Skip to main content
search
Monthly Archives

March 2015

Mar 02
Love0

Do Renters Need An Umbrella Policy?

By Personal Perspective

Umbrella insurance protects consumers from financial devastation. It’s a common policy homeowners  purchase because it protects their home and other assets when an insurance claim exceeds existing homeowners or auto insurance policy limits. However, it could be a smart investment for renters, too.

 

It Supplements Existing Liability Protection

Typically, basic liability protection only includes $100,000 in coverage. An umbrella policy can offer $1 million or more in additional coverage. Both types of coverage offer financial protection and peace of mind.

 

It’s Inexpensive

 

For $1 million in liability protection, renters could pay as little as $300 a year. Claude Lilly, Clemson University College of Business and Behavioral Science dean, also reminds renters that an addition million may only cost $100 more. This inexpensive investment protects a renter’s possessions, auto and other assets as it gives the insured peace of mind.

 

It Complements Exposures

 

The hobbies a renter enjoys can make an umbrella policy a necessity. For instance, the renter’s dog bites a contractor or guest, resulting in thousands of dollars in medical expenses and an expensive lawsuit. The umbrella coverage kicks in after the basic renter’s insurance policy funds are exhausted, and it provides the financial protection the renter needs.

 

Likewise, owning a swimming pool, hunting as a hobby or playing golf can each be fun activities, but they also have the potential to turn into expensive lawsuits. Renters should invest in an umbrella policy that covers expenses associated with a claim or liability related to the exposures they enjoy.

 

Consider Net Worth

 

Each renter can decide how much umbrella insurance to purchase. Overall, the renter’s current assets and net worth determine the basic coverage amount.

 

Buy Based on Future Earnings

 

A renter who’s found liable for an auto accident could face wage garnishment. Purchasing an umbrella policy that takes future earnings into account ensures the renter is adequately covered and can pay the judgment without losing his or her home and other assets.

 

Remember Slander, Libel and Invasion of Privacy Protection

 

Umbrella coverage does more than protect financial assets after an accident or lawsuit. It also protects renters who are victims of slander, libel or privacy invasion. The protection an umbrella policy offers against these challenges makes it a wise investment.

 

Overall, umbrella insurance provides beneficial coverage for every consumer, including renters. An insurance agent can offer additional counsel and advice regarding how much umbrella insurance to purchase.

 

Mar 02
Love0

Why Each Roommate Needs a Renters Insurance Policy

By Personal Perspective

You and your apartment, dorm or house mate might share living expenses, but you each need your own renters insurance policy. It’s an investment that replaces your possessions if they’re damaged, stolen or lost. Learn why this $15 per month policy is an important part of your living arrangement.

 

Be an Individual

 

Whether you and your roommates are strangers, best friends or cousins, purchase separate policies. Most renters insurance companies won’t include two or more unrelated people on a policy, so be an individual and purchase your own policy.

 

Cover Deliberate Damage

 

Maybe you and your roommate get along great until you have a big fight and he or she deliberately damages your valuables. If that happens and you and your roommate share a policy, you won’t receive a payout to replace the damaged item.

 

Protect Your Future Insurability

 

Let’s say your roommate’s car is vandalized. Your combined policy pays the claim, but since your name is also on the policy, your ability to purchase affordable insurance is negatively affected for the next three to seven years. Separate policies protects your future insurability.

 

Keep the Payout

 

Joint insurance policies include payout checks made out to both parties. So when your valuable electronic equipment is stolen, both you and your roommate have to sign the check. Purchase separate coverage to ensure you receive the full amount you’re due.

 

Cover Liability

 

When a visitor trips or falls and decides to sue you, renters insurance can cover the liability. Slander and libel may also be covered. Have your own policy to cover your liability.

 

Know the Limits

 

Despite purchasing separate policies, your renters insurance might include financial limits. Discuss coverage caps with your insurance agent to ensure your vintage guitar or art collection is covered.

 

Purchase Adequate Coverage

 

You don’t know how much your possessions are worth until you create an inventory list. Then, purchase replacement value coverage. Although it costs about 10 percent more than cash value coverage, it allows you to replace the damaged, lost or stolen item at its current cost rather than the purchase price minus depreciation.

