As promised, part one of where FreeERISA came from (and where it's going). It's all about the audience.
The year is 1959. America had just won a major coup against the Soviet Union with advances in Memorial Day barbecue technology, and a young Louis Armstrong dreamed of one day walking on the moon (I didn't pay much attention in history class). It's also the year Judy Diamond, a woman in her early 20s, started a document retrieval company in Washington, D.C., to provide insurance records to major carriers, such as MassMutual.
Now, from what I know from watching "Mad Men," a woman starting a business at that time was about as likely as not looking totally awesome while holding a martini and a cigarette, but that's Judy for you. The years went on, Judy kept selling government documents (to U.S. companies, not the Soviets), and in 1974 the government passed the ERISA Act. This was a watershed opportunity for Judy and the entire employee benefits community.
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ERISA, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, was designed to secure the retirement income of American employees (never credit the federal government with an abundance of imagination). Technically it was initially put in place to address certain vesting issues, but increased disclosure requirements powered its implementation. Meaning retirement and benefits plans now had to really spill the beans. Meaning Judy now had more stuff to offer her clients. Judy knew the key to selling isn't having a slick pitch, or wearing a tie: it's about knowing your audience.
ERISA gave the retirement and benefits community a brand new ability to target and track their clients. You could find all defined benefit plans in your ZIP code, identify what the largest health plans were, and even nail down only companies who sold pants. Unfortunately, in 1974 there were only a handful of these new-fangled "computers:" NORAD had one, so did the KGB. NASA's came to life and wrote most of Gerald Ford's speeches.
I don't know how Judy managed to get access to one, but she took those first ERISA tapes and brought them out of the impenetrable fog that veils all government data and turned them into something useful to the private sector: a fully customizable lead generation and prospecting book anyone in the financial or insurance worlds could use to find the right audience.
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