Workers Compensation Insurance – When It Comes To Claims, Time is Money

The old adage that time is money is certainly true when it comes to handling workers compensation claims. While the Form 19 claims form no longer states that the claim must be filed within 5 days of the accident or injury occurrence, moving fast on a workers compensation claim has a big impact on the size of the claim and the subsequent loss costs that will affect the employer. If you are an employer with employees and have a workers compensation policy, you should take a little bit of time before a claim happens to discuss with your agent what you will need to do to move the claim forward quickly.

Take a quick look at some insurance industry statistics related to the speed of claims reporting.

Claims reported two weeks after the occurrence had an 18% higher payout than claims reported in the first week.

Claims reported three weeks after the injury had a 47% increase in total loss costs over those reported in the first week.

And to drill down further, claims reported in days 5 through 7 after the occurrence had a larger claim cost than those reported in days 1 through 4.

Claims reported with only a 3 day delay had an increased medical cost of 16% over those reported on the day of the occurrence.

And we can also see this trend in terms of litigation costs associated with late reporting of workers compensation claims. Claims with a only a 3 day delay in reporting have a 50% greater chance of ending up in litigation. And litigation will increase the total costs of the claims and drive up your workers compensation premiums over time. To see how claims costs affect your premiums, click here.

So how does quicker reporting help to reduce the costs of a workers compensation claim? First of all, it allows the insurance company to contact all parties involved more quickly and this reduces the costs and chances of litigation. Once the injured worker has hired an attorney to represent him, then the claims process slows down considerably as the communication process now has another step involved. Quick claim reporting also allows the insurance company to get involved with the injured worker sooner and begin to develop plans to get the injured worker back to work in a shorter time. This not only reduces the costs of your future workers compensation claims, but it also cuts your downtime costs right away.

Last of all, consider that the longer the employee is out of work, the greater the burden on other co- workers in your company. This negative impact can hurt morale and can also lead to a higher risk of injury to the remaining workers on the job. In addition, hiring and training a temporary replacement worker can be very expensive.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC we want all insurance buyers to be informed consumers. Looking only at the policy costs can be a deceiving way to purchase insurance and might leave your company out in the cold. If we can help you with your business insurance, your workers compensation insurance, your general liability insurance, commercial auto insurance or life insurance, please call us, toll free at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

The source information for this article was pulled from other articles that can be found in their entirety at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Does Your Credit Score Match Your Insurance Company’s Appetite?

There is an awful lot of talk these days about credit scores. You see the ads with the people walking around with a number over their head, indicating their particular credit score. While these ads really have more to do with borrowing money or protecting your credit, a little known fact is that these scores also have a huge impact on your auto insurance policy rates and your home insurance rates.

Now, to clarify, most insurance companies don’t work straight off of your credit score, but rather a more complicated formula that is called your insurance score. They pool data that includes but is not limited to your credit score from database companies like Experian and Equifax. And your insurance score can actually vary from company to company. Add to this the fact that your rates are directly affected by your credit score. Insurance companies now have so many different rating tiers that it is almost as if they have a specific rate for you that is different from the rate that any other customer might receive.

So why is this important? I was recently at an annual meeting for a very large insurance company that specializes in auto insurance and home insurance. One of the graphs that came up on the overhead showed the percentage of policies that they wrote in many different insurance score bands. I guess that is no real surprise, but then they showed which bands of insurance score they wanted to grow in next year. And guess what, it wasn’t the highest score band. Now what that should tell you is that most insurance companies are not just trying to write all the policies they can, far from it. In fact, they are trying to write policies for people who fit their niche in the insurance score universe.

So this got me thinking. If every insurance company has a sweet spot in terms of insurance score, and almost every insurance buyer has his or her own unique insurance score, how in the world can the two match up so that the insurance company gets just the consumer that it is targeting and of course the consumer, by being in that company’s sweet spot, gets the best possible rate? There is no place where people can go and have their insurance score run and then plug those numbers into a data base that sorts them to the best insurance company. So, at best, this is an inexact science. But it does underscore the need for you to have an experienced advocate working for you in the process of buying your auto or your home insurance. And if you use an independent agent, then their access to and experience with the multiple insurance companies that they represent will give you a huge edge over the direct writers who only have access to one insurance company. So, who are the direct writers who are not independent? Well, they will be names that you recognize, State Farm, Allstate, Nationwide, Progressive and Geico. These companies spend a lot of money on TV talking about saving money and low prices, all designed to steer the conversation away from their weak point, the fact that they have only their one product to offer you and thus they minimize your chances of making a good match between your insurance score and your insurance company.

