Biography - December 2010 Richard B. 'Dick' Sanford

Professionally:

Since military service during the Korean War, and his honorable discharge from the U.S. Air Force in 1955, Sanford has worked in three career fields: adult education, investment management and the insurance industry.

Sanford’s interest in adult education attracted him to Dale Carnegie courses in 1955, where he participated as an organizer, instructor and instructor-trainer through out central and western Michigan from 1957 through 1971. His specialty centered on the training of sales managers and marketing representatives. Concurrently, in 1959, he also entered the insurance industry serving as agent, general agent and home-office marketing executive – where he held several posts with Michigan-based insurance companies as Director of Agencies and Marketing Assistant to the President of Fidelity Life and Income Mutual Insurance Company during the period of 1963 through 1965, and Director of Agencies, American Community Mutual Insurance Company 1965 to 1967.

In 1967, Sanford organized an investment, insurance and financial planning firm in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which bore his name: Richard B. Sanford Associates, Inc. This firm continued in business through 1979.

Early in 1969 a group of Small Business men and women, assembled by Sanford, met to discuss problems small business entrepreneurs face in creating business success. As a result of these early meetings a trade association to advocate for Michigan small business was formed, named the Independent Business Association (IBA). IBA was incorporated as a Michigan non-profit corporation in 1971 and Sanford was elected as President.

Early in 1973, IBA was challenged to develop a better answer for owners of small business regarding the problem of securing affordable group health insurance. Thus, in 1975, under Sanford’s leadership, the IBA Small Business Group Insurance Trust was created and filed nationally as a multiple employer (ERISA) trust. The trust became an insurance reciprocal in 1977 and was well received in the marketplace, expanding quickly and enjoying steady growth throughout the last half of the 1980s.

In January of 1980, the IBA Multiple Employer Trust was converted to a mutual property and casualty insurance company limited to the writing of disability, accident and health, and stop-loss re-insurance coverages. Sanford was named the founding chairman and president of the restructured company, IBA Mutual Insurance Company.
Along the path of business operations, the need for consolidating office space was identified, and resulted in Sanford and a business colleague, Judith A. Rodocker forming a Real Estate Investment Company named Les Actionaire Co.

Aggressive health care inflation in the early 1980s created a demand by owners of middle and smaller-sized companies for fully or partially self-insured group health insurance arrangements. In 1982, to meet this challenge, Sanford organized Small Business Group Insurance Administrators, Inc., a Michigan licensed third-party administrator (TPA). IBA Mutual Insurance Company provided aggregate and specific stop-loss coverage needed for these self-insuring clients, and was the only Michigan insurer to do so at the time.

During late 1984 and through 1986, significant changes in national and local costs of health care accelerated, exerting tremendous pressures upon the health insurance industry to fund these inflationary increases. On January 2, 1986, those pressures for change precipitated the demutualization and conversion of IBA Mutual Insurance Company from a mutual property and casualty insurer to a stock life and health insurance company called IBA Health and Life Assurance Company. The first such simultaneous demutualization and conversion in the Michigan Insurance Industry. Sanford organized a team of directors, managers, policyholders, consultants and leaders of the Bronson HealthCare Group, Inc., to carry out a plan for this demutualization and conversion process. Upon completion of the reorganization, Sanford was named the company’s chairman and chief executive officer.

In July1986, Sanford was appointed by the Michigan Insurance Commissioner to serve on the commissioner’s Life & Health Industry Advisory Committee. He was subsequently re-appointed in 1989.

During the period of 1985-86, Sanford also organized an Alternative Health Care Delivery system team to develop a plan for a statewide managed health care delivery system model. The outgrowth was to become the IBA HealthCare Plan, a Michigan Preferred Provider Organization of which Sanford and a colleague, Steven P. Stucky, CLU were the authors and founders. This plan was unique in that it blended a Preferred Provider Physician Network with a Managed Health Care Service Center, which coordinated quality health care delivery at lower costs of care. This approach was successful in reducing hospital bed-day utilization from near 700 bed-days per 1,000 to under 250 bed-days per 1,000 of in-patient stays, a 65% reduction, all in less than two years, with no reduction in “quality of care” to patient participants. This arrangement (because of lower ‘cost of care’) reduced insurance premiums for employers, employees and dependents.

Sanford semi-retired in 1988, upon selling his interest in IBA Life and Health Assurance company, but continued a number of other professional activities such as project leader, consultant and advisor to the Bronson (Hospital) HealthCare Group in their research and development efforts to develop a pilot, regionally-managed health care delivery system linking Bronson Hospital with all south western Michigan health care delivery provider services, and physician communities with employers, their employees and dependents.

