Home Security Alarm (re post)

On a daily basis you see ads on TV for home security systems. We at Fey Insurance highly recommend the installation of a Home Security System to add additional protection for you and your family. Insurance will work to put your property back in place after a fire or burglary, but a Home Security System will work to prevent or minimize the effects of that fire or burglary. If you are interested in such a Home Security System, please call us and we will tell you our opinion of the various manufacturers and what features to consider. For example battery backups are usually included in Home Security Systems, but we would also recommend cellular backups for your system in the event your normal phone service goes down or even disabled by a potential burglar. We would include carbon monoxide detectors in your system especially if you have a natural gas furnace or hot water heater. Central station monitoring is preferable to systems that go directly into a police or fire dispatch. Both are considered superior to a system that only sounds a local alarm in your home. There are discounts on your Homeowner policy for the installation of a Home Security System. Please call us to review those discounts. But the most important reason, in our opinion, to install such a system is for additional security for your family and peace of mind that you are doing everything to protect your family and your property.

Professional Liability & the Claims-Made Policy

Occupations or business practices involving specialized care or advice often need professional liability insurance. Typical business classifications that need this coverage would be notary publics, real estate agents or managers, attorneys, doctors and consultants. The typical commercial general liability policy will only respond to bodily injury, property damage, personal injury or advertising injury claim.

The professional liability policy often is written on a claims-made form. The claims-made form requires the claim to be reported during the policy period, and the incident causing the claim must have occurred after the retro date for a claim to be covered. A retro date is a date prior to the start of the claims-made policy. The retro date could be years prior to the start date of the policy based on the underwriter’s discretion, after considering the applicants past exposures and loss history.

By comparison, the typical occurrence-based policy used in most commercial policies responds to claims that occur during the policy period, regardless of when reported subject to the statutes of limitations. The occurrence-based policy handles when the claim happens, and the claims-made policy considers when the claim is reported. In some cases, it is possible to purchase a claims-made policy with full prior acts coverage that essentially does away with a retro date. Coverage classes for this option are limited, and again, depend on the underwriter’s discretion.

When canceling an existing claims-made policy, it is usually advisable to purchase and extended reporting period. This is commonly referred to as tail coverage. Various lengths of time are available. Tail coverage extends the claim reporting period under the claims-made policy to cover claims that have occurred during the coverage period, and not yet reported by the cancellation date.
While most occurrence-based policies are somewhat similar, claims-made policies are usually specific to each company issuing the policy. The insurance agent must d o a careful review of these differences to determine applicability to a particular operation.

Fire Prevention Week

This week is the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) Fire Prevention Week.  This is a great chance for you and your family to discuss the danger of fire, the best ways to prevent fires in the home and create an escape plan if fire were to occur in your home.  The National Fire Protection Association has teamed up with Scholastic, Inc. and have made great educational programs for families.  Click the below hyper link and be directed to the NFPA’s website that focus on the educational materials.  The materials are free.

National Fire Protection Website

US Working Toward Standardized Penalties for Data Breaches

Last month the US Senate’s Judiciary Committee approved three bills that deal with data breaches.  Those three bills where, The Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2011, The Personal Data Protection and Breach Accountability Act of 2011 and the Data Breach Notification Act of 2011.  The gist of all these acts is that the government is working toward a standardized practice of requiring notification of data breaches and a standardization of penalties for companies that have data breaches.  What this means for business is that it is now very important for you to take as many precautions as you can to secure your clients’ private data.  Firewalls, antivirus software, IT consultants, encryptions, company internet usage policies and password protections are all key parts of securing your business for data breaches. 

Even if all the preventative measures are in place, your business still runs that risk of a data breach.  That is where insurance products can help protect your business.  Insurance products can’t help protect your data but they can protect your company’s money by helping pay for data breach notification costs, third party lawsuits filed against your company for breach of client’s personal information and the cost to restore lost data.

As the government moves to a more standardized notification requirement and penalties for data breaches, companies that hold private information should also be working toward setting up strong data security measures as well as put in place insurance products to help protect their company’s hard earned money.

Be Cautious When Using Smart Devices

Mobile devices used by you personally or provided by your business or employer offer wonderful advantages to make you more productive, but they come with potential hazards. Security breaches either by accident or intentional "hacking" can put your personal information and/or your business information at risk.