 

The decision to share living space with an apartment means you share expenses too. Make sure each roommate purchases a separate renters insurance policy, though, as you protect your possessions.

Mar 02
Love0

Study Reveals Most Expensive Month for Auto Insurance Purchase

By Personal Perspective

You shop around for auto insurance every year, right? This habit helps you compare different companies, upgrade or downgrade your coverage based on your needs, save money and ultimately ensure you have the best possible coverage. Do you know which month offers the most affordable auto insurance?

 

When you Shop for Auto Insurance Matters

 

A recent study conducted by 4AutoInsuranceQuote.com tested auto insurance rates during a 12-month period. The results reveal that auto insurance quotes vary by as much as 48 percent based on which month you shop.

 

December is the cheapest month for auto insurance quotes. Shop during the last month of the year, and you could save up to eight percent. Unfortunately, March is the most expensive month for auto insurance purchases.

 

Where you Shop Matters

 

Your location also influences your auto insurance costs. Hawaiian residents pay up to 48 percent more when they buy a policy in March. Pennsylvania residents spend more for auto insurance when they shop in April. Some areas don’t follow the norm, though. Eleven states report higher auto insurance rates in December.

 

Why do Prices Fluctuate?

 

Despite the results reported in this study, no one knows why auto insurance prices fluctuates. States each regulate their own auto insurance, which could play a role. Also, the results could change each year based on new car purchases and other factors.

 

Find Additional Auto Insurance Savings

 

Even though March is the most expensive month in which to purchase auto insurance, you can still save money on a new policy this month.

 

1. Ask at least three different companies for a free quote. Compare the price and the coverage from all three companies as you decide if switching insurance companies is fiscally responsible.
2. Raise your deductible. Increasing it by even $250 can lower your premiums. Consider an increase of $500 or $1,000 for even greater savings.
3. Combine policies. Insure your auto and home with the same company, and you could be eligible for a discount.
4. Upgrade your vehicle. A small SUV, a low-mileage vehicle or a car that’s loaded with safety features like anti-theft devices could lower your auto insurance premiums.

 

March might be the most expensive month for auto insurance, but take time to shop around anyway. You could find big savings on this valuable coverage.

Mar 02
Love0

Spring Improvement Projects That Reduce Your Home Insurance Premium

By Personal Perspective
With the arrival of spring, you might be itching to start home improvement projects. Certain ones can reduce your home insurance costs, so consider focusing on those as you save money and improve your home.
Replace Washer Hoses
An inexpensive no-burst stainless steel hose from your local hardware store can reduce your home insurance premium by 10 percent. Attach it to your washing machine and reduce one of the most common causes of water damage.
Install a Sturdy Garage Door
Because strong seasonal winds and other stormy weather can destroy your garage door and everything in this structure, install a sturdy garage door. One that’s hurricane-resistant or fitted with horizontal and vertical braces can save you 10 percent on your insurance premium and potentially pay for itself within five years.
Hang Storm Shutters
Wind-resistant shutters could reduce your insurance costs by as much as 20 percent, and they’re particularly important if you live in a hurricane zone. Both metal and roll-down shutters protect your home.
Purchase Trouble Detectors
Smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are two investments that reduce your home insurance premiums, but consider other trouble detectors, too. They provide plumbing failure warnings, detect furnace failure or alert you to frozen water pipes. Find leak detectors and other trouble detectors online or at your local hardware store.
Invest in Fire Extinguishers
For a savings of five percent, invest in fire extinguishers. Place one in the kitchen and on every floor or your home.
Choose Fire-Resistant Siding
Save 20 percent on your insurance premium and give your home a new exterior appearance when you install fire-resistant siding. Metal, clapboard, fiber-cement and clapboards are all Class A fire-resistant materials that are available in a variety of colors and finish styles that meet your needs.
Replace Your Roof
Because worn shingles on your current roof won’t do much to protect your home when windy weather arrive, consider replacing your roof. Select sturdy roofing materials like metal, shake or Class 4 modified asphalt shingles. Use six instead of four staples or nails per shingle for additional savings.
These spring home improvement projects can decrease your premium. You’ll also save money when you drop additional structure coverage, increase your deductible, make automatic payments and combine home and auto policies. Discuss the details with your insurance agent as you save money and protect yourself this season and throughout the year.
Mar 02
Love0

