I was asking some of my friends on Facebook if they could give me some feedback regarding what is most important to them when they are doing business with someone. As you can probably imagine, words like honesty, trust, relationship, communication, integrity came up pretty frequently. It totally makes sense that people like to do business with people they know, like, and trust. It is very unsettling to try to do business with someone you don’t care for, or if you are not sure if they are going to do the right thing, especially if you are making a fairly large purchase! When it comes to the insurance industry, they spend billions of dollars a year to make you feel like you know them, like them and trust them. Professor Burke, portrayed by Oscar Winner J.K. Simmons of the University of Farmers commercials has quickly become one of the most recognizable and likeable company spokespeople around today. But while commercials are all well and good, it really comes down to the individual interaction with a person representing the company. While it requires an individual to conduct an insurance transaction, not all companies have agents, per se. What I mean is, if you call in to an insurance company and ask to change a vehicle, the person on the other end is a licensed insurance agent……for the Company. But are they YOUR agent? Many insurance companies have a bank of what I call “licensed phone answers” who may not even live in the state from which you are calling. Many of these people are very good at what they do and are very competent when it comes to making certain transactions. These “phone or chat only” companies are generally cheaper than more traditional agent based companies in that they have made the insurance transaction fairly automated. And that may be fine for many people……however……. I am a personal lines and life insurance agent. I am also an insurance broker. What distinguishes me from the phone only company agent is that the people I do business with are my clientele, not part of a faceless mass of people on the other end of a phone line. When people want to talk about their insurance needs, they call me or my staff. I am responsible for everything that happens (or doesn’t happen) in that office. When there is a problem, or an unmet need, I am the person who needs to resolve it, not operator 853 out of Nebraska. This is the value that an experienced insurance agent brings to the table: When I first started in business as an agent, I naturally reached out to my friends and family to get started. One of my dear friends had recently gotten married. In fact, within the past year and a half, he had gone from being a single man renting a room with some other single men to getting married and buying a house. He also bought a second car. When I approached him about doing business, he told me that he had been with the agent for over two years, but during that time, he had never spoken to the agent, nor had he ever received an invitation (via email, letter, phone call from staff) to sit down and review his coverages. When I looked at his coverage, his liability coverage was woefully inadequate for a homeowner with a mortgage and a fairly sizable savings. These are the sort of things that a competent insurance agent who asks questions would figure out right away. My friend was very happy to be equipped with this new information and we immediately got him set up with a policy that was tailored made especially for him and his wife. Where things get interesting is that, when he called the agent’s office to cancel, he got a staff person on the line. The staff person said that all cancellations had to go through the agent, but that (ironically) he wasn’t in at the moment, but that he would call him back. Later that evening at around 7 p.m., the agent calls him and immediately starts berating him about switching companies. He (then!) offered to review his coverages and get everything up to date. My friend told him that he was a little too late since he had already started up policies with an agent that he knew, liked, and trusted and that knew, liked, and trusted him! After a bit of going back and forth (and another call the next day!) he finally got his old policies cancelled. This type of interaction happens way too often. The old agent doesn’t kick into action until the client is ready to leave. My service to this gentleman did not end there, however. He recently bought a second home. In the process of looking at the escrow instructions, I saw that the ownership vesting was a bit odd for someone in his situation. In fact, if he or his wife were to die while they owned the home, it could potentially create some very inconvenient situations for the surviving spouse. I asked him about what he wanted to have happen to the ownership of the home should either one of them die. Based on his feedback, we were able to make a change that met their needs. Needless to say, Operator 853 out of Nebraska, would not have questioned the vesting and would have just used the escrow instructions, creating a hardship for a surviving spouse This is the value that an experienced insurance agent brings to the table: helping to prevent potential problems and heartache, because YOUR agent was looking out for YOUR best interests. I will briefly address some of things that my Facebook followers told me and how a personal agent fits in. Integrity is something that we all want to have in someone with whom we do business. Many industries have unscrupulous salespeople who will make a sale knowing that they will never see that person again. In real estate transactions, I have been asked to shape a policy a certain way to get the premium down. While I will certainly do my best to come up with an affordable price, I will NOT shape a policy that will leave an insured in an untenable situation with their coverages. If something happens five years down the line, and that policy is not structured well, it won’t be the real estate professional they will be calling, it will be me. When making large purchases like homes or autos, make sure that you have an agent that is involved in the process and is representing your interests. While the salesperson may be honest and trustworthy, this is going to be one sale. The insurance agent can be there for years. They need to do things right! If you are paying a little bit more