Rough Notes

A Peo Can Be an Opportunity for Agents

Professional employer organizations (PEO) are businesses that allow clients to outsource management of human resources, benefits, payroll, tax administration and workers compensation. According to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations, an industry trade group, PEOs establish and maintain an employer relationship with employees at the client's worksite and contractually assume certain employer rights, responsibilities and risk. Because of the integral role workers com...

Beating the Back-Office Blues

Many agency owners are discovering that these and other processes can be handled efficiently and economically by outsourcing firms that train college-educated employees in overseas locations to perform a host of back-office functions. Established in 2003 by New York City-based wholesaler Distinguished Programs Group, ReSource Pro opened a processing facility in Qingdao, China, to support back-office operations for managing general agencies. For Roach Howard Smith & Barton (RHSB), based in...

Beyond Compliance

Enterprise risk management (ERM) has matured over the past few years and has evolved from a number of other risk management-related applications. One of the most obvious was an outgrowth of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX). This legislation was passed on the heels of numerous financial reporting shortcomings from US corporations. The legislation was a direct result of a number of financial statement fraud issues that had rapidly spread throughout the US Among others, these fraudulent fina...

Blazing New Trails in Professional Liability

Building Benefits Towards 50% of Revenues

Assessing the potential impact on clients and then bridging the gap between 2010 and 2014 is a critical challenge for agents and brokers, says Rick DeBartolo, SVP and employee benefits department director at LaMair Mulock Condon Co in West Des Moines, IA. The agency partners with Milliman, a national employee benefits and actuarial firm, for benchmarking data and will soon use a model that the consulting company has developed to analyze the impact of health reform on individual employers. LaM...

Communication Is the Key to Good Customer Service

Every day people see how easy it is to misunderstand someone, whether in the professional or personal life. Communication truly is key when working on building relationships. Effectively communicating one's needs in a way that comes across clearly is crucial. Yet, not everyone knows how. You should try to meet with your clients at least once a year at renewal time, if not more frequently. When you meet with them, make sure to ask what has changed in both their business operations and their ho...

Community Service Award

Community Service Award for Independent Agents

Most people who give of themselves on behalf of others are much too humble to want any public recognition. They perform acts of service from their hearts in hopes that their contributions will positively affect others' lives, as well as to fulfill their own need to give back to the communities that have enabled them to become successful. Independent insurance agents have a proud tradition of volunteering their time, efforts and financial resources on behalf of others. It is this type of phila...

Court Decisions

Darned If You Do, Darned If You Don't

Insurers traditionally compete on price, service and products. Service, unfortunately, often wanes and price competition often is more destructive than helpful. Growing numbers of insurers are beginning to market a type of coverage that falls into the above category -- broad form property damage for completed operations. Because its scope was widely misunderstood among the insurance community, not to speak of consumers, the Insurance Services Office (ISO) and its predecessors issued memoranda...

Don't Forget to Ask

A friend of the author has been an insurance salesperson, and a very successful one, all of his career. He's involved in a number of social groups in his church and his community. Everyone knows he's in the insurance business and has respect for his knowledge, ethics and reputation in general. The author sales friend had been fearful of taking advantage of personal relationships. He thought invitations to buy might be viewed as pressure or harassment when, in fact, he would have been doing hi...

Heading South for Dental Work

Employees of US-based companies cross the border into Mexico every day to obtain dental treatment covered under dental insurance plans provided by their stateside employers. One dentist, Dr Juan Pablo Eng, operates six clinics just inside Mexico with 38 dentists who have treated more than 40,000 US residents in the past 18 years. Virtually all the patients at his clinics are US residents, and about 65% of them are insured under their US dental plans. Eng's DentiCenter clinics, in operation si...

Health Care Reform Repercussions Hit Agents

The implementation of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" is proving to have an impact on insurance producers' operations, even outside the sale of health insurance. On Aug 11, 2010, the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America sent a letter to congressional leaders advocating for the repeal of provisions of the act that will expand tax accounting requirements for businesses. During the extended negotiations that resulted in passage of the act, opponents of health care...

History, Community And...Oh Yeah...That Internet Thing

United Insurance, Falmouth, ME, is comprised of a number of agencies that have a history dating back to the 1800s and include returning Civil War veterans who established an agency to provide insurance to their neighbors. Much of that history is marked by service to the communities served by the agencies. Since that time, the agency has grown both organically and through mergers and acquisitions. Today, it boasts premium volume of $75 million; has 15 locations in Maine and a small office in N...

