Confirmation That Suit Papers Have Been Received by the Carrier.While not an every day occurrence, most agencies receive suit papers from various parties several times a year and these papers must be forwarded to the applicable insurance company immediately. This …
Inflation Factors are Missing.Some property policies, particularly dwelling policies in personal lines, lack automatic inflation adjustment factors. These same policies often get less attention than other personal lines policies. Agencies that do review these policies annually often are reluctant to …
Producers and Staff Do Not Adequately Know the Agency’s Procedures.More often than many might expect, staff and particularly producers do not adequately know the agency’s procedures. This can be especially exasperating to agency owners who spent the money developing procedures. …
Proper Authorization to Change Coverages Part II.In Blog 14 I wrote about the need to verify the party requesting a change in coverage has the required authority to make such a request. Another variation of this theme is more obvious …
Quality of Quotes. Sometimes in the hurry hurry world of the CSR or producer, an insured will request quotes for certain coverages. Whether they do so as a result of the agency using a coverage checklist or simply the client’s …
Renewal Processing Time. Due to many reasons, including agencies cutting staff too much, I find many commercial CSRs are far behind in checking their policy renewals. Being behind creates significant E&O exposures such as missing errors and making mistakes trying …
ACA Grandfathering Disclaimer. According to the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 6, 2013), the first E&O suits have been filed against an insurance company for allegedly misleading a consumer into changing their health insurance deductible and thereby obviating the grandfathering clause …
Review Renewals. While my recommendation to review renewals might seem so simple that even mentioning it might seem like I’m scratching the bottom of the barrel, I am writing this recommendation because I am seeing too many agencies that are …
Personal Lines Quote Sheets. In most agencies, CSRs base their personal lines quotes off the data gathered per their quote sheets. Two common problems exist using quote sheets. The first is many agencies’ quote sheets are inadequate. The questions are …
Fees & Agency’s Standard of Care. An agency’s Standard of Care requirement has many moving parts and variables. Simple answers generally do not exist because the applicable standard is case and fact specific. However, a key to making the agency’s …
