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Procedures

Certificates of insurance. Reviewing contracts for customers. Accepting premium payments. Employee moonlighting. Initiating policy cancellations. Disaster planning. Employee internet usage. Furnishing MVRs to customers. HIPAA and other privacy rules. In addition to typical agency operations, does your agency have procedures in place for these activities? If not, you can now.

A Policy Archeologist Talks Policy Records Retention

Agency owners often ask, “How long should I keep expired insurance policies?” When we’re talking about liability policies, the new answer may be “forever.”

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Disaster-Planning

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Should Agents Follow Up on Pending Cancellations for NonPayment?

For years your agency has not followed up on insurer cancellations for nonpayment. Now you feel that you are staffed to be able to do this. From an E&O (or other) standpoint, is this a good idea?

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"Courtesy" Calls on Cancellations of Direct-Billed Policies

After years of preaching to agencies that they should not call customers whose direct bill policies are in a “pending cancellation” state due to non-payment of premium, at least one insurer is suggesting that agents make a “courtesy call” on most clients whose direct bill policies are unpaid past their due dates. Could this present an E&O exposure for the agency?

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Canceling Current Policies for Failure to Pay Premiums on Past Policies

An insured received her commercial property renewal and paid it in full. She then received a cancellation notice. According to the insurer, they failed to bill the insured three years ago for a policy and wanted the premium for that term. She refused to pay it so they are cancelling the current policy for nonpayment. Can they do this?

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Lack of Documentation on L&H Sales

Some independent contractors sell L&H insurance and split commissions with a bank-owned agency. The agency does not get a copy of any of the documentation, from application to policy. Servicing is done solely by the insurer. Because of the way business is done, there is nothing that is recorded on the agency management system (no upload, no download, no nothing). Does this present a problem?

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Retroactive Cancellations

An insured requested that a second location be removed from his policy. He made the request on 09/29/06. The second location was sold 06/24/04 and he requested that it be removed effective 06/24/04, the date he sold the property, with a return of premium. He presented court house records showing that the property had been sold on that date. The insurer is only willing to remove the property effective 07/12/06 which was the current policy's renewal date. Who's right and why?

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