Parting Shots

Message to Agents: Be Proactive on Privacy

If you’re like most consumers, you get lots of mail from banks—banks that already call you a customer and those that consider you a prospect. “Hey, for a low rate of 2.9 percent, you can go into even deeper debt …

Wade Spilman: Peerless Advocate, Irreplaceable Friend

Wade Spilman was always proud to say that, even though he wasn’t an insurance agent, he spent so much of his life working with, and on behalf of, agents that he often found himself thinking like an agent. IIAT will …

Allstate’s Good Hands Put Death Grip on Fraud Perpetrators

“You’re in good hands.” Those words have a profoundly different context if you happen to be part of a group of individuals who submit “creative” claims to Allstate. In that case, those good hands will be locked in death grip …

What the Heck Is XML’

A persistent problem in delivering the insurance product quickly and accurately to the consumer is that there is no uniform way for all the players behind the scenes to communicate. There are way too many human touches and reentry of …

What the Heck is XML’

A persistent problem in delivering the insurance product quickly and accurately to the consumer is that there is no uniform way for all the players behind the scenes to communicate. There are way too many human touches and reentry of …

Mutual Holding Company: A Shell Game Without the Pea

I visited Liberty Mutual’s website recently and read information about the company’s plans to form a mutual holding company. It sounds like a great deal for policyholders: a more efficiently organized, flexible, stronger and more competitive company. Funny, the website …

Mutual Holding Company: A Shell Game

I visited Liberty Mutual’s website recently and read information about the company’s plans to form a mutual holding company. It sounds like a great deal for policyholders: a more efficiently organized,flexible, stronger and more competitive company. Funny, the website didn’t …

Living Through the Dot-Com Shakeout

Either through personal experience or observation, we all know that during the second half of 2000, Wall Street pummeled the value and image of Internet companies. The bloom was off the rose. Investors realized that most Internet companies were grossly …

Living Through the Dot-Com Shakeout

Either through personal experience or observation, we all know that during the later half of 2000, Wall Street pummeled the value and image of Internet companies. The bloom was off the rose. Investors realized that most Internet companies were grossly …

It’s All in the Execution for Doomed OSHA Regulations

To the relief of employers and insurers, Congress overturned the ergonomic regulations adopted by OSHA last year. Despite all the caterwauling about the ergonomic regulations adopted by OSHA in November 2000, I think they would have worked fine—if Bill Clinton …

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