to have a personal agent, service is something to be expected. Oftentimes insurance professionals view the regular transactions of swapping out vehicles, adding new vehicles, or helping with home refinance as just all in a day’s work, they need to remember that these transactions are really big deals to our policyholders. These are the times that they need us to come through, and to do it right. If someone needs proof of insurance, we have the technology to get them that evidence within a few seconds. If your agent says that they will have it to you within 24 hours, it’s probably time to shop for another agent. They are either lazy or not up to date with the new technology! Another key part of servicing that transaction I mentioned is that it means that something has changed in your life. If you bought another car, it could be that you now have a youthful driver on the scene and behind the wheel. Meeting with your agent at this time is a MUST! When people are buying new homes or selling homes, that’s the time an agent should be offering to review your coverage. Maybe there’s a new child on the way. A good agent will talk about life insurance in those situations. Operator 853 in Nebraska is very unlikely to remember that you have a kid. In fact, Operator 853 is now Operator 227 in New York and knows nothing about your situation, nor do they care. Bottom line, your agent should know you, or at least be willing to find out about you. If you are a business owner, has your insurance agent asked you to lunch? Have they offered to bring your office staff cookies? Do they do business with you like you do business with them? Those are all things to consider. As I looked at the feedback I got, what came through loud and clear is that people want the people with whom they do business to make them feel good. They want to feel at ease. If you are tensing up before you call your agent because you feel like you’re calling a stranger, it is probably time to invest some time in interviewing for a new agent. I hope you start with me! If you have any questions, or if you would like to just get a second opinion on your insurance situation, please feel free to call me or my licensed staff (their names are Sarah and Shannon, not Operators 1 and 2!) to schedule a time to go over your account. My number is (661) 946-4224. You can also drop by our office at 44309 Lowtree Avenue in Lancaster. We are also available via email at dave@thedaveowens.com.
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Boom! Two days later, you get a summons to court .... We have discussed the homeowner's policy at fairly great length in other blogs, and you can check it out HERE, but today I want to talk about a coverage that is very small in cost, is often left off of a homeowner's policy, but could have huge implications for a homeowner. That coverage is "Personal Injury Insurance."
Under most circumstances, your home insurance liability portion covers losses arising from your negligence. For instance, your dog bites someone. You never intended for your dog to bite someone, but it happened, and you're responsible. Another situation might be, you left a ladder leaning up against your home after doing some rain gutter cleaning. A powerful gust of wind blows the ladder over and it hits your neighbor's car. Homeowner's liability coverage is designed to protect you from these types of occurrences. Personal Injury insurance coverage, however, is rather different. In the examples I mentioned above, none of the occurrences were deliberate on your part. Where personal injury coverage comes into play is that it amends your policy to cover occurrences in which you deliberately did something that unintentionally caused harm. Examples of this would be, you have a party at your house and someone says something disparaging about your carpet. You stand in the doorway and say, "you're not leaving this house until you apologize for that remark!" You then block the doorway, and direct your spouse to block the back door so that the person can't leave. The person apologizes and then leaves. Boom! Two days later, you get a summons to court saying that you're being sued for false imprisonment! The injured party claimed that while they were not physically injured, they were held in your home against their will and that your "false imprisonment" caused them fear for their safety. This is a very real issue that could possibly end up costing a homeowner thousands of dollars in attorney's fees. Even if the case is determined to be without merit, you still need to defend yourself. Most people don't have that type of money laying around. That's why this coverage is so important. Another key aspect of this coverage which is becoming increasingly important in our modern social media savvy society. Libel and slander are becoming easier to commit, even unintentionally. It could be something as simple as saying, "that violinist in the middle was horrible! How did she ever make the high school band? Is she the teacher's daughter?" While these types of comments might be true in your mind, and you might even say something like that to a VERY close friend, posting it on Social Media like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram could find yourself with a summons as well as a subpoena for all of your computers and cell phones. With modern technology, your comments could be around the world in three seconds. Yet another key person for whom this coverage could be invaluable is a public person. Public people are by definition in the public eye. Things that they say are more closely watched, and therefore something they say could be misconstrued. In other words, a public person is a bigger target for slander and libel suits. While many of these cases are dismissed, the costs of defense can rise very quickly. Bottom line, a Personal Injury endorsement usually costs less than $20 per year. If you find yourself in one of these extremely trying situations, it will be money well spent!! If you don't have personal injury coverage on your policy, or if your company doesn't offer it, please feel free to give my office a call at (661) 946-4224. I or my licensed staff will be happy to review your homeowner's policy to see if this policy endorsement is right for you. Since Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, many folks are scouring