Delivering Outstanding NASBP Education Opportunities – NASBP offerings that have advanced careers of surety professionals

Advancing the careers of surety professionals through education is one of the core missions of NASBP. During the last two decades, the Association’s Professional Development Committee has updated and expanded its educational offerings, taking advantage of different delivery methods to provide multiple pathways to learning.

The NASBP William J. Angell Surety School, founded more than 50 years ago, continued to attract hundreds of early-career surety professionals each year. Then, after a successful Winter Surety School in 2020, COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the Summer 2020 school. But NASBP was determined to restart the program in 2021.

“The leadership of NASBP realized that we had to responsibly move forward in providing services to our members. Education and professional development are one of those key services,” said Matt Cashion, President of the Cashion Company Insurance and Bonding, who became chair of the Professional Development Committee in 2020.

Despite the need for attendees to observe all of the Covid protocols—including wearing masks and sitting six feet apart—the classes were a sellout.

“It really helped signal to our members in the industry that we were going to get back to normal—whatever our new normal was—and we were going to make it a better normal. We haven’t slowed down since then from the professional development standpoint,” Cashion said.

Continuing Value

One reason for the Surety School’s continuing success is the faculty, composed of knowledgeable surety professionals who volunteer their time, expertise, energy, and enthusiasm to make the classes an invaluable experience for attendees.

“The instructors had been in the industry for decades. They showed me not only how to do surety well but also how to do it the right way. They showed me what kind of professional I want to be, regardless of where I end up,” said Will Siegfried, Senior Underwriter Surety, Arch Insurance, voted the most outstanding pupil in his (year) Surety Level I class.

“The Surety School provides early career professionals with a better understanding of the industry. “We stand for the right way of doing things,” said Ed Heine, Managing Director—Surety, PayneWest Insurance and a faculty member. “Surety is a highly specialized area, but we’ve got some fundamentals that you have to understand to do the job properly. The schools are very much about the fundamentals.”

In addition, Surety School attendees benefit from the opportunities for networking and personal interactions it provides, such as the class discussions and Jeopardy-like games that test what they’ve learned. “In our industry, there’s a lot of communication via text and email, but the most effective, productive people are the ones who actually know how to talk to people and build the relationships,” said Cashion.

“One of the most invaluable parts of Surety School is getting a chance to interact with other professionals in the industry. The interaction between the instructors and the class is the best,” added Jaquanda Martin-King, International Surety, WTW, and the most outstanding pupil in her (year) Commercial Surety School Level II class.  During the game time, “It was so interesting to see how competitive people were working together.”

In addition to attending Surety School, Martin-King has taken advantage of NASBP’s online educational offerings. When she had a question about a support bond in a specific state, she found a recorded webinar on NASBP’s SuretyLearn website (learn.nasbp.org) that provided the in-depth information she needed.

That webinar was one of the 270-plus recorded programs offered through NASBP’s Virtual Seminar Annual Subscription. It also provides access to about two dozen live webinars each year. NASBP now has more subscribers to the Virtual Seminar Annual Subscription than ever before.

Student Changes

There have been some changes in the student body at Surety School over the last decade. There are more underwriters than before, since SFAA no longer offers commercial surety classes. Having the mix of agents and underwriters enables participants to look at surety from different angles.

Like participants in previous classes, students remain serious about the program and dedicated to learning. “But what I see is everyone is a little bit better educated and prepared, and the quality of engagement and attentiveness is better than it’s ever been. And it was good in the past,” said Heine, who is retiring at the end of 2024.

One significant difference is students’ interest in learning the larger concepts of surety transactions as opposed to the details. Many want surety reduced to a formula or a checklist, and that’s not possible. “There are checklist things that we have to do for a submission, but every piece of information that you get could open up a can of worms that you have to explore as the professional,” Cashion added.

Surety professionals who don’t take the time to understand what’s underneath the numbers may have trouble long term. “Do you want to be replaced by an Excel spreadsheet or by AI? Or do you want to be the one that understands what these numbers mean once the machine spits it out to you? That’s where the professional lives and then has the negotiation with the respective parties to make the magic happen,” Cashion explained.

The Surety School faculty have worked hard over the last decade to ensure that participants understand the importance of this more detailed approach to surety.

