Frequently Asked Questions

Once you purchase or subscribe to an International Risk Management Institute publication or electronic manual, your name will be added to our mailing list. If you do not wish to purchase a book or subscribe to a periodical at this time, we will be happy to add your name to our mailing list by request. To do this, simply register with IRMI.com and include your postal information. (Click here to add your name to our IRMI Update E-mail newsletter list.)

We use a variety of internal and external mailing lists for our direct mail marketing. Whenever we can, we perform a "merge-purge" to eliminate duplicate mailings. However, some lists are simply not available in electronic format or cannot be merged-purged for other reasons. When this happens, you get multiple copies. We apologize for any inconvenience and will continue working to eliminate this waste.

You can place an order by telephone, mail, fax, e-mail, or online. If you are outside the continental United States, payment must be received in advance in US dollars on a US bank. Please forward your e-mail address or fax number to us and we will send you information on international orders (charges, payment options, etc.).

Your location and tax exempt status determines whether you will be charged sales tax. The following stipulations apply:

1. State sales tax is charged for "ship to" addresses within California, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
2. Tax is calculated on the total amount billed including shipping and handling charges.
3. If you are tax exempt, a copy of your state sales tax exemption certificate should be faxed or mailed to us at the address below.
4. If you make direct payments of sales tax to your state, a copy of your state direct payment exemption certificate should be faxed or mailed to us at the address below:

International Risk Management Institute, Inc.
Attn: Order Fulfillment Department
12222 Merit Drive, Suite 1600
Dallas, TX 75251-2266
Fax: (972) 371-5120

Absolutely! We back up all of our products and services with no-questions-asked, money-back guarantees.

• You can return any IRMI book or print manual within 30 days of your purchase for a full refund or credit. (Of course, it must be in saleable condition.)
• You can cancel a subscription service at any time, and we will return the unused portion of the subscription fee.

Since you are a current subscriber, we can replace the manual at our replacement cost. The price varies according to the publication.

Your order can be shipped for overnight delivery if you have a Federal Express or UPS account to which the shipping charges can be billed.

Most of our publications can be accessed via an IRMI Online subscription. See a complete list of online publications. For a free guided demonstration of IRMI Online, call our Client Services department at (800) 827-4242, or e-mail us.

Additionally, IRMI publications are available over the Web from ReferenceConnect (formerly SilverPlume). It's easy to add IRMI publications to your ReferenceConnect subscription. Simply call Client Services at (800) 827-4242.

To cancel a subscription, what you need to do depends upon whether the order is new or is a renewal:

To cancel a NEW order, you must return the product before the subscription cancellation can be made. The product should be repackaged in the original (or similar) packaging and returned to IRMI (at the address below) via a traceable means, with a copy of the invoice to ensure proper crediting to your account.

To cancel the RENEWAL of a product, e-mail, fax, or mail your renewal invoice number and cancellation request* to:

International Risk Management Institute, Inc.
Attn: Order Fulfillment Department
12222 Merit Drive, Suite 1600
Dallas, TX 75251-2266
Fax: (972) 371-5120
E-mail Us

*Your written authorization provides the necessary backup for our Order Fulfillment Department.

There are two steps you need to take if you receive a damaged product:

1. Keep the damaged product in its original packaging so that UPS can make a proper assessment of the damage and authorize the claim.
2. Contact our Customer Service Department at (800) 827-4242. They will arrange for reshipment of the replacement product(s) and pick up or inspection of the damaged product(s).

IRMI's products come with a 30-day unconditional guarantee. If for some reason you are not satisfied with one of our products, just return it within 30 days in the condition in which it was received. (You are not required to contact us for return authorization. However, we do not authorize UPS "call tags.") The steps to return a product are as follows.

1. Return the product(s) in its original (or similar) packaging.
2. Enclose a copy of the invoice to ensure proper crediting to your account.
3. Using a traceable carrier (such as UPS, since we cannot give credit without. satisfactory proof of return), return the product to:

    International Risk Management Institute, Inc.
    12222 Merit Drive, Suite 1600
    Dallas, TX 75251-2266

While IRMI is not an association or membership organization in a pure sense, you become a member of our subscriber family when you subscribe to one or more of our manuals. If you wish to join a US risk management association, we recommend the following. Click on any of the links to access that organization's home page.

