Welcome to our 17th Annual Banquet, tonight we celebrate the Year of the Rat, 4706 in the Chinese lunar calendar. I hope you and your families had a good and prosperous year during the Year of the Pig, and now during the Year of the Rat. I am pleased to say it’s been a good year for our industry and for our association as well. Here is a brief update of our past year.
As part of our ongoing education program, we clearly identified the fact that the majority of the Chinese community in New York has difficulty understanding many of the principles of insurance coverage due to their lack of proficiency in English. We were fortunate enough to have an opportunity to work with the New York State Insurance Department to translate some of the Insurance Department’s informative Consumer Guides into Chinese.
Led by our Board member, Bin Bai, CAIA collaborated with the Insurance Department to generate the first-ever Chinese translation of the Insurance Department’s Small Business Insurance Guide. This will help the Chinese business community better understand what insurance coverages they need to protect their growing businesses. We express our appreciation to the Insurance Department, especially Superintendent Dinallo, tonight’s honoree, and David Neustadt, who is Deputy Superintendent for Public Information. We hope to continue our translation efforts to include additional material in the future.
We continue to maintain both the continuing education program for our current members as well as the scholarship program to develop new talent for our industry.
As we mentioned last year, we hoped to upgrade our website, and we are therefore very happy to announce that we have done so. We trust it will provide easy access for both our members and non-members.
Our organization continues its alliances with other insurance organizations as well as non profit organizations in Chinatown.
This coming September we look forward to attending the International Conference in Singapore to further our relationship with insurance companies and insurance departments of various Asian countries.
As I enter the last year of my presidency, I must express my sincere gratitude for all the dedication, support and generosity I have received during my term. I am especially grateful to my board of directors, though comprised of a diverse group of individuals; they worked beautifully as a team and made my job so much easier.
Again, I say thank you!
Gung Hay Fat Choy!! Happy Chinese New Year!
Elizabeth Y. Mui, CPCU
President of the CAIA