Most corporate security types say the biggest issues involve personal mobile devices use to "hack" into corporate servers and data bases. Data encryption and passwords are highly recommended along with the ability to wipe out data from a Smartphone or tablet issued by the company. The latter can be extremely helpful in the event a personal Smartphone is stolen, and the corporate IT people want to wipe the phone of all secure access information remotely. Some corporations allow access to company data through personal mobile devices but only with devices that were provided by the corporation. Some corporations are requiring employees to register personal devices with corporate security/data processing so they can control how their corporate data is being accessed. All of these precautions are highly recommended by Fey Insurance.

It isn't just the business world that faces possible problems with personal smart phones, iPads, etc. accessing data. Accessing your personal and private financial information via Smartphone, iPads, etc can also be an issue. Many people have their banking applications on their devices as well as applications that have all their stored passwords. A lost device could result in access to your personal bank accounts and do a lot of financial damage. Password protecting your devices is key. The more passwords and protection you employ the better in protecting you and your family from potential financial ruin. Apple iPhones have tracking capabilities so if your phone is lost you can use your personal computer or another iPhone to track its location. They also allow you to wipe the phones clean of all data and make them useless to anyone who might find the lost phone and want to cause serious problems with your data.

If you have further questions, consult your Smartphone or table manufacturer, your phone service carrier or your corporate IT/security people for help.

WSJ Article on Flood Insurance

Wall Street Journal had a very interesting article about flood insurance.   In the wake of all that is going on in the aftermath of Irene, we thought this article would be a good one to share.  As you may recall from our previous posts on flood insurance, it is run by FEMA.  What is going to even make this whole flood topic even more interesting is that the FEMA flood program expires on Sept 30th, 2011 unless the lawmakers decide to continue the program.  Stay tuned.

Click below to read the article:
As Homeowners Dive Into Pool Of Flood Insurance, Caveats Abound

NAIC Provides Forum for Ivory Tower Attack on Self-Insurance

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has never been known as an organization where the self-insurance/alternative risk transfer industry is treated fairly, but its penchant for bias became even more visible this past week. Worse yet, this bias is now being fomented by an “ivory tower” expert.

Professor Timothy Stoltzfus Jost is the designated “consumer representative” on the NAIC’s ERISA (B) Subgroup , which is tasked with developing various policy recommendations related to how states should adapt their insurance regulations to better coordinate with PPACA implementation. The esteemed professor is not shy in sharing his opinion that smaller self-insured group health plans, facilitated by stop-loss insurance, should be made extinct.

During the Workgroup’s last conference call, Professor Jost presented a formal statement entitled The Affordable Care Act and Stop-Loss Insurance. This scholarly work was quite the hit piece on self-insurance disguised with big words, extensive footnoting and misleading legal references.

His central thesis is that smaller employers should not be allowed to self-insure because they do so primarily to escape state regulation, and going forward to sidestep new PPACA regulation. He also pushes the dubious argument that self-insured plans contribute to adverse selection (see my earlier blog post on this subject).

Virtually all of Professor Jost’s points can and will be rebutted privately and publicly as this NAIC policy development process moves forward, but first let’s take some time to consider the source.

He is currently a law professor at the Washington and Lee University of Law, with multiple other academic appointments dating back to 1979. Along the way, he has written several books and academic papers on the subject of health care with titles such as The Threats Facing our Public Health Care Programs and a Rights-Based Response; and Health Care at Risk: a Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement.

And by the way, he is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz. In case you are not familiar with this school, it makes U.C. Berkley look like a bastion of conservatism.

So what about private sector experience over his 35 year career? You guessed it, zero. How about past experience as a regulator who at least could interact with the private sector? No again. What we have here is the classic liberal elite academic who looks at the world through prisms of theory and ideology.

Professor Jost holds himself out to be a patient’s rights advocate and clearly views the NAIC as a forum to present his “ivory tower” perspective. OK fine, there’s certainly room for a diversity of qualified opinions as part of the policy development process.

The problem is that while Professor Jost may well have valid perspectives to contribute on true consumer (patient) protection issues, he’s out of his league in commenting on how health care delivery should be financed.

Moreover, if he was truly concerned about the ability of individuals to receive quality, affordable health care, Professor Jost should actually be a proponent of self-insured health plans (regardless of size) because these plans generally do a better job on both counts as compared to the fully-insured marketplace.

It appears the professor is in need of some timely continuing education.