'We Can All Do More': American College President

George Nichols III says the American College should become a platform for progress.

By Allison Bell | June 08, 2020 at 06:51 AM

George Nichols III, the president of the American College of Financial Services, says the school should play a role in dealing with racial injustice.

Nichols — who has been marketing director for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kentucky, the Kentucky insurance commissioner, the president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and an executive vice president at New York Life Insurance Company — talked about his vision for the school’s role in a blog entry.

Nichols wrote the article in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer.

“You hear the stories of black men and women navigating poverty inside America’s densest projects; the malnutrition, the financial stress, the entrenched inequalities in our system that eventually boil over,” Nichols write. “They become fearful of the cops, of creditors, even of each other while fighting on the streets for survival…. I lived this life as a kid in the segregated South — and five decades have not solved these injustices.”

Resources

·        A copy of Nichols’ article is available here.

·        An article about the American Council of Life Insurers’ role in a U.S. Chamber of Commerce opportunity equality effort is available here.

The American College is the King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based school that runs the Chartered Life Underwriter professional designation program.

Nichols said he has asked himself whether the college is doing enough.

College scholarship programs help people looking for careers in financial services, and its Conference of African American Financial Professionals serves as a venue for black men and women to support each other, Nichols said.

“Yet, we can all do more to create equal opportunity in this world,” Nichols said. “The College will hold itself and its partner companies accountable for affecting real change through real dialogue.”

The college has “the opportunity and responsibility to become a platform for progress,” Nichols said.

Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at abell@alm.com or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.

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