Latest Chris Burand Headlines
All the headlines from our Chris Burand Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Should Agency Owners Find or Develop Salespeople?
Nov 3 2014 // I was going through some old files and found an article from 20 years ago discussing how difficult it was to find quality new producers. The author discussed the partial solutions he had discovered running his agency. Two...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #64
Oct 24 2014 // Confirmation That Suit Papers Have Been Received by the Carrier.While not an every day occurrence, most agencies receive suit papers from various parties several times a year and these papers must be forwarded to the...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #63
Oct 21 2014 // Inflation Factors are Missing.Some property policies, particularly dwelling policies in personal lines, lack automatic inflation adjustment factors. These same policies often get less attention than other personal lines...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #62
Oct 17 2014 // Producers and Staff Do Not Adequately Know the Agency’s Procedures.More often than many might expect, staff and particularly producers do not adequately know the agency’s procedures. This can be especially...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #61
Oct 15 2014 // Proper Authorization to Change Coverages Part II.In Blog 14 I wrote about the need to verify the party requesting a change in coverage has the required authority to make such a request. Another variation of this theme is...
Future of Insurance Distribution for Independent Agencies and Companies That Rely on Them
Oct 6 2014 // Distribution of insurance today has become a de facto discussion of marketing. Smart agents and smart company people will benefit if they understand the history of insurance distribution. Insurance distribution was...
Small Commercial Lines: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Aug 27 2014 // Small commercial lines is suddenly the Cinderella of the insurance industry. Previously the unwanted step child turned beauty queen being courted, pursued, and being offered dowries for marriage. Dowries and marriage are...
Small Commercial Lines: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
Aug 4 2014 // Small commercial lines is suddenly the Cinderella of the insurance industry. The previously unwanted stepchild turned beauty queen is being courted, pursued, and being offered dowries for marriage. Dowries and marriage are...
Agency Ownership of Expirations
Jul 7 2014 // Agency ownership of its expirations is core to agency culture, core to the agency’s value, and core to the owners’ livelihoods. Yet today, the ownership and even more important, the value of the expirations, is...
Evaluating the Standard of Care in Today’s E&O Education
Jun 2 2014 // I do not know where agents are going for their errors and omissions (E&O) education, because from what they tell me about their standard of care it often has absolutely no connection to what I know their standard of...
Competition & Best Practices Results
May 5 2014 // A recent study reviewed in The Economist (Jan. 13, 2014) proved that competition was required to foster business success and progress. This makes sense. Competition is in many ways the “invisible hand” that...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #60
May 1 2014 // Quality of Quotes. Sometimes in the hurry hurry world of the CSR or producer, an insured will request quotes for certain coverages. Whether they do so as a result of the agency using a coverage checklist or simply the...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #59
Apr 29 2014 // Renewal Processing Time. Due to many reasons, including agencies cutting staff too much, I find many commercial CSRs are far behind in checking their policy renewals. Being behind creates significant E&O exposures such...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #58
Apr 24 2014 // ACA Grandfathering Disclaimer. According to the Wall Street Journal (Nov. 6, 2013), the first E&O suits have been filed against an insurance company for allegedly misleading a consumer into changing their health...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #57
Apr 23 2014 // Review Renewals. While my recommendation to review renewals might seem so simple that even mentioning it might seem like I’m scratching the bottom of the barrel, I am writing this recommendation because I am seeing...
Why Agencies Need to Pay More Attention to Insurer Insolvency
Apr 10 2014 // A myth is sneaking into the industry that insurer insolvency is not as important today. Belief in this myth is important to many entities. To put it more simply, a number of companies, agencies, and other firms benefit if...
Hiring That First Good Producer
Apr 7 2014 // Hiring that first good producer may be the most difficult single step/achievement an independent agent undertakes. It is so difficult, at least 60 percent of agencies, based on size surveys, never hire a single successful...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #56
Mar 27 2014 // Personal Lines Quote Sheets. In most agencies, CSRs base their personal lines quotes off the data gathered per their quote sheets. Two common problems exist using quote sheets. The first is many agencies’ quote...
Burand’s Agency E&O Blog: Tip #55
Mar 24 2014 // Fees & Agency’s Standard of Care. An agency’s Standard of Care requirement has many moving parts and variables. Simple answers generally do not exist because the applicable standard is case and fact...
Insurance Company Stability
Mar 10 2014 // Many years ago, a well-known insurance company went from being highly rated to insolvent almost in a fortnight. Most people in the industry older than 50 years old remember that time. The failure was a shock that created...
