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In many jurisdictions it is compulsory to have vehicle insurance before using or keeping a motor vehicle on public roads. Most jurisdictions relate insurance to both the car and the driver, however the degree of each varies greatly.
A 1994 study by Jeremy Jackson and Roger Blackman[1] showed, consistent with the risk homeostasis theory, that increased accident costs caused large and significant reductions in accident frequencies.
Vehicle insurance (also known as auto insurance, car insurance, or motor insurance) is insurance purchased for cars, trucks, and other vehicles. Its primary use is to provide protection against losses incurred as a result of traffic accidents and against liability that could be incurred in an accident.
While maybe not the most exciting topic, document retention is actually an important issue for insurance agents and brokers and can impact insurance agents’ and brokers’ professional liability insurance (E&O). Clients may rely on the agent or broker (producer) to have copies of critical documents (read policies), and may hold their producer responsible for providing a copy in time of need.
Recent articles in Business Insurance notes the importance of document retention (see here and here).
Best practices would be to treat your insurance articles as valuable assets and not subject to any document destruction program.
Document retention is actually easier to manage with new technology. One example, which we have extensive experience with, is an imaging and processing system called ImageRight. Document imaging and storage occurs within the normal business process.
There may be regulatory requirements for insurance producers, although we could not find any with a limited web search. New York addresses the question, in part (see here). Two other pages muddy the water however (see here and here).
There is no specific prescription for customer record retention by insurance agents and insurance brokers under the Insurance Law or Insurance Department Regulations … that provide record retention requirements for customer records of insurance agents and insurance brokers. However, to the extent that an insurance agent or broker maintains customer records on an insurer's behalf, the insurance agent or broker is subject to the record retention requirements applicable to insurers in New York State…
What product and services do insurance agents and brokers, whether retail or wholesale, provide to their clients? Many practitioners define this narrowly – the product is insurance, the service is advice, and sell accordingly. However, some organizations have taken a wider perspective, and try to add additional value. The classic example in the specialty lines business, for an insurer, has been Hartford Steam Boiler Insurance Company, a company which provides both insurance and the expertise to significantly reduce catastrophic losses.
A recent article in Business Insurance provides a retail agents perspective on providing added value through the provision of risk management services (see here). Anderson Baker, of Gillis, Ellis & Baker Inc., advocates providing loss prevention and risk management services in order to differentiate your agency and to assist clients in preventing losses and reducing loss severity. Their experience would indicate that this can be a successful strategy in differentiating an agency.
Our own experience, first as Tennant Risk Services and more recently as part of Mercator Risk Services, indicates that differentiation is an important component of a distribution strategy. We have seen a number of retail agencies execute this extremely well. . Three examples (to remain nameless) come to mind, each of which rely on a specialization strategy to build the value component:
Each of these examples have succeeded in building significant market shares in the chosen specialty areas through specialization and the provision of value added service. You will be able to name many others.
Insurers spread risk, primarily through reinsurance, in order to take on greater risk through their insurance polices than they could retain on their own. Syndication and subscription policies are other means to share risk which reduces an insurer's exposure to any one loss. Lloyds of London has used subscription policies for years as a means of spreading risk.
The concept of syndication, or using a number of insurers to write a risk, also makes sense for insureds in our current economic environment. A recent article, entitled Syndication for Reducing the Risk of Carrier Capsize by Joshua Stein, Chief Underwriting Officer, IronHealth, points out that insureds should be considering syndication as a means of reducing carrier risk.
From the insured’s perspective, during this period of unprecedented upheaval in the financial sector, isn’t it reasonable to assume that virtually all insurers have exposure they either aren’t aware of or aren’t yet owning up to?... If the current crisis has taught us anything, it’s that apparently bullet-proof financials can morph into near insolvency virtually overnight.
Using multiple insurers on a placement can reduce the risk to the insured from insurer insolvency, but carrier risk is more than insolvency risk. A carrier can be solvent and strong, but can tighten up underwriting guidelines or decide to stop writing a class of business. For an impacted insured, this can make renewal a tougher and more expensive proposition. Having other insurers on a program and ready to step in is a good idea.
Insurers want more premium and tend to increase their risk tolerance in a soft insurance market, which leads to larger lines and less risk sharing. As the article suggests, insureds might want to consider increasing the number of insurers on their programs. Two ways to accomplish this are subscription policies, frequently used by Lloyds, and layered programs. While this can be more work for the broker, it can also reduce carrier risk.
Healthcare providers such as physicians face many risks in the United States today. They constantly have to keep up to date on the changes in their profession. Physicians also need to constantly monitor their relationships with the Healthcare Insurance providers. They have to pay close attention to State and National legislatures to see what new regulations they have to comply with. For instance, Massachusetts recently passed a new statute regulating all companies that collect and store any private information of its citizens. The United States today is as litigious as ever, and lawyers and doctors are still not the best of friends. As new laws get passed by the legislatures, mostly lawyers, new risks are presented to physicians. Privacy is one of the biggest issues in the media. The healthcare industry is far from immune from this issue. In fact there has been numerous acts passed specifically regarding the medical and healthcare industry's regulation of private information. Legislation such as HIPAA, EMTALA and STARK has caused many headaches for healthcare providers since their enactment. I am not going to be able to help alleviate those headaches, but I will be able to provide an insurance policy that will help those providers sleep a little easier at night. This new program provides defense cost coverage and coverage for civil fines and penalties in regards to healthcare regulations and other proceedings. These policies offer payment of defense costs and civil fines for billing errors, including fraud and abuse, voluntary reporting, Qui Tam and commercial payor claims. They also cover HIPAA, EMTALA and STARK. The policies have limits for solo physicians up to $1,000,000 and up to $5,000,000 aggregate limits for physician groups. These policies should name the employees, directors, trustees, officers and the entity as an insured in the definitions page of the policy. Network security and Privacy liability insurance is also a very important issue for physicians and other healthcare providing agencies. Network Security and Privacy liability is a policy which covers the company against suits due to invasion of privacy and computer hacking. We've all heard the horror stories of different corporations losing laptops, or having private information stolen. All companies that collect and store non-public information of their clients should make certain that they have certain procedures in place. For one, everything needs to be reviewed by an expert in computer security. But secondly, even the best laid plans can go awry, that is why every one of these companies also needs to have a privacy liability insurance policy. Healthcare agencies have more personal and private information than anyone other entity including the government. That is why it makes the most sense for those agencies to have the insurance. Doctors have a bad view of insurance. They hate health insurance because they never get paid. They hate casualty insurance because it costs too much. And they are correct on both accounts. However, privacy liability insurance policies and the defense coverage for regulatory actions are reasonably priced. Underwriting for these policies is based on how many doctors are in the practice, gross revenue and what you have done to mitigate against these risks, among other things. For a free quote, and to speak with a privacy liability insurance expert, please contact Andrew Cohn from Internet Risk Specialist, the technology division of Wilson, Washburn & Forster Insurance. Andrew Cohn has been specializing in the unique risks of the technology and life sciences industries. Andrew has had articles published by the Insurance Journal and Website Magazine regarding privacy liability insurance. Andrew will also be speaking about privacy policies and other insurance matters at the Social Network and Internet Dating Conference in Miami, January, 2009.