What You Need to Know About Insurance Certificates

By Risk Management Bulletin
Insurance certificates can be a great way to manage risk by transferring some of that risk to another party. But if you don’t know the “ins and outs” of these certificates, it’s easy to overlook important protections or leave yourself with less protection that you thought, especially when you’re working with a business with whom you have no prior experience. If you don’t have a lot of experience with insurance certificates, here’s a quick rundown of some of the most important elements:
First, the basics: An insurance certificate doesn’t just provide proof of insurance; it also contains all the insurance information about another business or subcontractor, and it’s most commonly used to transfer risk from the contracting company to the party that’s being contracted.
When requesting a certificate or if one has been requested of you, consider including these important elements:
Effective dates: Make sure the start and termination dates span the complete period when coverage is needed. If the end of the certificate’s term is near, be sure to request an extension certificate in advance of the expiration date so coverage remains in effect.
Notice of cancellation: This clause stipulates you’ll be notified if the insurance is canceled at any time during the certificate’s effective period. It provides important protection in case the other party winds up dropping their insurance without notifying you first.
Cross liability: If a loss occurs, a cross liability clause means each party is treated separately when it comes to assessing liability. Having a cross liability clause can come in handy if one party needs to defend against the other in the event of a loss.
Limitations and coverages: Be sure to consult your agent about the coverage amounts and any limiting clauses so you’re fully and appropriately protected. They’ll have the skill and experience to make sure the coverage amounts are sufficient and the limits are reasonable for the activity that’s being insured as well as your potential risk exposure.
Finally, regardless of how experienced you are in handling insurance certificates, before agreeing to accept or provide a certificate, you’ll need to contact your broker. Only an insurance representative  can issue a certificate, so when reviewing a certificate that’s presented to you, make sure it’s issued by an insurance company and have your broker call to confirm.
Mar 02
Love0

Do You Need a Business Continuity Plan?

By Risk Management Bulletin
Does your company have a business continuity plan (BCP)? If it doesn’t, it should. A business continuity plan is simply a strategy that helps ensure your company will be able to respond to a disaster or other event that would normally interrupt the flow of work – a flood, a hurricane or other natural disaster, or a power failure that results in loss of telecommunications or Internet connectivity, for example.
Some businesses – for instance, healthcare facilities – make business continuity planning a priority; in fact, many hospitals are required by their boards to develop plans and keep them updated on a regular basis. They make sure they have contingencies in place that can help tide them over until power is restored, roads are cleared or they can otherwise resume “business as normal.”
But many SMBs don’t bother to develop continuity plans at all, at least not beyond a vague idea of what they would do under such extreme circumstances. If that sounds like your business – or if you’ve thought about developing a BCP but have no idea where to start – here are a few quick tips:
•Start by forming a team to build your plan. The team should include key decision-makers who can solicit input from every department in your company to make sure the plan is comprehensive and responsive.
•Then, brainstorm to identify the potential events and risks. Events include things like power outages, major storms, accidents, cyber-attacks, service sector failure – basically anything that could interrupt your workflow.
•Next, identify critical resources that need to be maintained. These are resources that are necessary for the continued functioning of your business. Prioritize resources in order of importance so you can determine where your post-disaster efforts should be focused.
•Develop mitigation plans. This is the “meat and potatoes” of your BCP, and includes things like communications, resource management, emergency response and public relations.
•Finally, to be sure your plan remains responsive, revisit it frequently with your team members to fine-tune it, especially as equipment and other resources are added to your company, or removed from it.
Having a BCP in place helps ensure your business can weather virtually any storm – literally –  while minimizing loss and other impact that could otherwise wind up crippling your business. If you don’t have a BCP, make it a priority to develop one; and if you do have one, make sure it’s up-to-date and relevant.
Mar 02
Love0

