Iowa Economic Development Authority Manager: State Attracting Insurance Redomestications
November 2, 2015 by John Weber: John.Weber@ambest.com
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – Michael Gould, manager of insurance development at the Iowa Economic Development Authority, said Fidelity & Guarantee and Symetra have set up offices in Iowa in the past two years.
Gould spoke with A.M. BestTV at the annual conference of the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.
View the video version of this interview at: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=gould1015
Following is an edited transcript of the interview.
Q: What are you doing here at PCI?
A: The state of Iowa is a very strong insurance state. We have a large presence of insurance companies for about 40,000, 44,000 insurance related jobs in our state. As a result of that, it’s a very large part of our economy. We want to nurture that and grow that and so we come to PCI and conferences like this where we can interact with a lot of CEOs and talk about how Iowa is a great place to do business and do insurance-related business.
Q: Why is Iowa such a great place to do insurance business?
A: A number of reasons. One, it has a very low premium tax, a 1% premium tax. It’s located centrally in the United States where you can traverse across the time zones very easily. We have a significant labor market of insurance-related jobs. Also it’s a very reasonable cost of business state in terms of doing business, cost of living and the cost of doing business.
Q: How successful have your efforts been in attracting insurers to the Hawkeye State?
A: It’s been very successful. We’ve grown our existing companies in recent years. In the last two years we’ve redomesticated two different companies into Iowa. Fidelity and Guarantee out of Baltimore, Maryland has redomesticated into Iowa. Symetra out of Bellevue, Washington has redomesticated in the last two years.
Q: What does that mean in terms of number of jobs and premium dollars?
A: It means increased jobs into our state, increased premium dollars. I don’t have exact figures on it at this point but it means more jobs coming into the economy, more investment of premium tax dollars into the economy.