Responsive to Members

NASBP members are always top of mind when NASBP’s Professional Development Committee makes decisions about updates and additions to the Surety Schools’ curriculum and to the topics selected for Virtual Seminars and other educational programs.

“We want to make sure that we respond to their needs and the marketplace that we’re working with,” said Heine. “There are many offerings we have developed, such as the Surety School, Virtual Seminars, and the great content in SuretyLearn that have been a direct result of the feedback and the demands that we have received from our members.”

One example is the online, CE-certified Ethics for Surety Bond Professionals course, which NASBP began offering in 2015.

Another is the addition in 2018 of the first Level I Commercial Surety School. This class has been a sellout since its introduction. Last year, in response to members’ requests, the committee added a Level II Commercial Surety course.

About a dozen years ago, Don Appleby, Surety Director & Shareholder, Holmes Murphy & Associates, helped the Professional Development Committee develop a new Sales Workshop. It included a moderator, Jonathan Paul, who interviewed Appleby and two other NASBP members about their methodology for producing bond business. Paul determined that each producer has different, sometimes opposite methods. “It showed participants that there is no one right way to bring in new customers,” said Appleby.

“NASBP transformed that seminar into a shorter session in the Level III Class of Contract Surety. I think it was fun for people to see in a more subjective way how sales are done,” he added. (NASBP will be offering a similar Sales Workshop in the fall of 2024.)

The Professional Development Committee has sometimes repurposed the content from the Virtual Seminars, designed to keep members up to date on the latest topics in surety, to reach a wider audience. For example, after giving a webinar on renewable energy, Nathan Wonder, Vice President, Surety at CAC Specialty and current Vice Chair of the Professional Development Committee, began teaching a session in the Commercial Surety School on that same topic.

“There’s a tremendous amount of renewable energy going on around the country, and there are a lot of bonds being requested now that weren’t requested 10 years ago,” he said.

The Professional Development Committee also includes other hot topics in the industry, such as surety reinsurance, during some sections of both the Level II and the Level III Surety School classes.

Addressing the Future

Throughout the last decade, the surety industry has seen many seasoned professionals retire and younger people stepping up to assume their responsibilities. Something similar is happening in the Professional Development Committee. Former chair Matt Cashion and current chair Michael Baxter, Vice President, Surety at LA Surety Solutions, worked together to restructure the committee and bring in new members. With the committee handling so much work, especially with the growth of the Surety School, their goal was not only to reduce the burden on individual committee members by spreading out that

responsibility but also to provide more opportunities for all surety professionals to take on important roles in the Association.

The responsibility for the curriculum and faculty of Surety School, which previously rested with the committee’s chair, has now been spread out so that there are separate vice chairs who run the program at each level for contract surety and for commercial surety.

“There’s been a little bit of a passing of the baton. The past chairs and the people who have been involved in the past are still there; we’re not losing that institutional memory. But I do think there’s a generational shift that’s happening, which is important and beneficial,” said Baxter. The vice chairs will look at the program with fresh eyes to make sure that what’s being taught and how it’s being taught remains current and relevant.  

“We want to provide members the opportunity for engagement and involvement, to see how committees work, and to see how the trade Association works. We want to engage their appetite,” Wonder said.

The committee plans to keep improving its programs and to connect with a wider audience. “There’s a lot of conversation about how we can better reach our members, using social media platforms like LinkedIn, and being more present where the agents are,” he said.

“We have a really great podcast; I think that was a really good creation over the last several years. We have webinars, and I think the creation of those has been super successful. But how do we make sure people know that this is available? I think this is a big problem,” Wonder added. Information about the availability of NASBP’s educational offerings doesn’t always filter down below the senior levels of an agency. When Wonder asked in a Surety School class how many people had seen the webinars, for example, 90% of the students didn’t know about them.

Delivery methods will also be a topic for discussion. Although in-person educational opportunities like the Surety School will remain, “We’re going to have to figure out a means by which we can reach new audiences in a more cost-effective way, with the same level, if not better, of content and delivery,” said Heine.

Baxter said that the current members of the Professional Development Committee realize that they have a big job ahead, but they are up to the task. “We want to maintain what we like to think is one of the crown jewels of the Association,” he said. “Former President Nick Newton said we should do things with passion and purpose. We have a lot of passion and purpose exhibited within Professional Development.”