“I’m an insurance agent, not a lawyer. Why do I need to know so much about contract law?” This is a question almost every new insurance employee asks, especially once they begin taking classes toward a designation. The CPCU 410 Speaking the Insurance Language course contains an entire chapter on contract law. This article will…
Insurance company agency agreement wording for both Property Casualty agents and Group Health agents require unequivocal compliance with all current state and federal privacy and data breach response laws. Failure to do so puts the agency in potential breach of contract and liable for all claims incurred by the insurance company under the indemnification clause…
People who know this industry and its contracts extremely well can help establish the contractual framework that includes real world knowledge of how various contracts need to work. For example, almost no producer contracts I have read, written by attorneys with limited insurance agency knowledge (about 95% of attorneys), know the proper wording for producer…
Agency employment contracts, particularly with producers, can prove to be critical when trying to resolve problems involving commissions, termination, account ownership, and similar disputes. The existence of such contracts can benefit both the agency and the employee. In this article, we’ll give you an example of how an employment contract (or lack thereof) governed a…
A Non-Compete Agreement that contains geographic wording is like a rancher telling a cowboy that if he can’t work for the rancher, he also must move to another geographic area to ply his trade. The courts generally say that a business cannot stop a worker from plying his trade where he lives and works. Fortunately,…
Producers often work for the agency with a lot of independence. Does that make them independent contractors rather than employees? What if they’re paid as 1099 workers rather than receiving W2s? Obviously, their employment status can affect how they’re viewed by the IRS and your state labor department with regard to workers compensation coverage.
Citing tough economic times, an agency producer has ventured into a multi-level marketing operation and has sold energy conservation devices to several existing agency customers. The agency owner is concerned on many levels, not the least being the agency’s potential liability for one of these defective products. How should this situation be handled?
Warning: This article is NOT about “agency contracts,” but rather about the practice (or lack thereof) of the agency reviewing the coverage implications of contracts entered into by insureds. We’re categorizing this as an agency management, rather than a coverage, issue since procedures need to be in place for carrying out this often requested task.
Every agency should have a contract with every producer. Every contract should include a clause that governs the solicitation of accounts if the producer leaves the agency. Unfortunately, too many agencies either don’t have such contract provisions or the ones in place are legally unenforceable. In this article, we explain the difference between non-compete, non-piracy…
It is unfortunate that the majority of agencies still do not have Non-Compete and Non-Piracy Agreements with producers and other key employees. Three things can happen without these agreements…and two of them are bad. In this article, we’ll distinguish between these two types of employment contracts and explain what they should include and why.
