News:
Community Association Insurance Professional Earns Top Industry Designation

January 20, 2006

Joel W. Meskin, Esq., V.P. of Community Association Products at McGowan & Company, Inc. recently joined a select group of community association insurance and risk management professionals who have earned the Community Insurance and Risk Management Specialist (CIRMS) designation from the Community Associations Institute (CAI).

Joel W. Meskin, Esq., the former Senior Vice President of Ian H. Graham Insurance, has been intimately involved with the community association industry for the past several years. Prior to joining IHG, Mr. Meskin practiced law for 15 years as an attorney specializing in Insurance Coverage and related litigation. Mr. Meskin is the author of numerous articles regarding community association, community association insurance and community association risk management. Mr. Meskin is also a speaker and presenter on many Community Association and Property Management topics.

CAI is a national organization dedicated to fostering vibrant, responsive, competent community associations. Some 50 million Americans live in the nation’s estimated 250,000 association-governed communities.

To be eligible for the designation, professionals must have at least five years of experience in the community association field, have been responsible for 25 association insurance programs in the past three years, and maintain a legal and ethical standing in the insurance industry.

A community association insurance and risk management professional’s duties include:

• Ensuring that associations have thought through their exposures to risk and have examined carefully all the options they have for transferring or avoiding those risks.
• Recommending insurance products and steps to reduce the risk itself or to transfer it to another party.
• Conducting cost benefit analyses on each option so community association board members have information on which to base decisions.
• Educating board members to raise their level of understanding, so they can make knowledgeable decisions, and to assist them in educating and association residents on how to avoid their own losses.

CAI and its fify-five state, regional and local chapters work on behalf of the professionals and volunteers engaged in the management and governance of homeowner and condominium associations, cooperatives and other planned communities. CAI’s 16,000 members include community association volunteer leaders, managers, management companies and businesses that provide products and services to these communities.

More information is available at www.caionline.org.