the specialty card aisle at their local drug store or supermarket. I have personally seen folks spending quite a bit of time trying to find the absolute perfect card for their loved one. After all, what is Valentine’s Day about except love! While one would not normally make the association of Valentine’s Day and Life Insurance, there is actually a very strong link between the two. In fact, you can only write life insurance on someone you do business with, or someone you love. That would include a child, a parent, a spouse, a grandchild, or various other “love connections.” Life insurance is a product specifically designed to create a pool of tax-free money at the death of an individual. That pool of money is then given to the beneficiary (or beneficiaries) of the policy. That’s it. Life insurance is one of the simplest insurance products to understand since it only involves two things: the life of the person who is being insured and the life of the person they love (the beneficiary). The one thing that most people stuggle with life regarding insurance, is that by its very nature, it requires that people talk about their own mortality: not exactly something we like to contemplate every day! The fact is, however, we are all going to pass on at some time in the future. Some of us sooner, and some of us later. In almost every case, our lives will leave a huge hole in the life of those around us. While life insurance can never replace us physically, it can replace us financially. In my over 20 years in the insurance business, I have personally hand-delivered four life insurance checks to the family members of someone who had a life insurance policy on them. It is hard to describe the satisfaction I feel knowing that I was able to truly, truly help someone in their time of need. The first life insurance checks I delivered were for a husband and wife. In a strange twist of fate, the couple was murdered in their own home. The crime has never been solved, and the authorities have concluded that it was a case of mistaken identity. The married couple had each other as their primary beneficiaries, so the policy reverted to the secondary beneficiaries, their respective parents. What life insurance did for this family is, they were able to fly their children back home to a family burial site. Without that life insurance, such a move was probably out of the question. As it turned out, the family was able to bring their children back home and they were able to grieve with dignity. The next life insurance policy that I will tell you about is very emotional for me. Most people don’t think about life insurance for children. When our children are so vital and full of life, the thought of them passing away is almost impossible to comprehend, but it happens. My niece was pretty much like any other infant at seven months. She was happy, growing and developing, and generally progressing as most babies do. One day, however, the babysitter noticed a large lump on her back, right about the kidney area. She immediately told my sister about the lump, and my sister called the doctor. The doctor wanted to see her immediately. To make a long and difficult story short, my niece had a form of cancer called Wilme’s Tumors. This particular type of cancer is the second most common childhood cancer behind leukemia. My niece fought a brave and difficult two year battle against the disease, but succumbed exactly one month before her third birthday. The silver lining to this story is that my niece Ally was covered by a life insurance policy. The policy had been written prior to her diagnosis, and the policy benefit check was cut and delivered within five days of her death. What did this life insurance check do for my sister and her family? They were able to pick the mortuary that they wanted instead of the one they would have had to use. They were able to bury Ally in clothing that she would have loved. They were able to pay for some lingering medical bills, but most of all, they were able to mourn the loss of their beloved daughter with grace and dignity. They had some people give them offers of money, but they were able to take care of everything themselves. Unfortunately, the story does not end there. Shortly after Ally’s passing, my sister started experiencing chest pains. She went to the doctor for a chest x-ray. My sister saw the x-rays and immediately told the x-ray tech, “that’s cancer.” The technician said that she shouldn’t make that type of diagnosis. My sister said, “I’ve seen enough cancer on x-rays to know what I’m looking at.” Her doctor confirmed the diagnosis of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. In my sister’s case, the story is much happier. She responded exceedingly well to all of the therapies and has been cancer free for close to ten years. She sometimes jokes that it’s great when your oncologist isn’t really interested in seeing you that much! She also stated that she is actually grateful that she got cancer because now she understands more fully what Ally went through. After her experience with the loss of her daughter and her own experience of going through cancer, my sister Linda and her husband Scott Webb started the non-profit organization “Ally’s House.” The reason they named it Ally’s House is that whenever Ally would come home from a harrowing treatment the first thing she would say when they rounded the corner was, “Ally’s House!” At “Ally’s House,” she felt safe and secure. Linda and Scott wanted to create an organization that would help families of children with cancer by providing funds to cover many of the daily costs associated with cancer treatment that are not covered by insurance. Things like food, housing vouchers, travel vouchers, etc. If you want to find out about the great work being done by the folks at Ally’s House, check out their website at www.allyshouse.net. You will see a picture of Ally (Allison) and read her story. If there is anything that I would stress, it is that life insurance is about taking care of families in their time of greatest need. Life insurance gives your family and loved ones the dignity to mourn your loss without the burden and stress of how they are going to pay for all of the costs associated with your passing. While this topic may seem a bit heavy for Valentine’s Day, it’s what Valentine’s Day is all about: love.
