Commercial Lines

Preparing a Winning Underwriting Submission

While the reality of today’s underwriting is often, “Does this fit the box?” today’s hard market has caused many agents to scramble toward wholesalers and carriers with heartier appetites. However, submissions swamp today’s underwriters, and they may only scratch the surface of an application before responding, “No way!” How do you get your underwriting submission…

Round Out Your Accounts with a Business Owners Policy

A few recent articles highlight how many Americans, especially Millennials, supplement their income with side gigs. A side gig is work people start in addition to their main jobs. Side gigs can be full time or part time, and many people begin side gigs because they intend to transition into a full-time business. Many side-gig…

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Habitational Hot Mess

The habitational market struggles with a lack of capacity, increasing non-renewals, higher deductibles and restricted underwriting. How can the industry adapt to this hard market? This article covers current habitational risks in the multi-family market and offers tips for agents trying to place coverage.

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Back to Basics – Financial Terms Commercial Insurance Professionals Need to Know

As you handle more complicated commercial accounts, you’ll need to understand some often-used financial terms. Whether you’re furnishing your commercial insured’s financial data for underwriting or renewal or responding to audit assistance, here are the top financial terms you should know.

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Back to Basics – What is the Business Owners Policy?

The business owners policy (BOP) is one of the most widely used commercial insurance policies designed to protect small-to-medium sized business owners. While the Insurance Services Office ISO form is readily available, many insurers develop their own BOPs, tailored to different types of businesses, from main street florists to restaurants to contracting businesses. If you’re…

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Can Administering Narcan Create a General Liability Exposure?

Our Ask an Expert service offers Big “I” members insight into today’s risks or other coverage, technology, or agency management issues today’s agents encounter. This article offers insight into an important question we received: If I administer Narcan as a trained or untrained employee in emergency situations as required by the employer, will the employer’s…

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Back to Basics – Lead with Workers Compensation Coverage

Read any insurance trade journal, and you’ll see articles about how agents can “lead with workers compensation insurance.” Savvy insurance agents can increase their business by targeting employers with considerable workers compensation exposures. Often after the sale of the work comp policy, agents don’t stay as involved as they do on other lines of coverage.…

West Virginia Workers’ Compensation Legislation is a Dilemma with No Clear Solution – Yet

The Oxford Language Dictionary defines a Catch 22 as “A dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions. A new West Virginia law that allows employers to voluntarily cover post-traumatic stress disorder in frontline responders is just that – A Catch 22.

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Pollution Exclusion Found to Hold “Ambiguity” by Rhode Island Supreme Court

When my plumbing contractor husband recently renewed his general liability coverage, he asked our agent if he would have coverage if his employee installed a gas water heater and it later leaked, injuring someone in his customer’s household. His agent said, “Probably not,” based on the total pollution exclusion. Case law regarding what is and…

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