At Clinard Insurance Group, Inc, in Winston Salem, NC, we want insurance consumers to be informed consumers, whether or not they choose to buy from us. We believe the independent agent gives you the best possible chance to purchase the most coverage at the lowest price consistently over the long term. If we can help you with your NC auto insurance or your home insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557, or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com.

You can read source information for this article among other articles at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Clinard Insurance Group Named Rough Notes E-agency Of The Month February 2011

In this blog, I usually try to focus on insurance policy and coverage help that will allow insurance consumers out there to become more informed buyers of the insurance product they need. In this article, I want to deviate from that tack just a bit and take a moment to sing the praises of Clinard Insurance Group in particular.

The occasion for this change in approach on this blog is that Clinard Insurance Group, an independent insurance agency in Winston Salem, NC has been named the e-Agency of the month by Rough Notes magazine. Rough Notes is a national insurance industry magazine with over 40,000 subscribers. So this is a big honor and we want to let all of our readers know about it.

The Rough Notes article focuses on our digital marketing efforts in particular but does give a lot of other information about our agency and our more traditional marketing methods as well. This is an important marker for those of you out there considering an agent for your business insurance. The reason this is so, is that we take our digital and traditional marketing expertise and we use it help our business insurance clients grow their businesses as well. We understand that if your business grows, then so does ours. One of the ways you can see us working hard for our clients is through our partners page that is a place where our business clients can offer coupons to the online world to help increase their client base.

If you would like to read the rough notes article and see photos of some of the people behind the scenes at Clinard Insurance Group, just click here. I hope you enjoy this inside look at our agency.

At Clinard Insurance Group we want all insurance consumers to be informed buyers. We work hard to try and disseminate information to the public about insurance issues that affect their lives and their businesses. If we can help you with your home insurance, your auto insurance, your life insurance or business insurance, please call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.ClinardInsurance.com. Also, keep in mind that we also specialize in used car dealer insurance, auto repair and body shop insurance, restaurant insurance, and insurance for small contractors and landscaping companies.

The source information for this article was originally posted to a blog at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com and you can find the full version at that site.

Used Car Dealer Insurance – An Overview

If you are in the car business, or thinking of getting into the car business, one area in which you will want to develop some expertise is used car dealers insurance. Insurance for a used car dealer is a bit of an unusual animal in the insurance world and there are many agents who don’t fully understand how it works. So how can a non-insurance person get it right? This article will give you the tips you need to get started in this important facet of your business. Note, the information in this article is aimed at NC used car dealer insurance, but most of the basics remain the same in other states as well.

Insurance for a used car dealer is different from a lot of business insurance policies because your inventory moves around. Not only that, your inventory is being driven by customers before they buy and is capable of inflicting huge damages on others. These factors alone make your insurance solution very unique from most other mom and pop businesses out there. So, to keep this simple, we will take these items one at a time and break it down for you.

Garage Liability – This is the place to start. You will need a garage liability policy in order to get your dealer tags. In NC, these policies are rated based on the number of tags you have and the number of salespeople you have. Also, if you furnish a tag to yourself or some other member of your family or an employee, then that will increase your premiums as well. The basic garage liability section of the NC garage insurance policy is designed to protect your business from damages done by your vehicles to other people or their property. Be very careful here to check the limits of liability that you are purchasing on your garage liability coverage. You don’t want to just chase the lowest price without considering your liability limits. The rule of thumb should be to purchase the highest liability limits that you can afford as you are trying to protect against large, unknown loss values that threaten to wipe out your business completely. Also be careful to choose adequate limits for your uninsured motorists and your underinsured motorists coverages.

Dealers Open Lot Coverage – This is protection for your cars themselves, your inventory. Here you need to select a limit that at least covers your highest level of inventory. Also, you should choose the highest deductible that you can afford in the event of a loss. Higher deductibles will reduce the costs of this insurance protection. And, if you work on cars that are owned by others, you need to consider garagekeepers insurance as well. To read more about that situation, see my blog on garagekeepers for car dealers.

Workers Compensation – If you hire employees I highly recommend that you purchase workers compensation insurance. I find that in North Carolina, many dealers skip this coverage when they only have one or two employees. This is a dangerous approach and has the potential to bring your very business down. Please take a moment to read my blog on work comp for car dealers.

Dealer Bond – In NC each car dealer has to post a $50,000 bond with the state of NC in order to obtain and maintain a dealer’s license. You can purchase this bond through your insurance agent. You can read more about this regulatory requirement here.

