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                                                     Industry News

Meetings & Events
Announcing Registration for the 2010 Big “I” Winter Meeting

The Big “I” Winter Meeting will be held Jan. 6 -10, 2010 at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa in Miami. Click here to register for the event. To book a hotel room at the special Big “I” rate, click here. Room reservations will be handled on a space-available basis until rooms at the special rate of $259 are sold-out, or until the reservation cut-off date of 5 p.m. EST on Nov. 27. For more information, including transportation and restaurant recommendations, click here. Please direct registration questions to Lauren Batch at lauren.batch@iiaba.net and hotel questions to Janis Mann at janis.mann@iiaba.net. 

Best Practices
Five Reasons to Build a Disaster Recovery Plan Now

What would your agency or clients do in the event of a flood, technology failure, berserk employee, boycott, negative media exposure, storm or terrorism? Do you have a plan in place?   

Here are five reasons to build a plan:

1. Under pressure, emotional decisions can be costly. Decisions based on a prepared plan have been shown to be more effective, timely and lower in terms of overall cost.

2. A plan can reduce recovery time and the impact on customers.

3. A plan will instill confidence in employees and customers that the organization is there for the long-term.

4. Insurance settlements require “due diligence and dispatch” in recovering from interruption. A plan helps prove that the organization has acted accordingly.

5. Inappropriate costs are avoided.

The Best Practices of Crisis Management CD can help prepare for these situations and minimize the impact on normal agency business. Agents can use a CD offered by Best Practices to customize a manual that will outline initial steps to determine if the plan needs to be executed, provide an external communication guide, assign and describe duties to each member of the resumption team and more. This information is valuable to an agency and to its clients. Click here to learn more and order the CD. For more information, e-mail BestPractices@iiaba.net. 

Virtual University
Prepare Your Agency for H1N1

It’s a hot topic on the news, in schools and in day care centers, but is your agency prepared for this year’s flu season? Can your agency operate in a highly-infections environment? If such an event occurs and impacts your business clients, are they insured for what could be a catastrophic loss of income? The Big "I" Virtual University has gathered a wealth of resources on flu and pandemics, from business planning checklists to self-assessment tools. Also, it’s important to educate your team and help them stay healthy. Provide hand sanitizers and tissues, and ask sick staffers to stay home. The Center for Disease Control recommends that employees stay home until their fever breaks and until they have been off medication for at least 24 hours. Your agency may want to create or evaluate a telecommuting policy so staff members understand they have options when they are out of the office. Make sure your agency is prepared for the flu season and check out all the resources available from the Big "I" Virtual University.


Big “I” Markets
Bond Market Offers Short-Cut Program

Now accessible through the Big "I" Markets Web site, the national surety bond broker Goldleaf Surety Services offers Big "I" members tremendous market capacity and a wide range of expertise in all types of bonds – performance bonds, bid bonds, license & permit bonds, court bonds, fidelity bonds and other commercial and miscellaneous bonds.

But Goldleaf's Short-Cut bond program is also an extraordinary program for companies with smaller contract bond needs.

"Small contractors and their insurance agents are used to being told that they have to have CPA-prepared financial statements and certain financial ratios in order to get bonding," says Goldleaf President Geoff Hathaway. Goldleaf often can complete the whole underwriting process for bonds of less than  $250,000 with a simple one-page application. Agents will not experience delays and will not be required to submit additional forms or financial statements.

Hathaway says Goldleaf typically responds to requests within the Short-Cut bond program in less than one business day – a vast improvement from when agents had to wait days and even weeks to get a final answer on even the smallest bond applications.

Hathaway adds that the owner's personal credit score usually needs to be 650 or above in order to qualify for this program. And if the Short-Cut bond program does not work, Goldleaf works to find another way to get the bond written.

"Our staff does a terrific job of helping clients work around issues in their surety applications," says Hathaway. "We also help growing companies and those with larger bond need to migrate out of the Short-Cut bond program as soon as they need to, in order to get them qualified for larger surety programs and better rates."

For more information about helping clients with their bond needs, log on to www.bigimarkets.com or e-mail bigimarkets@iiaba.net and an underwriter will contact you.

InVEST
Donate to Support InVEST Student Scholarships

InVEST seeks agents’ help in tackling the war for talent through donations to the 2010 InVEST Silent Auction, which benefits student scholarships.

With the new streamlined schedule planned for the 2010 Big “I” Legislative Conference and Convention, the InVEST Silent and Live Auctions will be held during a Young Agents hospitality event on March 4, 2010.
 
The Big “I” is thrilled by the response from past auction participants and appreciate members’ consideration in making a tax deductible donation to the auction. To make the process even easier, this year donations may be made by filling out a simple, online form available here. 

Once the form has been submitted, Big “I” staff will be in touch to coordinate additional details in the coming months. 100% of funds raised from donations will be awarded to students through scholarships.

The deadline to be included in the auction catalog is Dec. 15, so act fast!

Not sure what to donate? Items that have been hot in the past include Tiffany & Co. jewelry, electronics like iPods and GPS systems and sporting event tickets.

For more information, contact Jennifer Robinson at 1-800-221-7917; jennifer.robinson@iiaba.net.

Virtual University
Big “I” Issues White Paper on Catastrophic Homeowners ‘Exclusion’

The Big “I” Technical Affairs Committee has published a white paper entitled, “Where You Reside  – The ‘Where’s Waldo^® Catastrophic Homeowners Policy Exclusion that could Bankrupt Your Insureds.” Most homeowners policies provide coverage for the dwelling on the “residence premises.” The term “residence premises” is typically defined to include the dwelling “where you reside.” The question is --- what happens if you no longer (or never) reside there?

This situation can arise unexpectedly with emergency admissions into long-term care facilities, urgent job relocations, military deployments, illnesses or deaths and other situations beyond the control of insureds. Other circumstances may include foreclosures, temporary rentals and renovations. It is not uncommon for a homeowner who has sold a home to move out and allow the purchaser to move in days before the closing, leaving the existing homeowners policy in force.

According to some interpretations and court cases, these situations could cause claims to be denied by insurers. The Big “I” is aware of at least four real-life claim denials of up to six figures in size because of circumstances not contemplated by agents, much less consumers. At least nine court decisions that have upheld claim denials of these types have also been documented. In the case of foreclosures, the homeowner’s and lender’s interests may be imperiled, despite the existence of the standard mortgage clause.

To download the white paper and an executive summary, click here. To register for an upcoming webinar concerning this issue, click here. The Big “I” encourages member agencies to use this information to inform customers, insurers and local media, and, as warranted, to seek resolution of this potential problem in order to mitigate the possible E&O consequences.