AAIS BOARD MEMBER PROFILE
Moving Ahead While Staying Home
Richard Zick
Utica First Insurance Co.
This is the third in a series of profiles of
property/casualty executives who serve on
the board of directors of AAIS.
Richard Zick presumed that, like most
of his high school classmates, he would
not be returning to Utica, N.Y. after
departing his hometown to attend college
at Niagara University.
Coming Back
Zick was good enough to be accepted by
several Division III colleges to play football,
but decided that he had endured enough
“pounding” and opted to concentrate on
academics at Niagara.
Yet, more than 40 years later, he still lives
and works in the area where he grew
up, helping to provide growth, stability,
and service to a community that has
been severely impacted by the decline of
manufacturing in the Northeast.
A couple of courses on insurance peaked
Richard’s interest in the field, and he
received two job offers upon graduation:
one with Aetna in Buffalo, and the other as
an underwriting trainee with Utica First.
Despite the economic troubles of upstate
New York, Utica First Ins. Co. has seen its
written premium quadruple and its surplus
increase more than 800% since Zick
became president and CEO in 2000.
“My first wife’s family was from the Utica
area, too, so we decided to give it a try,”
he says. “Right after we got started in our
post-college life, tragedy struck. My first
wife died of ovarian cancer and I was now
a father of a two-year-old girl.
Growing up, Zick was something of an AllAmerican boy in an All-American town.
He played football and baseball at Utica
Free Academy, where he was also President
of his class and a member of the National
Honor Society.
“Just about every kid in my neighborhood
went to college and went on to be
successful,” Zick says, “but it was by no
means an affluent neighborhood.
“It was just a regular middle class
neighborhood with working families
with kids that wanted to take it to the
next level.
12
“Just about everybody I grew up with left
for college and never came back.”
VIEWPOINT | SUMMER 2014
“This is when you find out what you are
made of.
“Fortunately,” he continues, “I was lucky
to find another great woman and raise two
fantastic girls. Many of you know my wife
Nikki from AAIS annual conferences. She
is a great asset by my side.
“Forty plus years” with one company
may seem unimaginable to many young
and mid-career professionals today, but
Zick says his career trajectory was “not
unusual for somebody that started on the
underwriting side.”
Zick started in the “rating and coding”
function that has since been supplanted
by automation, and rose progressively
to become an underwriter, personal lines
manager, underwriting manager, senior
vice president of underwriting, president,
and then CEO.
Expanding
Over the course of his tenure with Utica
First, Zick has been instrumental in helping
the company adapt to the demographic and
economic changes in upstate New York and
expand to other regions.
Utica itself saw its population decline
from about 100,000 when Zick was in
high school to around 60,000 today.
“It became very clear long before I
became CEO that we were not going to
make the money we needed in central
New York,” he says. Apart from the
population decline and economic
headwinds, there is intense competition in
the region among co-op insurers, strong
regionals, and major national carriers.
In response, Utica First expanded
outside of its traditional comfort zone
to Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but
most importantly into the New York City
metropolitan area—“where the growth
really was,” according to Zick.
Expanding downstate involved not only a
change in geography but some profound
cultural adjustments, as well.
I think I have served on just about every charitable board
in this area. That’s just the philosophy we’ve tried to build
within our people.”
“Today, we’re a large writer in the
Chinese and Korean communities in
New York City,” Zick says. “It presents
a lot of challenges because of the
language barrier.
“It is difficult to find people who can
adjust a claim and keep the policyholder
satisfied, but we have a wonderful group
of agents.”
Thanks to its growth and stability, Utica
First has been recognized as one of
the “Ward’s Top 50” property/casualty
companies for two years in a row; it was
also recognized in 2013 as among the top 35
P/C companies rated by Demotech.
Zick has also previously served as
chairman of the New York Insurance
Association and is a long-standing board
member of the Property Casualty Insurers
Association of America.
expensive than others and much more
sophisticated than what we were seeing
from small rating bureaus.”
Utica First became one of the first carriers
to write the AAIS Artisans Program, and
completely converted all of its products to
AAIS programs, with the exception of a
personal auto program the company phased
out several years ago.
“That’s just the philosophy we’ve tried to
build within our people. As my time comes
and goes, my hope is that the people behind
me will do the same thing.” ■
“When they were going through the
transition of the new CEO, they wanted
some people who were familiar with the
organization, so here I am,” Zick says.
Rooted
AAIS has been an integral part of Utica
First’s growth and expansion.
While growing their business and
connections outside of central New York,
Zick and Utica First have continued to
support the city where the company was
founded in 1903.
Zick visited AAIS’s downtown Chicago
office at the time, finding that “we really
liked the people we dealt with.” He
adds that AAIS services “were a lot less
As for Utica First, “we give to more than
100 charities,” he says.
Zick’s current tenure marks his second
time around on the AAIS board of
directors. He previously served as AAIS
chairman in 2003-04, and was re-elected
to the board in April 2012 when Edmund
J. Kelly became AAIS’s current president
and CEO.
AAIS Role
In the late 1970s, Utica First was among
the first non-AAIS companies to convert
its homeowners product base to AAIS
forms and manuals.
“and I’ve made it a point to give back as
much as I possibly could.”
Zick credits the Vincentian fathers, founders
of Niagara University, for inspiring him to
give back to his community.
“I think I have served on just about every
charitable board in this area,” he says,
VIEWPOINT | SUMMER 2014
13