Charles E. Symington Jr.

President & CEO: Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (The Big “I”)

Charles E. Symington, Jr. is president & CEO of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, also known as the Big “I,” the largest property & casualty insurance trade association in the country. He began serving in this role in September 2023, after having been executive vice president since September 2022. Prior to that, he was senior vice president of external, industry and government affairs for the organization. During his Big “I” tenure, Mr. Symington has managed the association’s powerful Capitol Hill office and has directed the day-to-day activities of the association’s legislative, political, communications and company relations staff. He has been regularly recognized by The Hill newspaper as one of the top lobbyists in Washington, D.C. He is a sought-after industry speaker and has led the insurance industry’s premier grassroots fly-in event, the Big “I” Legislative Conference, for two decades. Under his leadership, InsurPac, the Big “I” federal political action committee, grew to a $2.5 million PAC per cycle. It is one of the largest small business PACs in the nation. Mr. Symington has overseen numerous legislative wins for the Big “I,” including securing substantial small business tax relief, defending a modernized state regulatory system for insurance, preserving an effective Federal Crop Insurance Program and extending the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). He has also been a key leader in many industry coalitions on Capitol Hill, advocating on issues important to Big “I” members. Before coming to the Big “I,” Mr. Symington served as a senior counsel with the United States House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services from 2000 to 2003 where he focused on insurance issues. He also worked as a majority counsel for the House Committee on Energy & Commerce where he concentrated on health care policy and oversight. Mr. Symington began his career in the private sector. He was an attorney with the law firm of Matricardi & Moylan in Springfield, Virginia, and previous to that was an associate attorney with the firm of Drew, Eckl & Farnham in Atlanta where he specialized in insurance defense litigation. Mr. Symington graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in history and received a Juris Doctorate from Emory University, School of Law in Atlanta. He also served as chairman and vice chair of the National Down Syndrome Society and served on the NDSS board from 2014 to 2022. He and his wife Cathy reside in Alexandria, Virginia and have three children.