|
On February 6, 1999,
John Hildebrandt, past MWCIA president, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. Mr.
Hildebrandt had been employed by the MWCIA for thirty-three years, serving as president
for the last twenty-two years. Mr. Hildebrandt started his career with the original Minnesota Compensation Rating Bureau as Rating Department Supervisor in November 1964. He was promoted to Office Manager in May 1970, Assistant General Manager in November 1971 and to General Manager/President in February 1976. Mr. Hildebrandt retired on January 2, 1998. During his long and successful career at the MWCIA, Mr. Hildebrandt was a highly respected workers' compensation authority in Minnesota and nationally. He served as guest lecturer on workers' compensation data collection and ratemaking at the University of Minnesota and other institutions of higher learning. He was instrumental in the development and presentation of the I-COMP series to agents, insurance companies and other interested publics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mr. Hildebrandt also testified numerous times in support of industry rate filings, and shepherded the MWCIA through the national study of including investment income explicitly in workers' compensation pricing. Mr. Hildebrandt played a significant leadership role in moving Minnesota workers' compensation from a prior approval, single rate structure industry, to the competitive pricing industry it is today. As a part of this, he was highly influential and instrumental in the design and development of the Minnesota Ratemaking Report. This report has set a national standard for completeness and accuracy among workers' compensation pricing manuals, and was selected by the Casualty Actuarial Society as part of its' ratemaking syllabus. In the Technology arena, Mr. Hildebrandt was a highly influential visionary. As a result of his efforts, ACCCT (American Coop- erative Council on Compensation Technology) was formed. This consortium of independent rating associations was created for the specific goals of sharing workers' compensation data technology, taking advantage of strong economies of scale and the ultimate goal of enhancing products and services for member insurance companies. He served as the managing partner for ACCCT from inception until his retirement. In Minnesota, Mr. Hildebrandt was instrumental in transforming the MWCIA from a paper-driven bureau to the fully computerized, technologically advanced data collection, processing and production organization it is today. These significant accomplish- ments have afforded the MWCIA the opportunity to provide significant, detailed workers' compensation data and products to a wide variety of publics. Upon retirement, Mr. Hildebrandt along with his wife Pat and two sons Curtis and Kellen moved to Osakis, Minnesota to pursue their family passions of fishing, hunting and exploring the great outdoors. |
