John Keenan, founder of California-based Keenan & Associates and an industry icon, died Sept. 3.

I had the pleasure of knowing John for the last dozen years or so. This column is not written in memory of John; instead it's inspired by John, a person I have often called my idol in the business.

John was all about ideas. One of the guiding principles in his organization is market focus. Keenan focused on three markets: school systems, hospitals and government employers. One of John's innovations was to pool group life insurance experience so the individual employers and their employees received a better rate than they may have qualified for on their own as the size of the pool created pricing leverage through scale. This also protected the individual group from having a small number of claims adversely affect experience.