IRMI Update—Issue #65
An E-mail Newsletter for Risk and Insurance Professionals
ISSN: 1530-7948
May 20, 2003
In This Issue
Colleague,
With the publication of the 400th article on IRMI.com a couple of weeks ago,
it is now the most comprehensive and relevant depository of free risk and insurance
information that I know of. I am proud of it and very grateful to our panel
of Expert Commentators—all 63 of them—for contributing their knowledge and expertise.
The list of Expert Commentators is a who's who of knowledgeable professionals.
Visit this Web page to see
a list with links to their biographies.
I'm delighted to announce that we are launching a new e-mail newsletter,
and I hope you will subscribe. Called Personal
Lines Pilot, this new e-zine will provide tips and commentary on personal
risk management and insurance. It will be edited by Rob Olson, the editor of
Personal Risk Management
and Insurance, and will help insurance agents, CSRs, and underwriters
better serve their personal lines customers. If you don't work with personal
lines, please recommend Personal Lines Pilot to your colleagues who do. There is no fee for the subscription, and you can
sign up on this Web page.
We are getting geared up to hold our "Captive
Insurance Solutions for the Middle Market" seminar series beginning next
month. The summer series is being sponsored by Arch Insurance Group and will
be held in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Orlando. I hope you will join us at one of
the sessions. For information on the agenda and speakers (or to register), please
see this Web site.
Thank you for subscribing to IRMI Update and for recommending it to your
colleagues.
All the best,
Jack
Jack P. Gibson
President
IRMI
Consider Implementing a Second Type of Emergency Alarm—Most
buildings now have fire alarms and, in many cases, building managers periodically
require the occupants to practice emergency evacuations. Since the September
11 terrorist attacks, employers and employees alike have taken these drills
much more seriously than they did in the past, which is good. However, the potential
for terrorist attacks using nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons may have
created the need for another type of alarm as well. In the event of one of these
attacks, you don’t necessarily want to send a building full of people outdoors.
Thus, it might be wise to equip your facilities with two types of alarms, one
to spur evacuation and one to spur retreat to a safe zone within the building.
Of course, the process will need to be reinforced with periodic drills to ensure
people follow it properly.
—Based on remarks made in a speech at the 41st RIMS Annual Conference & Exhibition
by Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Marsh
Crisis Consulting Company.
Suggest a Risk Tip. Send us a practical tip (less than 300 words) for identifying and managing risks,
buying insurance, managing claims, or filling gaps in insurance coverages. We'll
acknowledge your contribution.
There are now 411 articles on IRMI.com, and many more are in production.
Below you'll find summaries of some recent additions with links to the articles.
-
Contingent Business
Interruption: Getting All the Facts—Today’s risk managers look
to contingent business interruption (CBI) insurance to soften the financial
impact of events outside their control. Daniel Torpey explains what it is
and what it does.
-
Environmental Due
Diligence: The Information Is Everywhere!—In his Environmental
Insurance column, Jeff Slivka turns to the Internet for sources of environmental
information on air, water, and land use and abuse. A list of Web sites is
provided.
-
Binders and Confirmation—Peter
Polstein discusses insurance binders and why the placing agent or broker
must make absolutely certain that all parties fully understand the coverage
ramifications.
-
Realizing the Potential
of Remote Access—In his Wholesale Distribution column, Robert
Giles discusses the ability to access and process data in real time—away
from the home office, in the field—and the advantages to the wholesaler.
Help Us Find
Candidates for the Gary E. Bird Horizon Award!—The Gary E. Bird Horizon
Award recognizes innovative and effective approaches to construction risk management.
If you know of someone—yourself, a colleague, or a client, perhaps—who has developed
and implemented a successful technique for managing construction risk, please
consider nominating the person for this prestigious award. It is given out in
conjunction with the 23rd IRMI Construction Risk Conference, scheduled for November 17-20, 2003,
in Chicago. Find eligibility criteria, nomination packets, and general information
about the award at this Web site.
IRMI Launches Free Personal Lines Pilot Newsletter—This
free monthly e-mail newsletter will keep you up to date on the latest news and
developments affecting personal lines insurance. It will also offer personal
risk management tips you can pass on to your customers. If you are an agent,
CSR, underwriter, adjuster, or attorney who works with personal lines insurance,
you will find this free newsletter invaluable. If you work in commercial lines,
please forward this information to your personal lines counterpart. The inaugural
issue will be published in August. It's easy to sign up on this Web page.
Comply with the Law
When You Cancel or Refuse to Renew—The IRMI Insurance Cancellation Guide charts
out state laws pertaining to an insurer's intent to cancel, nonrenew, or even
increase premiums or restrict coverage on renewal of an insurance policy. It
provides user-friendly summary charts by line of coverage and more detailed
summaries by state. It also links to the actual statutes on the Web and indicates
the form number of the policy endorsement that must be attached to comply with
each state's law. The IRMI Insurance Cancellation
Guide is updated twice each year and is available for as little as $22.50.
In IRMI Update #64, Jack noted an apparent
rise in risk and insurance education at insurance companies, agencies, and brokerage
firms and wondered whether readers were seeing the same. Below are some comments
we received:
- I hope your anecdotal research is valid. What we are seeing is somewhat
different. As one old friend put it, "It now takes longer to get the underwriter
to understand my question than it used to take to get a definitive answer."
Or to put it another way, it is tough to find people at the company who
understand the coverages when you explain them, if you are not asking about
a set program their company writes.
It seems some days that no one can
talk intelligently about concepts and less common approaches to coverage.
I once asked an underwriter of 10 years' experience if his company would
consider writing Per Diem Business Interruption and his answer was, "What
is that?" That was a few years ago, after it had been dropped from the fire
manual. It took him 2 hours to find someone in his office who had heard
of it. If it isn't on their "expert system" screen, they have no idea what
you are talking about.
I believe the hard market requires imagination to develop the necessary
coverages for accounts that are not "main street" stores, so it behooves
the companies to have people we can talk to who know (hopefully) more than
we do on a subject of insurance.
—Paul Dobinsky, Director of Research and Account
Executive, Chesterfield, Missouri
- I have talked recently with some group insurance companies (Aetna for
example) that are restarting their "group insurance schools," a new recruits'
training facility that had been mothballed for several years. This indicates
that the group insurance industry, as well as the property and casualty
industry, is refocusing on training. I agree it is needed. There are too
many untrained or shall I say poorly trained individuals in this industry.
—Chuck Lee, Principal, Tillinghast-Towers Perin, Dallas
- I think insurance agents, brokers, and carriers are being more choosy
about who they hire, and not simply because the job market has changed,
but because there is an increasingly large pool of more qualified insurance
recruits available coming out of high schools and community colleges who
have been trained by the industry's InVEST program. I'm talking about tens
of thousands of students around the country who have been trained in insurance
and risk management. I have been involved with InVEST for several years,
and I've been to some of the classrooms, and I'm telling you, this is a
wonderful program that is raising the level of talent in our industry. In
short, yes, I think you're on to something here with your column.
—Peter van Aartrijk Jr., CIC, Managing Director, The
van Aartrijk Group, LLC, Springfield, Virginia
A subscription to IRMI Update is absolutely free. Use the e-mail registration form to initiate or terminate
your subscription.