Following the Bronson project, Sanford was asked by the Small Business Association of Michigan (SBAM), (successor to IBA) to design and develop a new small-business group insurance program for their existing and prospective members. As a result, an arrangement between SBAM, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) and a newly formed independent insurance administration company was created to conduct the marketing and administration of the program. BCBSM provided the insurance element, SBAM provided the membership sponsorship and the new insurance administration services organization, Sanford Insurance Group, Ltd., a licensed Third Party Insurance Administration organization (TPA) with headquarters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, provided the Plan marketing, customer/member services and plan administration. The company grew rapidly, generating over 14,000 new SBAM members in 10 years through its 400+ independent Michigan insurance agents generating over $136,000,000 in annual insurance premium income.

Also, during the 1990’s, Sanford’s interest in challenging research and development projects led him to identify the insurance needs of retiring employees. One such area of need was prescription drugs coverage for retirees and seniors. As a result, the American Network for HealthCare Savings Corporation was organized in 1999, offering ‘low-cost’ prescription drug benefits for retirees and seniors nationwide. In 2004, a linking of USA customers with heavily discounted prescription drugs via Canadian Pharmacy Rx resources were added. The AmNet Prescription Plan, as it was called, provided significantly lower priced Rx drugs for retires as they departed their employers insurance plans.

Following Semi-Retirement in 2000, Sanford was approached by former colleagues, asking him to dedicate time and effort in formalizing his Small Business Strategic Planning Model and show them (and their staff) how to acquire and implement the planning skills and tools he had developed and used in forming, planning and executing business success for his companies over the past 40 years. This same year, he formed a consulting and seminar business named Simplified Strategic Business Planning, LLC and continues to provide consulting services to a select group of clients and community organizations.

The development of a training guide for use by those whom he has taught Simplified Strategic Business Planning was the motivator for formalizing his model into a handbook “Success by Design” available to entrepreneurs and clients. He subsequently created a Strategic Action Plan for self-publishing the guide as a “Hand Book” for distribution to the general public . Publishing and book release occured in June of 2011.

Special Interests:

Sanford’s interests for over 55 years have been directed to the cause of adult education, entrepreneurship and small business – initially in Michigan and later in other states. In 1969, recognizing the need to unify the owners of small businesses – in an effort to help them help themselves and to assist in the preservation of the grass roots of our free enterprise system – Sanford organized a group of small business owners and founded the Small Business Association of Michigan, (formerly named the Independent Business Association of Michigan). SBAM was subsequently incorporated in 1971. This statewide, non-profit trade association of Michigan’s small business owners and managers, is dedicated exclusively to the preservation, enrichment and promotion of small business in Michigan and numbers currently (2010) 10,200+ members. By 1999, it was the largest membership trade association in the state of Michigan and continues with this distinction today.

To provide further assistance to the owners of Michigan’s small businesses SBAM, during the chairmanship of Sanford, organized and sponsored the formation of the IBA Federal Credit (Bank) Union; the IBA Small Business Group Insurance Trust; the Small Business Association of Michigan Legislative Action Council; the Michigan Small Business Political Action Committee (PAC); and the Small Business Education Foundation of Michigan. Although Sanford retired from active association leadership and participation in 1997, he remains SBAM’s founder, honorary chairman, and an active member.

During the 1980’s, Sanford was a leader in the formation of Small Business United, a national small business advocacy group located in Washington, D.C. He also served as advisor for other founding small business associations being formed in other states including Iowa, Wyoming, Illinois, California, Washington and Indiana. Among his many civic activities, he served as chairman of the Michigan Delegation to the President’s White House Conference on Small Business in 1980 and was appointed by then Governor William Milliken to serve as his chairman of the first-ever Michigan Conference on Small Business, which concluded in 1981.

Sanford was a four-year member of the Detroit District U.S. Small Business Administration Advisory Council and a member of Lt. Governor James Brickley’s Regulatory Relief Task Force, which met privately with then- Vice President George H.W. Bush at the White House to affect a coordinated effort between Michigan and the White House. On January 1, 1981, Sanford was appointed to the National Advisory Board of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), serving on its executive committee and advocacy network providing input to SBA’s Office of Advocacy. He continued his service on SBA’s National Advisory Council through 1986.

Personally:

Richard B. Sanford was born raised and educated in Battle Creek, Michigan, and briefly attended Ohio State University. Following high school, he served in an Aerial Photo Intelligence Squadron of the United States Air Force. He was stationed in New York, Mississippi, California and Ohio and detached to French Morocco, North Africa.

Sanford holds professional insurance designations of Registered Health Underwriter (RHU) and Third-Party Insurance Administrator (ASM). He is a 41-year member of Rotary, and a multiple Paul Harris Fellow. He returned to college after a 54-year hiatus to earn a Bachelors Degree (with Honors) in Business Administration from Madison University.

Sanford and wife Cay, reside summers in Cheboygan County Michigan at their Mullett Lake home and winters in Litchfield Park, AZ. The couple enjoys mutual hobbies of golf, reading, competition cribbage and spoiling their daughters, grandchildren, and great grand child.

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