• Risk & Insurance Management Society (RIMS)
  This is an association of corporate and public sector risk managers.
• Public Risk Management Association
  This is an association of municipal, state, school district, and other public entity risk managers.
• American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM)
  This is an association of hospital and other healthcare institution risk managers.
• Society of Risk Management Consultants (SRMC)
  This is an association of insurance and risk management consultants and consulting firms.

The information we provide is our product, and selling that information is the sole source of our revenues. For that reason, we cannot give it away any more than an insurance agent, broker, or company can give away insurance. Therefore, we copyright all of our publications and guard our copyrights very carefully.

With that said, we understand that you need the ability to use the information we provide, and we support your doing a limited amount of copying or quoting from the products to which you subscribe. Our customers can quote a limited amount of information from publications to which they subscribe in proposals, reports, letters, briefs, and other documents that are not being distributed to a wide audience. (This is allowed under the "fair use" exceptions of US copyright law.) Whenever you quote from our material, it is important that you indicate the name of the publication from which you are quoting or state that the information was taken from IRMI.com when applicable, along with the fact that the copyright is owned by International Risk Management Institute, Inc. Here is an example of an acceptable citation: Commercial Liability Insurance, page XV.C.3, copyright 2015, International Risk Management Institute, Inc., Dallas, TX.

To reproduce any more than this, we ask you to seek our specific permission. Request permission by submitting our online Contact Us Form and selecting the "Reprint Request" topic. Our decision as to whether to provide permission will depend on the nature of your use of the material, the intended audience, the amount of material to be reproduced, and the number of copies to be made. In all instances, we will require that you give appropriate recognition of our copyright on your reproduction. In some instances, we also will require a fee to reproduce our material.

Here are some examples of copying that would be illegal without our specific permission.

• Photocopying one of our newsletters to distribute to everyone in your office
• Photocopying an article from one of our manuals or newsletters and mailing it to a number of clients or colleagues
• Including copies of articles or sections from our manuals in a handout you distribute at a seminar or class
• Paraphrasing from one of our articles in an article you are writing for publication in a newsletter or magazine
• Including information from one of our articles on your website

The best policy is to simply inquire about your use of our copyrighted material before copying it. You can do so by submitting our online Contact Us Form and selecting the "Reprint Request" topic.

IRMI developed and maintains four insurance certifications:

• General Insurance CE—more than two dozen commercial lines insurance, personal lines insurance, life insurance, and health insurance courses.
• Construction Risk and Insurance Specialist (CRIS^®)—a specialized program focused on construction risk management and insurance that leads to the CRIS certification.
• Management Liability Insurance Specialist (MLIS^®)—a specialized program focused on professional and management liability continuing education that leads to the MLIS certification.
• Agribusiness and Farm Insurance Specialist (AFIS^®)—a specialized program focused on agribusiness and farm risk management and insurance that leads to the AFIS certification.

The US-based organizations that offer designation programs are:

• Insurance Institute of America
  Sponsors many associate programs, including the Associate in Risk Management (ARM)
• American Institute for CPCU
  Sponsors the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) professional designation
• Professional Liability Underwriting Society
  Sponsors the Registered Professional Liability Underwriter (RPLU) designation
• The National Alliance for Insurance Education and Research
  Sponsors the Certified Insurance Counselor (CIC) and Certified Risk Manager (CRM) designations

Yes! We are happy to help current customers navigate through our manuals to find the information they need. We will even provide a limited amount of advice about your specific problem if we can do so without additional research. Simply phone or e-mail the research analyst responsible for the manual on the subject in question. We do not charge for this customer service.

Of course, we do have to place some limitations on this free customer service.

We cannot violate our policy of not providing consulting or expert witness services.

Our staff doesn’t have time to do special research projects or prepare written analyses for you.

Please call us as a last resort. Our research analysts have a heavy workload preparing updates to your manuals. Their time is precious, and we have thousands of customers who may call. In respect of their time, please perform a thorough search of your manuals before calling.

Please be patient as we respond. We are working under deadlines to prepare updates to your manuals. We try hard to respond to voice mails the day they are received. However, at times our main duty—to serve our subscriber base by finishing an update—must take priority. In these cases, it can take us a bit longer to get back to you.