Risk Mapping: A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

By Risk Management Bulletin
Understanding the risks your company faces is about more than simply identifying potential hazards; unless your company has unlimited resources, you also need to be able to quantify those risks in order to prioritize them in terms of mitigation. While that’s a task that comes easily to some people, others can benefit from a risk map, a two-dimensional representation of risks that can help you see at a glance which risks demand more immediate attention – and resources.
Plus, risk maps can play an important role in helping other people in your organization understand the risks the company faces, especially when you’re trying to promote buy-in for a risk-related expenditure. Many board members may not truly appreciate the relative risks a business faces; providing a visual aid can be tremendously valuable in ensuring your message is understood, even by those who may not have a “risk” mentality.
Plus, by using a risk map, decision-making among different departments can be facilitated and silos can be broken down: By plotting decisions of different departments on one map representing the entire company, it can be easier to see which decisions need to be prioritized.
More recently, the same technique has been used to map opportunities to make it easier to identify which opportunities represent the least risk and the most potential rewards.
Most risk maps use two axes: The vertical axis reflects the likelihood or potential frequency of a given risk, while the horizontal axis reflects the impact. You can see an example of a risk map (or “heat map,” as it is also sometimes called) at this Purdue University website. Using this design, moving farther to the right and/or up indicates increased risk, while activities or elements with the lowest risk are located closer to the lower left.
Developing a risk map is a skill that can take a little time to master, so before using one for a presentation to, say, your board of directors, set aside some time to consider the risks your company is facing and try plotting them on a simple two-axis map. You might be surprised how quickly your risk mitigation options begin to fall into place. Once your initial draft is complete, review it with a colleague and use their input to fine-tune it and gain additional insight that can help you allocate resources, make mitigation decisions and get that all-important board buy-in.
Mar 02
Love0

Consider Fire Extinguishers as an Employee Benefit

By Workplace Safety
Traditional employee benefits have become part of the “typical package”: taken for granted, expected, missing when not offered.  So employers tend to get a little pro forma with benefits.
Employers need to do a better job communicating benefits.
How many times have you heard an employee state they don’t think they have good medical insurance after they pay a thirty dollar copay for a two hundred dollar prescription?
Benefits should express some business ethic.  We don’t want you worried about your family healthcare so we pay all but thirty dollars for prescriptions.  Not “we have a healthcare program”.  You certainly wouldn’t recruit a new employee by offering a salary rather than being specific.
What says “we want your family to be safe” more than fire extinguishers?  Brand them with your company logo or identifier.  Give every employee two per year – one for home, one for the family vehicle.
This benefit might cost one hundred dollars per employee, far less than any other health or safety related benefit.  Every employee home and vehicle will have a reminder that the employer values their safety, on and off the job.
Safety becomes a twenty-four hour a day awareness program.  If any employee deploys this gift in an emergency, every employee will hear about it.
Along the same thought pattern, perhaps you choose to give smoke detectors or batteries every quarter to remind employees to change their detectors.  Protect the employees’ families, the spouse will be appreciative.
Many homes do not have carbon monoxide alarms.  Basements and garages should have these early warning systems for family safety.
These safety measures are very inexpensive compared to your company contributions to employee social security or Medicare.  Yet, they are much more visible in your employees’ lives, and you probably don’t adequately communicate the costs of the employers share of these mandates.
For an employee earning $40,000, the employer pays over $2800 for social security and Medicare.  Fire extinguishers, carbon dioxide monitors or smoke detectors combined cost less than $280.  The safety equipment is branded by your company, a concerned employer.
Health insurance, disability, contributions to retirement, paid vacations all cost more than safety.  Consider this employee benefit to reinforce your company safety ethic.  Your employees and their families will appreciate the good thoughts.
Mar 02
Love0

