I’m working with a Dallas area consulting firm which has experienced explosive growth over the past year in terms of both people and revenues. They are negotiating a lease for their first office space and will move out of the owner’s home in the coming months. It’s a very exciting time for them involving a lot of moving pieces, insurance being one of them.
I been working with several young couples on their home and car insurance. They have several things in common with each other; they are buying their first home and I’m the first independent insurance agent they’ve ever worked with. In each case, the individual or couple have asked me one of two questions as we completed the applications for their policies; do they pay me for the service I’ve provided or will I be their agent after the policies are written?
News sites across the internet, as well as local media, informed us that 1.2 billion usernames and passwords were stolen by an internet crime group located in a small city in south-central Russia. In addition to the usernames and passwords, over 500 million email addresses were also stolen and confidential material was obtained from 420,000 websites. The websites that were hacked included Fortune 500 companies as well as small internet sites.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve had discussions and quote requests from 4 small business owners in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. Each of them is living the dream having started and building a successful small business through all of the hard work and long hours it takes to build a successful company. Each of the businesses are in different industries, but what was remarkable is their similarity as it related to their commercial insurance. Their commercial insurance coverage didn’t adequately protect them.
I’m currently working with several small business owners regarding their commercial insurance needs. One of the questions each of them have asked is what commercial insurance do they need to adequately protect themselves and their businesses. The answer is it just depends on the business. Some need general liability, others need business property coverage, and a couple need professional liability or errors and omissions (E&O) coverage.
On the afternoon of April 17, 2013 a fire broke out at the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas, a town located a little more than an hour’s drive south of Dallas and Fort Worth on Interstate 35. The first responders to the fire included 10 members of the West Volunteer Fire Department, along with 2 other people who pitched in to help. At 7:50 that evening, an explosion rocked the West Fertilizer Company killing 15 people including the 12 people who responded to the fire and injuring about 200 people in town.
On a day in September with a clear blue sky over New York City where most people were going about their day dropping kids off at school, getting to work, and tackling the tasks on their to do lists, our lives were forever changed. American Flight 11 and United’s Flight 175 crash into the twin towers roughly 14 minutes apart. 37 minutes later …
There are two broad areas of coverage in a Business Owner’s Policy or BOP; liability and property coverage. Last week I introduced liability coverage and the types of protection found in many BOP packages. This week we’ll outline the property portion of a BOP and what it’s designed to protect.
North Texas was hit by an ice storm about two weeks ago. Rain fell and froze then built up on trees and powers lines until weight won out and lines began to snap. The storm led to power loss for over 270,000 people with no numbers reported on the impact to small businesses.
Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, Colorado have experienced severe fires both last year and this year. In June of 2012, the Waldo Canyon fire ravaged almost 19,000 acres, killed two people, and destroyed 347 homes. The Black Forest fire that happened in June of this year torched over 14,200 acres, killed two people and destroyed 509 homes.
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