Accepting Payment After Hours. Many agencies continue to accept premium payments even when closed. Customers put their payments through mail slots, under the door, wedged between the door and the door frame, or by some other means. This is perceived …
Claims Draft Checks. Not many agencies have claims draft authority any longer, which I consider a positive change relative to what it was 20 years ago. However, a few specific insurance companies continue to believe draft authority is an important …
AOR/BOR Procedures for Benefits. For some unknown reason, I continually find Benefits Producers thinking the P&C AOR/BOR procedures are not applicable to them because the risk on the P&C side does not exist on the benefits side. This belief is …
Inflation Factors on Personal Lines Property. Some personal property forms lack automatic inflation adjustments that increase the structural limit annually. Usually these are dwelling forms, but not always. In any given year, the difference is usually so minor that the …
Mailing Certificates of Insurance. You should always do what companies tell you to do because they always look out for the agent, right? If an agency issues a certificate of insurance that affects the cancellation of an insurance policy in …
I wrote two columns in the summer of 2012 that elicited more online comments and emails than any article, out of the hundreds, that I’ve written. One column’s subject was that producers are paid to produce. If they do not …
A huge amount of press has been devoted to how important price is to insurance buyers — and it clearly is. But this is not specific to insurance. Price is a key factor in almost all buying decisions, excluding medical …
Privacy Compliance. It’s not serious until you get caught, right? The normal individual human reaction to complex laws and laws that defy relatively easy compliance is to acknowledge their existence, give them lip service, and generally ignore them. Complex laws …
Carrier Rating Notifications. What responsibility does an agency have to notify clients of carrier ratings? On new business, it is a good idea to list the carrier’s rating. However, if the carrier has an A.M. Best rating of less than …
Personal Lines Liability Limits. If an agency has only offered a client $100,000 liability and they have a $300,000 claim, what do you think the answer will be when, on the witness stand, their attorney asks them whether they would …
