providing health care coverage for the majority of workers and their families with medical and economic efficiencies compared to the existing individual marketplace. SIIA believes that disrupting the current private U.S. health care system would be an imprudent policy action that would jeopardize benefits now received by millions. Establish small business health plans. SIIA believes that small business health plans (SBHPs) should be regulated under federal standards similar to the manner that employer-based group health plans are regulated under ERISA with federal preemption of state regulations. SBHPs would allow employers to band together as part of trade or professional associations to provide health benefits to employers and their dependents. Currently, such arrangements may qualify as ERISA plans but are subject to state regulation.

Alex Giordano’s ability to rally support among SIIA members for the organization’s public policy objectives is viewed with confidence by immediate past chair Freda Bacon, administrator of the Alabama Self- Insured Worker’s Compensation Fund. “Alex brings not only his many years’ experience in the self-funded industry but also his reputation as being an innovator in responding to the industry’s continuing challenges,” she says, adding, “Never shy about speaking up, Alex has become a real opinion leader among our membership.” Alex grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn where early in his life he came to love the Dodgers and making music. “We kids used to be able to walk to Ebbets Field for Dodgers games and buy a cheap ticket,” he recalls. “Our heroes were guys like PeeWee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and all the rest of the old Dodgers. My fondest memory is from the 1955 World Series when the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the Series for the first time. My worst memory was when owner Walter O’Malley took the Dodgers to Los Angeles three years later.” “When I was about ten years old I asked my mother if I could take lessons on the accordion – my uncle and lots of kids were playing them and it looked pretty neat. Well, we weren’t a really well off family and I learned later that my mother went to work in a factory to pay for my music lessons. “Pretty soon I learned that playing the accordion was a lot more difficult than it looked and I started to slack off on practicing. About that time my mother went to my music teacher and told her to teach me some Italian tunes so she would know when I was making mistakes in the music.”

Alex’ career in music took off soon thereafter and continued successfully into his adult years. He formed his first band when he was 12 to play at local Catholic fraternities’ socials. By the time he was grown Alex was the lead singer of his rock band covering the Beatles and other groups of the era. “Then one of my cousins pulled me into doing weddings,” he says. “I saw those bands playing a few songs, then taking breaks to eat some prime rib and I said, ‘This isn’t work!’ I added the rock songs and some old-time Italian ballads to the mix and we went on for years.” But Alex denies being the role model for Adam Sandler in the film “The Wedding Singer.”

Like many in the industry, Alex took a circuitous route to the insurance business. He was a salesman at the dazzling Cartier jewelry store on Fifth Avenue and then joined the Navy. During the climax of the Cuban Missile Crisis he was posted on the deck of a radar picket ship in the Caribbean with an automatic rifle in his hands. “I was one of the smallest guys so they figured I wouldn’t be a big target,” he jokes now. Upon returning to New York he joined a small jewelry chain and worked his way up to managing three retail stores, one in Manhattan and two on Long Island. When the Manhattan store closed he balked at moving to manage the two remaining stores. “Then my wife’s cousin said to come on into the insurance business,” Alex recalls. “He said they would pay me during training more than I would get from unemployment. “I went through the training and took the test and passed it and started out with State Mutual Insurance selling life and health policies, then I went into a partnership in a brokerage – my partner did the P&C side of the business and I did the Life & A&H”. Soon Standard Security Life Insurance Company of New York came calling and Alex became Executive Vice President and President of two of its subsidiaries. That was in the early 1980s and one of the industry networking events Alex attended was a SIIA annual conference.

“I met Alex in 1983 and we hit it off immediately,” says Keith Brougher who, at that time, was partner with his brother Jeff in the Brougher Insurance Group of Greenwood, Indiana. “I told Alex that Standard should get into the stop-loss business that was just then taking off. In fact, I think we originated stop-loss in the U.S.,” says Brougher who was an original member of SIIA.

“We reinsured the stop-loss coverage for Standard,” says Brougher, now working as a consultant from his home in Phoenix. “We still do business with Alex with his present company and with Standard Security as well. I think that now we’re Standard’s oldest agent”.

Asked how it happens that a chance meeting at a SIIA conference resulted in a 29-year business relationship with Giordano, Brougher says, “Alex is the kind of person who generates enthusiasm for the value of his products – that’s his real ability.” Through the years Giordano’s enthusiasm about SIIA has infected other of his business contacts. One of them, Bob Repke, joined SIIA because of Alex’ insistence. “I believed Alex when he said he couldn’t have made the contacts he did and grow as he did in the business without belonging to SIIA,” Repke says.

“I found out that if you want to meet people who are serious about self-funding you have to join and be active in SIIA.” Repke has subsequently participated at SIIA’s highest levels, having recently concluded a term on the board of directors and now serving on the International Committee. Repke now is president of Global Medical Connections of San Francisco, which operates an international hospital network that is marketed to self-insured clients to enable international travel for medical treatment.

“I have followed Alex’ example and recruited members to SIIA myself,” he says. “And I am always mindful that Alex does not steer anyone down a path that he wouldn’t go down himself.” Alex and his wife Susan, who live in South Belmore, New York, will soon celebrate their 45th anniversary. They have two grown children, Andrew and Alexandra, and two grandchildren.