Results For Articles or Consultants
Bank Owned Agencies
Over the past 2 decades, Carey has worked with hundreds of independent insurance agencies helping them understand their agency’s value and turn that knowledge into an actionable plan for their future. She is a Certified Exit Planning Advisor, CEPA, and provides a variety of business consulting services including valuation, perpetuation planning services, acquisition support, financial…
Bob began his career as a casualty underwriter for Pacific Indemnity Company (Chubb) and later for US Fire and Fireman’s Fund. Bob also served as chief executive officer of the well-known Anderson & Anderson Insurance Brokers. Over nearly 30 years, he built Anderson & Anderson from a four-person company into the fifth-largest brokerage firm in…
I earned my Bachelors degree in Risk Management/Insurance from Florida State University in 1989, and my CPCU designation in 1992, eventually adding an MBA in 2022. Most of my career has been in the retail P&C arena, spanning 30 years, and I run a small retail agency with 14 employees. Our client base is broad,…
In the past two decades, nearly 200 rural hospitals across the United States shuttered their doors, leaving millions of residents without local access to essential healthcare services. Hospital closures not only impact injured workers, but they also place additional pressure on rural industries. Farms, ranches, factories and energy producers rely on a healthy and stable workforce to attract talent and maintain productivity.
Insurance agents, brokers, and /or producers have a lot to worry about these days. Insurance itself has become more complicated, and the standards expected of agents by the consumer continue to dramatically increase. One might think that personal lines insurance is uncomplicated and is driven solely by price. All too often, we are bombarded by advertisements about how we can save money with one insurance company over another. That mistaken approach implies that all policies are the same, which we know is not true.
Personal line agents may find that issues of coverage are just as complicated today as any commercial policy can be and sometimes even more so. The real question is how you approach the challenge, and more importantly, how you document what you did and why.
The insurance industry has always been cyclical, going through periods of “soft” and “hard” market conditions that can last several years. Today’s agents have been thrust into what the insurance industry has historically called a “hard market.” However, this market cycle seems a bit different than those in the past and perhaps may not soften as quickly as we’ve seen in some cycles.
Colby Allen is a consultant with Agency Brokerage who has over 10 years of industry experience in finance, operations, analytics, and project management. During that time he has worked with regional agencies, national agencies, and a regional carrier. Notable projects include refinement of agency finance and operational reporting processes as well as assist in acquisitions…
“This number (224) likely represents just a small fraction of the notice-based denials that never
make their way to a courtroom. More must bedone to educate policyholders on how to comply with their policies’ claims-made reporting requirements. How did notice-based denials under claimsmade forms become so common? To understand how the industry has arrived at this
point, it is important to explore the history and evolution of the claims-made form.
There are six main reasons for these denials.
1.Late reporting of a claim after policy expiration
2.Failure to disclose known claims or potential facts and circumstances that could
give rise to claims later on an application (and not reporting same under the notice
of potential claim provisions)
3.Failure to identify that the current claim being reported is related to a prior claim reported to a previous insurer or previous policy with the same insurer
4.Failure to disclose prior-pending claims made on an insurance application
5.Reporting the claim in a manner that is not as directed by the policy language itself
6.Claims denied for not reporting “as soon as practicable”
The main driver of denials is that the policyholder reported the claim after the policy expired, as represented by 101 denials upheld by the courts. Not too far behind that category is
the situation where the insured knew of a claim or wrongful act before the inception of a policy.
Here is a breakdown of the six categories. … “
“Overall, many of the more common issues were explored in previous articles. That is not to say, however, that these are complete solutions. I have long been of the belief that extended reporting provisions, when invoked, are an incomplete solution for long-term protection. That is because one is taking a limit of liability and stretching it across at least one year and sometimes six years or more. The limits, thus, are never refreshed. So, if there are any claims during the extended reporting term, policy limits are being eroded. This could mean that policy limits could be extinguished by claim frequency, and the benefit of runoff would be lost when that happens before the term had even run out.”
“There are inherent dangers when a company is acquired, not only for the selling company, but for the acquiring company. It is not uncommon for the buyer to require the seller purchase several years of extended reporting coverage. This is because the buyer, when either acquiring the assets or the stock transaction, wants no exposure to any known or unknow liabilities created by activities before the acquisition.
We’ve all seen companies get acquired, with the seller invoking whatever extended reporting coverage they can acquire, sometimes at a significant price. But that is not the only problem, and this is where the approach and analysis become important. Asking the right questions is thus necessary to provide the appropriate financial protection to those involved, with the avoidance of any error and omission claim that might be made against the broker, despite whether they are simply following an “order take” standard or not.”