Property Coverage – If you own your building, or if you have business personal property that you need to protect, be sure to purchase the commercial property insurance to cover these items. Often doing this reduces your garage insurance costs as some companies will give you a multi policy or package discount for combining these policies into one package.

Now that you have a better understanding of which types of policies you should consider, I want to spend a moment on how you should choose your agent. Insurance is a funny business because it is the one business that I can think of where hiring a specialist will generally cost you less money. This is not true of doctors and lawyers of course, the more specialized they are, the more it costs you to hire them. But to add to this oddity, there is also a danger. While most doctors and lawyers will refer you on to a specialist when you are dealing in an area that requires one, few if any insurance agents will refer you to a specialist if they don’t know much about insuring your business. The scary thing here is that they will actually try to help you, and learn on your nickel. This, as you can imagine, can be downright dangerous for the unsuspecting used car dealer. Just because you have a friend or relative in the insurance business, doesn’t mean that they are qualified to help you correctly insure your business. And best of all, insurance agents who specialize in used car dealerships generally have the lowest rates available to you.

When selecting your agent, do a little homework. Google their name with the words car dealer insurance. Do they appear active in this niche business? Do they seem to understand exactly how to insure used car lots? When you talk to them, ask them how many dealers like you they insure now. If they don’t insure at least 25 or more, you can bet they aren’t specialists. If you find one that insures hundreds, then you have probably found the guys with the knowledge and the rates to really help you get the best deal at the best price.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we insure over 300 car dealers across North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. We want our dealer clients to be informed insurance consumers and to protect their businesses in a careful and considered way. If we can help you with any of your questions, please feel free to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us on the web at www.theautodealershelper.com.

You can read the source article and others from which this article was created by visiting the Clinard Insurance Group Blog at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Electrician Insurance – A Quick How To

If you are thinking of starting your own electrical contractor business, or if you are planning to grow your existing one, you must become fluent in insurance speak and understand just how to piece together the insurance puzzle for your own specific company. Electricians face some unique insurance issues, so here is a basic primer on the types of insurance policies that you should consider for your electrician insurance program.

This guide should serve as an introductory overview of insurance options for an electrical contractor. For more detailed information on any of these policies or coverage types, please contact our office and we will be happy to give you more one on one personal help.

Liability Insurance – If you have been an electrician for any amount of time, you have probably encountered the need for a certificate of insurance. If you don’t know it already, you will soon find that you will have customers who will require that you prove to them that you have liability insurance on your electrical contractor business. This is the most obvious coverage type and it is usually the first one that electricians think to purchase. This is designed to provide you with protection for losses that you cause in the operation of your business for which you are legally obligated to pay.

Workers Compensation Insurance – Too many electricians, particularly smaller operations want to skip over this policy and not buy it at all. What drives this thinking is the NC law that says you don’t have to purchase a workers compensation policy if you have 3 or less employees. But what people fail to realize is that if you don’t purchase a policy, then your company is on the hook for paying all claims as though you were the workers compensation insurance company. Don’t skip this coverage, one bad accident could put you out of business and ruin all that you have worked so hard for. For more information on workers compensation in general, you can visit the website for the NC Industrial Commission.

Equipment Coverage – This protection comes in two types. Coverage for your equipment and coverage for hand tools. We rarely see a strong need for equipment coverage among electricians, but don’t let this fact lead you to forget to insure your hand tools and small equipment if losing those items would jeopardize your ability to stay in business. Often this coverage can be added for a small limit of coverage to your general liability policy for very little money per year.

Business Auto Insurance – Quite often, one of the first things an electrician does after starting up his or her business, is to title one or more personal vehicles in the company name. There are often nice tax advantages to this but if you do so, don’t forget that you will need the insurance policy to be titled the same way. This means you will need a business auto insurance policy. One quick tip, if all of the vehicles that you own are listed on your commercial auto policy and you don’t have a personal auto policy in your name, then you are vulnerable to a gap in coverage I call the DOC gap. To learn an inexpensive and easy way to protect yourself from this gap, read my blog on DOC for electricians.

Disability Insurance – What happens if you become injured and can’t work? Who will do the work and who will run your business? Disability insurance is a good solution for you to solve this problem. Most electricians don’t remember to cover this exposure and the failure to do so have run a few out of business.

It’s clear that buying insurance for your electrical company is a complicated and specialized process. You need an agent who specializes in electrician’s insurance, and one who can help you navigate the maze of policies and underwriting rules. At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we specialize in helping all kinds of electricians with their electrician insurance policies all over North Carolina. We can help you develop a plan that protects your business and saves you money on your electrical contractor insurance policies. If you own an electrician business in NC, then you owe it to yourself to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at www.LowRatesForElectricians.com and we will be happy to help you.

