Declarations

Get on the Bandwagon

“You’re not going to get any more mortality (business) with the things you’re doing now.”

—Douglas French, managing principal of Ernst & Young’s insurance advisory practice, recently told Reuters that most insurers are missing business opportunities to target Generation Y, the future customer base. Insurers are letting consumer technology like smartphones and social media networks get ahead of them, creating a challenge to attract a new generation of customers who are not interested in doing business with agents the way their parents did. Some companies have been more aggressive with their push into new media, though mostly in automotive insurance, he said. (Reuters)

Outsourcing in the Country

“[W]hat I’m doing is finding all our amazing retirees in the insurance space. As you know, the Baby Boomer population is beginning to retire. Our average age in the industry is 54 and we have an amazing amount of talent and brainpower out there that has retired from the industry but still needs to work.”

—Sharon Emek, co-founder, president and CEO of WAHVE, or Work At Home Vintage Employees. The company helps insurance industry companies that want to outsource work to contract employees who work from home. The WAHVE network includes customer service representatives (CSRs), account executives, underwriters, claims managers – people who have worked at retail agencies, wholesalers and insurance carriers. Many hold professional designations, including CIC, ARM, CPCU, and they hail from all over the country.

Fatalities Fell

“The experience of the past three years is not grounds for concluding that sustainable progress has been made on traffic safety.”

—A report from a U.S. government research panel that found the United States is lagging behind nearly every other high-income country in reducing annual traffic fatalities. U.S. traffic fatalities fell 9.7 percent in 2009 to 33,808, the lowest number since 1950. In 2008, an estimated 37,423 people died on the highways, a decline of 9.3 percent from the previous year. But dramatic declines in traffic fatalities in the United States over the past several years are likely due to a sour economy in which people drive less, rather than lasting changes in behavior, the report suggested. As the economy improves, researchers said, fatalities are likely to rebound. (AP)

Topics USA