Home Is Where the Care Is

Until the end of World War II, home care was the rule rather than the exception for people who were ill or injured. To meet the growing demand for home health and hospice care, new businesses are springing up all around the US. A leader in insuring these entities is GuideOne Insurance, which recently launched a new insurance product for Medicare-certified home health and hospice agencies. Based in West Des Moines, IA, GuideOne is a niche market insurer that provides coverage for churches and ...

Made Ya' Look!

Growing numbers of independent agents are adding video to their agency Web sites to do everything from welcoming visitors and providing navigational tips for the site to reinforcing the agency's expertise in a particular niche or specialty and sharing customer testimonials. Bryan Costello, CEO of Costello and Sons Insurance (CSI), beats out Marsh on what he describes as a "significant deal" involving a multi-state Internet company, and he gives part of the credit to the strategically placed, ...

Making It Personal (Lines That Is)

Nearly 25 years ago, the author wrote an article for another publication about the need for independent agents to recapture market share in personal lines. At that time, independent agents controlled about 35% of the personal lines market. The article talked about the independent agents' advantage over the direct writers in terms of service and local presence. Independent agents still control about 35% of the personal lines market, despite a number of initiatives that have been undertaken by ...

Professional Liability Market View

While soft market pricing continues to challenge many in the professional liability marketplace, coverage enhancements and increased attention to emerging risks are likewise capturing attention. Susan Harker, product line leader, A&E Professional Liability, for Insight Insurance Services, said new, inexperienced entries to the market are offering coverage at a sub-market price in an attempt to gain market share. In the midst of pricing pressure, coverage issues also are front and center, ...

Recipe for Success

Growing numbers of successful agencies are using e-mail marketing to bring in new customers as well as cross-sell or up-sell existing customers. Unlike direct mail, you can determine who has opened your e-mail and, more important, who hasn't. Here are some highlights of the key strategies used in e-mail marketing and how you can apply them to your agency. 1. A key component for successful e-mail marketing involves your database. 2. Properly segmenting your database -- according to client life...

Social Suicide

Anecdotes abound about professionals who have lost job opportunities over something they've posted online. A survey of 1,100-plus HR professionals by market research firm Cross-Tab found that 70% of recruiters have rejected a candidate for employment based simply on text, photos or videos they discovered about that person online. Indeed, many of the HR professionals participating in Cross-Tab's "Online Reputation in a Connected World" study say Web screening of candidates has become a formal ...

The Power of Reputation

Unlike a politician, an actor or some other public figure, you probably don't have a clear picture of what your reputation is or how your staff perceives you. The reality is people don't tell leaders the whole truth. Sometimes they fear being the bearer of bad news -- and getting shot, figuratively speaking. Leaders who have no clue what others are saying about them behind their backs have no opportunity to correct the falsehoods (if incorrect) or change their negative behavior (if correct). ...

To Blog or Not to Blog

The effective blogger develops a relationship with his or her readers and, in so doing, earns a greater measure of credibility and trust while reaching an ever larger audience. Credibility and trust are traits people all seek with those with whom they want to do business. It only follows, then, that blogging should be a communications tool that insurance industry champions and uses as widely as possible, so long as they do it right. Lynne McChristian spends a lot of time listening. McChristia...

Unique Approach for Captive Advantages

There are signs that the alternative risk transfer market is actually growing. One organization that has been able to take advantage of this middle market trend is General Agency Services Inc (GAS). According to John E. Briggs, CEO, his company is a risk-sharing program manager. He points out that GAS specializes in "providing commercial property and casualty alternative risk solutions for niche programs nationwide. It was only natural that GAS's first program was directed at the oil and gas ...

What Your Clients Won't Tell You

Recently while on a business trip the author struck up a conversation with a complete stranger, a business owner named Jim. He told him he works with insurance agents, and he proceeded to give him some valuable insights into his needs and expectations for an insurance agent. Jim is an intelligent, middle market business owner who said he pays premiums of $1 million per year. He could tell he had a high level of business acumen. He thinks his comments and thoughts are in the minds of many of t...

Why Own When You Can Rent?

Seasoned practitioners in the captive world tend to throw jargon around like it's going out of fashion, and the author finds that the rent-a-captive arena has more than its fair share. The purpose of this article is to demystify some of this jargon and explore some good reasons for renting a captive instead of owning. Over the past 10 years, the rent-a-captive concept has entered the mainstream of alternative risk-financing methods and can now stand shoulder to shoulder with any other. The pr...