Have you considered hiring a local celebrity to help promote your insurance organization? Would it be worth the cost and effort? Would it help consumers to remember your name? Some researchers think so but only if the celebrity is a …
An agent’s technological plate is so full it may seem impossible to decide where to start. Experts agree that embracing mobile needs to take top priority for two critical tasks: to mobile-optimize the agency website and streamline clients’ access to …
Hard market or soft, having an active relationship with at least a couple of excess and surplus lines (E&S) wholesalers is typically required for agencies to be successful. For as long as insurance has been part of our society, the …
Imagine running an insurance agency 150 years ago. Essentially all that was available to sell was fire insurance and perhaps some marine. Fast forward to today and that same operation – now celebrating its sesquicentennial – has not only survived …
Direct premium written (DPW) for property/casualty insurance companies continues to increase, albeit gradually. At year-end 2013, nearly $545 billion of DPW was reported, a record high for the industry. For 2013, total DPW for all P/C insurers aggregately increased 4.1 …
Brewing Brewer “The ruling is especially disturbing given the current influx of illegal aliens, a crisis President Obama created and escalated.” —Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer upset over a U.S. Court of Appeals decision that her state’s policy of denying driver’s …
Many independent insurance agents say that tablet devices are going to be more important in the next couple of years – particularly for sales presentations and accessing carrier-based training. This is among the many findings in a new national survey …
The combination of Validus Holdings and Western World Insurance Group fills in “missing pieces” for both organizations, Validus’ chairman said in late June, detailing finer points of a $690 million deal that was announced June 23. For Western World, the …
You can be sure critics are already getting ready to pounce on a preliminary draft of the financial services section of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), invoking the usual rhetoric about the evils of global trade liberalization. TiSA is …
Private U.S. property/casualty insurers’ net income after taxes fell to $13.8 billion in first-quarter 2014 from $14.3 billion in first-quarter 2013. Insurers’ pretax operating income – the sum of net gains or losses on underwriting, net investment income, and miscellaneous …
