While risk management is now a top priority at companies everywhere, it's been the focus of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) since 1950. Celebrating the not-for-profit's 60th anniversary is high on Terry Fleming's to-do list when he takes over as president on Jan. 1.

But as he travels extensively for the next year promoting RIMS' agenda, Fleming will be keeping his day job. He's been the director of the division of risk management of Montgomery County, Md., since 1988 and manages the county's $100 million risk management program and its self-insured property and casualty operation.

Supporting RIMS' lobbying for regulatory and legislative changes are among his top priorities. "On the regulatory side, the broker compensation issue has reared its ugly head," Fleming says. Last summer, the Illinois Department of Insurance lifted the ban on Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.'s collecting contingency commissions from insurers on sales of commercial policies. That practice was effectively scuttled for large national brokers in 2005, after a New York State settlement with insurance broker Marsh & McLennan, but regional brokers continued to do it.