Reverse Engineering Accidents

By Workplace Safety
Basic reverse engineering of accidents is an iterative process which uses facts uncovered by investigation and interviews, and attempts to recreate events leading up to industrial accidents.
Usually, several levels of safety redundancy must fail to lead up to an industrial accident.  Supervision is weak.  Employees are poorly trained.  Equipment is not maintained properly.  Leadership values production over safety.  Proper operational protocols are not in place.
Reverse engineering helps prevent future incidents by diagnosing weaknesses in training or process.
Begin with the task itself.  What was being attempted?  Was this action in the scope of normal employment or employee horseplay?
Did a roofer fall from a roof while stapling shingles down, or did he jump off the roof while attempting to dunk a basketball?
Was the employee trained for his job?  Was a first-day employee stapling these shingles or a seasoned employee?
Were safety devices used?  Was the employee tied off and in a harness or was the line too long for the fall?
Where was the supervision?
In double checking the information received against the field conditions, you can determine what is the likely truth.  Some forensics may be required for vehicle wrecks or building collapses.
Utility markers make errors.  Did someone follow up on the physical markings and compare them to utility drawings or field markers?
Reverse engineering teaches vigilance.  Redundancy will reduce damages and injuries.
Leadership, management, labor, equipment, and machinery conspire to create accident scenarios.  Quality management changes leadership direction, trains the labor force, maintains equipment properly, and teaches proper use of machinery to avoid problems which increases overall efficiency.
Leadership envisions the big goals of the business, the forecasts.  After an accident, this forecast can be used to model the hindcast.  Where did the process go wrong?  Obviously the goal was not to create an injury scenario, so where did leadership fail to communicate its vision?
The employee certainly does not want to sustain an injury.  Where did those actions go wrong?  Did the employee fail to ask for help?  Was the employee not trained properly?  Were they just messing around?  These facts, once confirmed, need to be confronted.
Wherever the failures are found, the proximate causes of the incident require intervention.  Perhaps the investigation finds a series of events not anticipated.  Find the avoidance practice and retrain.  Perhaps a supervisor simply failed in their duties.  Rehabilitate that employee or dismiss them.
Reverse engineering is about finding the causation and rehabilitating the system to avoid future problems.
 
Mar 02
Love0

Long-Term Exposures to New Chemicals

By Workplace Safety
Asbestos was considered a great and safe discovery for all types of insulation applications.  Years later asbestosis and related cancers wiped away all the positives.
Lead made paints brighter and gasoline burn better.  Then the effects of lead on the development of children became better understood.
For every short-term gain, new chemicals or applications run the risk of long-term downsides.  Why?  Long-term studies cannot be completed in an economically feasible time before product launch.
So, what should be done with new chemicals?
Caution.
Even the “green” cleaners, additives and solvents risk long-term effects.  It just isn’t predictable.  Under OSHA HAZMAT protocol, if you don’t know what contaminants you’re dealing with, the wisest approach is to use maximum protection:  positive pressure respirators and full skin protection.
In the case of short term exposures, like those on a construction site, respirators, gloves and protective eyewear should suffice.  In confined space or enclosed poorly ventilated areas, upgrade the respirators and use chemical suits.
It’s well worth getting workers OSHA HAZMAT training.  Products sold for specific building applications should not be feared, but long-term effects are never known in the short run.  Think about the number of concrete additives.  Have any tests been completed for vapor inhalation?  Yet, slabs in confined space (basements) use newly formulated chemicals.
Workers are exposed to them in vapor forms.
This warning is not meant to sound alarmist; however, the insurance industry is scared to uncover the “next asbestos” kind of claims.  They do spend a large amount of money studying the scenarios.  Their concerns focus on vapor intrusion scenarios and biological “Legionnaire’s” mutations.
Some of the more interesting and scary scenarios involve vapor intrusions from historical spills (old gasoline stations or heating oil spills) combining with and changing the newer chemicals used in modern construction.  Unlikely to occur in great numbers, probably not a large workforce concern, but this scenario could affect general liability policies in the long run.
Research the newer choices of chemicals and uses before jumping on the bandwagon.  From a hardline environmental view, nothing is non-toxic.  Remember, asbestos is a natural mineral; however, once changed, becomes a cancer causing material.
Research some of the older chemicals too.  Some long-term studies should be available for chemicals released ten years ago.
Finally, research the spill history, the historical environmental impacts on a site.  What are the possible combinations of vapor, and what can they do?
Be cautious rather than jumping in to the latest craze.
Close Menu