The source information for this article can be found at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Painters Workers Compensation Insurance – How To File A Workers Compensation Claim

If you are a NC painting contractor with any employees at all, there is no question that you should purchase a workers compensation policy. If you don’t and you are paying someone to work for you, whether you consider them a subcontractor or not, then you shouldn’t go a day more without a policy. To learn more about the NC rules on who must buy a policy and who can go bare, click here. But assuming you already have a workers compensation policy, how exactly do you file a claim?

Filing a workers compensation claim is really pretty simple. You should be sure to move quickly and file the claim as soon as possible after the employee is injured. In NC the claim form states that you must file the claim within 5 days of the injury. So, to file the claim you must complete a Form 19 claim form and mail, fax, or email it to your insurance company claims department. The Form 19 is a standardized claim form to be used for all workers compensation claims in North Carolina. The reason for this is that the policy and claims payments are all overseen by the NC Industrial Commission.

If you don’t have a form 19 on hand, check your policy as most insurance companies will insert a few blank ones in the policy that they send to you. It’s ok to make copies of this form when you run out. You can also get one in pdf form from the NC Industrial Commission website.

The Form 19 will ask for contact information for you and for your injured employee. They will also need to know the details of the injury, how and when and where it occurred. This information usually comes from the injured employee’s supervisor. Also, you will need to fill in the occupation of injured person and information about how many hours they work each week and what their wagers are per hour and per day. This information will help settle the disability portion of the claim.

The rules require that you provide a copy of the completed Form 19 to the injured employee or the employee’s representative (read lawyer) at the same time that the Form 19 is submitted to the insurance company. Last of all, you must give your injured employee a blank Form 18 which is a form they can use should they wish to contest the claim settlement. You can obtain blank Form 18 copies the same way you got the form 19, by clicking here, or you may call the NC Industrial Commission at 800-688-8349.

At Clinard Insurance Group, in Winston Salem, NC, we work hard to help our clients be informed insurance consumers. As a painting contractor it is important for you to know in advance just how to properly file a workers compensation claim. Trying to figure all of this out after an employee is injured will just slow things down for you and downtime can only cost your company money.

Should you need help with your painters insurance policies, from workers compensation to your general liability, commercial auto and equipment insurance, please consider us as we specialize in insuring painting companies of all types and sizes all across North Carolina and South Carolina. We can put our extensive knowledge to work for you with one quick phone call. Call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557 or visit us online at www.LowRatesForPainters.com.

The source information for this article was pulled from articles which can be found in their entirety at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.

Clinard Insurance Donates $690 to Local Charities

Thanks to the help of the Clinard Insurance Group family of customers, we were able to donate $690 to local nonprofit groups in January of 2011. This is possible through our referral rewards program which designates a $5 charitable donation for each and every referral that we receive throughout the year each year.

Here’s a quick overview of how our Referral Rewards program works. Any time that we receive a quote request that was referred to our agency we do 4 things. First of all, we send a $5 treat gift card to the referring client, just as a way of saying thanks. These cards are from Wendy’s, Starbucks, Krispy Kreme and various other places. Next we put the referring client’s name in our monthly drawing for a $50 gift card to the restaurant of their choice. We also put their name in the hat for a chance to win $1000. The winner of that drawing is announced in early December each year. Last of all, we donate $5 to a local charity. Our customers can vote on their favorite charity by calling us, or by completing the form online here.

So this year we had $690 to give away and we delivered that to the following three local nonprofits:

Sunnyside Ministries – This organization is engaged in providing emergency help to families in South Central Forsyth County and Northern Davidson County who are in need of help due to financial crises.

Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC – This organization collects perfectly edible food that might otherwise end up in a garbage dump and they then distribute this food to those in need across an 18 county area.

Crisis Control Ministry – This organization is engaged in helping people in crisis to meet essential life needs and to become self sufficient.

Each of these groups received a check for $230 thanks to the generous referrals of our clients in 2010. To watch a video of Gina Carlson delivering these checks, please click here.

For 2011, we are going to do it all over again. Your referrals not only help Clinard Insurance Group, but they work directly to help promote and support some of the many fine nonprofit organizations that are right here in NC. We thank all of you who referred your friends and family to us last year and we hope that many more of you will refer your friends and family to us in 2011. Thanks for your support.

The source information for this blog was taken from other articles which can be found in their entirety at www.InsuranceAnswerGuy.com.