Insurance companies judge management many ways, including attitude toward safety (cooperation with risk personnel), financially (credit checks), superficially (housekeeping, deferred maintenance), and in depth systems analysis (employee selection process). Positive results earn schedule credits, which reduce premiums.
When the warm weather arrives, many bike owners dust off their bicycles and hit the road. Whether bike owners plan to participate in competitions or just take a ride around the block with the family, it is important for them to understand the rules of the road. It is also important to be adequately insured.
Intellectual property is the crown jewel of any business, no matter its size. That’s why R&D departments exist and also why companies incur great expense to obtain patents. In fact, the race to innovate has heated up dramatically. But as Tom Aeppel noted in an October 25, 2004 The Wall Street Journal article entitled “Patent Dispute Embroils Industries,” the growing drive to be first has also ushered in another phenomenon
Fear is an important motivator when it comes to buying insurance. We worry about what will happen to assets like cars or homes if they are involved in a disaster, so we buy insurance to help us maintain their financial integrity if something should happen.
In recent years, our society has become what some people call “lawsuit happy.” In other words, an increasing number of people are filing lawsuits for everything from emotional injury to property damage-and they’re suing for larger amounts than ever before. If someone were to file a lawsuit against you, you could end up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, even if you won.
A business that suffers a major accident such as a fire or hurricane may have to shut down for days, weeks or longer for repairs. Often, the income lost during the shut down will exceed the cost of repairing or replacing the damaged property. Businesses can protect themselves against this severe financial loss by purchasing business income insurance. However, sometimes a business can suffer a significant income loss, not because of damage to its own property, but because of damage to someone else’s.
The materials that a contractor brings to a job site are subject to numerous perils in a variety of locations. The contractor might take delivery of them at his main location and store them for a period of time. At some point, he will transport them to a job site where they may again sit in storage. Finally, he will cut, drill, weld, or otherwise process the materials until they become a finished part of the building. During all of these stages, the materials may suffer damage by fire, theft, flooding, or even damage in a traffic accident during transport to the job site.
Standard auto, homeowner’s and boat insurance policies cover liability a person may have for injuries or property damage suffered by someone else. Insurance companies design them to cover accidents for which the insured person may owe tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, sometimes the person may be responsible for an accident so catastrophic that the damages are $1,000,000 or more. To cover financially devastating events like these, insurance companies offer personal umbrella policies. These policies provide additional protection when an accident uses up the amounts of insurance provided by the other policies. They may also cover some types of losses these other policies do not cover.
The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) is reminding homeowners that warmer temperatures not only signal the coming of spring, but they also contribute to snowmelts, which increases the risk of flooding in some parts of the country. Hence, there is no better time than now to review your flood insurance to ensure you are adequately covered against flood-related damage.
Filing an insurance claim can seem like an overwhelming task, but it doesn’t have to be. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has put together the following tips to help policyholders facilitate the process.