CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM Janice Reischel is the newly elected president of the Honolulu Association of Insurance Women. She also is an avid golfer, and occasionally gets in a little practice in her downtown office.

Reischel savors
her independence

Question: You have a real estate background?

Answer: Yes. I owned part of a real estate agency in Indiana that sold both real estate and insurance.

Q: More recently, why didn't you jump into the booming real estate market?

A: Insurance is my life now. You don't spent 27 years doing it and walk out. You build up your clientele and there is no reason to walk away. What is it they said on "Saturday Night Live"? Insurance has been very, very good to me.

Q: How did you get into insurance?

A: Probably the fact that it was not a straight 9 to 5. I enjoyed the freedom and the creativity that was required. Sales people are never off. You work 24-7.

Q: What brought you to Hawaii?

A: I was ready for a move from Chicago. I'd been here on business several times and I'd always wanted to go.

Q: What does the Honolulu Association of Insurance Women do? Why an association of insurance women?

A: It is an organization of professionals. It started out in 1947 as a group of women meeting for lunch and discussing insurance issues and related matters. It developed to include programs, professional opportunities, personal development. It's grown from two members to 71 right now, I believe. And we meet monthly. The mayor is our speaker next month. Just in the last couple years, with the whole market having gone crazy after 9/11, people are demanding more from the organization such as education. Our monthly meetings have grown from 15-20 to 63. This month is probably going to be even more with his honorable mayor there. One of our goals in the coming year is to start providing more variety and continuing education courses.

Q: What's your target for raising membership?

A: We're hoping to get up to 100 by 2007 or 2008 and I think that's going to be a real easy target to meet.

Q: What's the cost?

A: Only $130 a year.

Q: Last year, 8 percent of your members were male?

A: Actually we're becoming more and more of a diverse group. It's not necessarily a group of only women. It started out being associated with the national association of insurance women, which is probably going to be changing its name to "professionals." It was simply started by women.

We have a new association starting on the Big Island and it's going to be "Big Island professionals."

Q: Eleven insurance employees were fired earlier this year from the Bank of Hawaii Insurance Services subsidiary for faking attendance in mandatory continuing-education course. What's happened since?

A: We're back up to full staff. Our business has grown tremendously. We've taken some really strong steps to make sure that we're up and running as smooth as possible after all of the changes. I believe that we've hired 11. Maybe even more. But we made changes in our business to streamline.