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Reaching Academic and Professional Heights
9/15/2021
This post originated from our 1000,000th FLMI celebration that took place in 2015. In honor of Life Insurance Awareness Month this year, we'd like to share this story with you.
FLMIs are high achievers. As this story illustrates, an eagerness to soak up knowledge in one’s professional field can lead to great things.
In September 1975, fresh out of college with an undergraduate degree in natural sciences and having no idea about a prospective career, I was fortunate enough to have been employed as a trainee head office underwriter by Life of Jamaica (now Sagicor Life Jamaica) in Kingston, Jamaica.
On my first day at work, my boss assigned me the task of reading a text book on insurance since I had accepted the job knowing absolutely nothing about the industry. This was to have been a stop-gap until I could find a more suitable position! By the end of the second week, craving more information about the subject, I sought out the Personnel Administrator, who explained that the text was for the first course of the LOMA FLMI program, and advised that I could sit the examinations scheduled for May. That was all it took, for not only did I sign up for the May 1976 LOMA examinations, but completed the FLMI program in three sittings by May 1977.
The knowledge I gained from studying for the FLMI has proved to be invaluable in the subsequent years of my 40-year career as an insurance professional. In less than two years after gaining the designation, I was promoted to Chief Underwriter at the tender age of 25, but soon realized that if I wished to grow beyond the confines of the underwriting role, I needed to expand my horizons. So, once again I turned to LOMA and started sitting one additional specialty per year whenever possible.
That decision turned out to have been a winner because in 1983 and without having any practical experience in claims administration, I was recruited by the American Life Insurance Company (ALICO) and appointed Regional Claims Manager for Caribbean. During my tenure with the company, I was invited to be a candidate for LOMA’s Master FLMI (FLMI/M) program and was successful in gaining that designation in 1989.
Since then, I have lived and worked in the United States, Haiti, and the Cayman Islands, where I was the senior VP, group insurance operations, for a local insurer. I was also an associate professor of business at the International College of the Cayman Islands. I also have attained other LOMA designations including Fellow, Financial Services Institute (FFSI), Professional, Customer Service (PCS), Associate, Annuity Products and Administration (AAPA), Associate, Insurance Accounting and Finance (AIAF), Associate, Insurance Agency Administration (AIAA), Associate, Insurance Regulatory Compliance (AIRC), and Associate, Reinsurance Administration (ARA).
By building on the solid foundation provided by the LOMA program, I was able to more easily achieve other professional and academic milestones, including completion of my doctoral dissertation and several other insurance industry designations. On my return to the US in 2008, I established InConServ, Inc. to offer consulting and professional development services to life and health insurers in the countries of the Caribbean.
Trevor Hugh B. Stewart, DBA, FLMI/M, CEBS, CLU, CPCU, HIA
President, InConServ, Inc., Miami, Florida
Have an FLMI story of your own? Email us with your thoughts, memories, and experiences.