NASBP’s Resolution for the New Year!

Our holiday traditions often include the making of a resolution toward achieving a goal or goals in the coming year. Preparing for the year ahead by making resolutions has ancient roots dating back as far as the Romans. Indeed, the name of the month of January comes from the name of the Roman god, Janus, the god of beginnings and endings, who had two faces, one looking to the past and one looking to the future, and to whom the Romans would seek forgiveness for transgressions during the past year and entreat with promises in the year ahead in order to receive the god’s favor.

The months of December and January mark a decided transition in the life of NASBP each year, as the point at which the NASBP calendar and fiscal year changes. I hope everyone will take the opportunity to read the 2019 NASBP Highlights—Year in Review to take stock of all that NASBP volunteers and staff have accomplished this year. These actions and initiatives are indeed impressive and, in most cases, will extend well into the New Year. They make our choice of a fitting New Year’s resolution obvious—that is, our goal in 2020 is to make certain that surety bonds are more fully understood and appreciated by the myriad of entities and businesses that are stakeholders in or beneficiaries of bonds.

To that end, the New Year will see the continuation of the Be Guaranteed to Succeed Campaign. No less than five new testimonial videos, what we call “surety stories,” will debut in the coming months. These short videos will feature lenders, contractors, and private owners, all attesting to the positive impact that surety relationships offer them, whether through prequalification, risk transfer, or business knowledge and intelligence, or all of those benefits. Also planned in 2020 is the release of a revised and expanded Producer Communications Toolkit to better enable you to tell the story of how surety brings successful outcomes. Like the existing Producer Communications Toolkit, it will be available for download from www.nasbp.org/guaranteed (access to the Toolkit requires a NASBP.org password and login). NASBP will continue to place print and digital advertisements extolling the merits of surety bonds in social media channels and in select print and digital venues.

Moreover, the main website of NASBP, www.nasbp.org, will receive a significant design refresh in mid-January with additional site improvements to be undertaken throughout 2020 to improve ease of navigation. The NASBP Surety Pro Locator, an online directory to improve the visibility of NASBP producer agencies, already debuted this month and can be found at suretyprolocator.nasbp.org.

NASBP will seek to further extend its outreach to the surety community and to anyone interested in surety matters by producing and releasing a new podcast series. The tentative date for the first podcast is mid-February. The podcast series will combine timely and lively discussions with staff, surety professionals, and other guests to illuminate all things surety. We also are looking at the possibility of live streaming a podcast from the NASBP Annual Meeting at the Broadmoor Resort.

Momentum built with partner organizations, such as the U.S. Small Business Administration, will be sustained in 2020. SBA and NASBP already are in discussions on ways in which to increase the awareness of small businesses about surety bonding through more educational programs around the country and through a possible summit of minority and disadvantaged business organizations hosted by SBA in Washington, DC.

These are only some of the concrete ways in which NASBP plans to realize its 2020 resolution, ensuring that surety bonds are more widely understood and respected.