If you have questions about life insurance, or if life insurance is appropriate for your family’s situation, please feel free to call my office at (661) 946-4224. We will be happy to talk about the different types of life insurance available as well as how to structure it in the best way for your family situation. As a business owner, there are so many details that need to be addressed. Paying the bills, ordering the supplies, prepping the product, organizing inventory, the list goes on and on! One coverage that falls under the "must be taken care of" category is Workers' Compensation. Workers' Compensation is a coverage which kicks in when one of your employees is injured on the job. This could be a cut hand, a sprained ankle, a bumped head, or even worse. Workers' Compensation gives business owners the peace of mind knowing that if one of their valued employees is hurt, they will be taken care of, and the business will not have to pay medical bills out of pocket. Since the early days of the 20th Century, the courts have determined that it is the responsibility of the business owner to maintain a safe working environment, as well as to take care of any injuries that an employee may incur while working. Before that time, many workers labored under horrific conditions, and many of them lost limbs with absolutely no compensation whatsoever. Since that time, the Workers' Compensation insurance product was developed. Now, employers can shift the risk of paying for injuries to an insurance company instead of paying medical bills out of pocket. A whole new industry related to workers' injuries sprang up with a multitude of attorneys, doctors, and therapists setting up shop to take care and service this emerging societal phenomenon. All of this economic activity resulted in an increase in premiums for business owners. Instead of being something that an employer would gladly pay to take care of their employees has become a larger and larger bill for many businesses. Naturally, employers have looked for ways to cut costs. One way that some employers tried to cut costs was by paying their employees on a 1099 form, thus removing them from payroll and avoiding the Social Security tax. While this may seem like a good idea, the law does not allow this except in very specific circumstances. The IRS has a checklist to assist employers in deciding whether the people they hire are employees or independent contractors. You can find the link here: https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Independent-Contractor-Self-Employed-or-Employee. Many business owners have found to their detriment that their attempt to shift the responsibility for taking care of their workers wasn't legal and ended up costing them big time. While there's no way of getting around providing Workers' Compensation (short of getting rid of employees!), there are ways to keep the costs down. First of all, make sure that the employees are classified correctly on your policy. Workers' Compensation rates are based on wages paid to different classes of employees. A clerical employee who works in an office setting is much less at risk than someone operating sharp blades. Ask your agent about how best to determine these classifications. Secondly, make sure that the payroll amounts your premiums are based on are accurate. If you've cut hours to save money, make sure that your insurance companies knows this and makes adjustments accordingly. Thirdly, make up (and enforce!) a safety program in your business. The very best way to keep premiums down is to avoid accidents in the first place. Also, a safety plan does no good if it's not used, so make sure your employees are regularly educated and informed about safety. Fourth, keep an eye on your open claims. Oftentimes, old claims remain open, even if they've been settled. By being proactive, you can contact your insurance company to make sure that they close out any old claims. This helps keep what's known as an Experience Modification Factor low. Last, see if you are eligible for a deductible. Many companies offer deductibles for their Workers' Compensation policy. This enables you to take care of the small "first aid" types of claims. Once again, this keeps your claims frequency down and your premiums lower. As always, if you should have questions, please feel free to contact our office at (661) 946-4224. We'll be happy to review your policy and assist you with your questions. |
AuthorDave Owens, Owner/Agent. I have proudly served in the Insurance Industry for over 20 years. Archives
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