BeNew Insurance

Stop Gap Coverage

Stop gap coverage provides employer’s liability insurance when it’s not included in a workers’ compensation policy.

The term stop gap coverage, or a stop gap endorsement, refers to an employer filling a gap in workers’ compensation insurance by purchasing an additional policy.

Stop gap coverage protects business owners from lawsuits filed over workplace injuries. Business owners are protected from such lawsuits by employer’s liability insurance, which is typically included in workers’ compensation coverage.

Stop Gap Coverage Details

Stop gap coverage provides protection against allegations that an employer has not provided a safe work environment. While workers’ compensation pays for job-related injuries, employer’s liability is a separate clause of the policy. It protects the employer from being held liable for worker injury or illness.

A workers’ compensation policy from a monopolistic state fund does not include the part of the policy dealing with employer liability. To prevent a worker from holding the employer liable for an injury or illness, the employer should consider purchasing stop gap coverage from an insurance provider.

Qualifying Event

A qualifying event is any change in your business situation that affects your needs for insurance.

A qualifying event is a change in your company’s situation that allows you to request policy modifications ahead of your next policy renewal. However, you must report these changes within two months of the event to be allowed to change your policy before its renewal.

Insurance qualifying events are important because they allow you to request coverage changes without waiting for your next policy renewal. If your business changes and you don’t update your insurance coverage, you could be exposed to risk.

What Are Some Common Qualifying Events?

Your business could experience a qualifying event when it adds products or services, hires new employees, expands, or moves to a new building. Other examples of potential qualifying events include:

-Changing ownership structure, such as moving from sole proprietorship to a limited liability corporation
-Adding a new partner or merging with another company
-Experiencing higher revenues
-Buying expensive production equipment
-Purchasing additional business vehicles

Occurrence-Based Insurance Policy

Occurrence-based insurance is a type of policy that pays for losses that occur during the policy period, even if it’s no longer active when you file a claim.

An occurrence-based policy covers losses that happen during the time you have the policy, regardless of when you file a claim. It is designed to protect you against long-tail events incidents that could cause injury or damage years after they occur. For example, a chemical spill is a long-tail event because it often takes decades to produce visible injuries or disease.

Occurrence-based policies will protect you against such events even if:

-Many years pass before injuries or damages become known.
-You have switched to another insurance policy or insurer.
-You have canceled your insurance and not replaced it with another one.

Common occurrence-based insurance policies; Insurers typically use occurrence-based policy forms for general liability, umbrella liability, and commercial auto insurance

How Do Occurrence-Based Policies Compare With Claims-Made Policies?

With an occurrence-based policy, insurers will compensate you for losses that happen during the policy period, even if it is no longer active when you submit a claim.

As long as you maintained your coverage with no breaks, your current claims-made insurance policy can typically pay for losses from insurable incidents that occurred under previous claims-made policies with different insurers.

What are the advantages of an occurrence insurance policy?

-Occurrence-based policies have fixed costs.
-They offer longer protection.
-They’re simpler to manage.

What are the disadvantages of occurrence-based policies?

-Occurrence-based policies cost more.
-They can be riskier to buy.
-They can complicate your purchase decision.

Cyber Extortion

Cyber extortion is an internet crime in which someone holds electronic files or your business data hostage until you pay a demanded ransom.

Cyber extortion is an online crime in which hackers hold your data, website, computer systems, or other sensitive information hostage until you meet their demands for payment. It often takes the form of ransomware and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, both of which could paralyze your business.

How does cyber extortion work?
Cyber extortionists have several common techniques for breaking into your computer hardware, software, and networks and incapacitating them until you pay a fee.

So-called distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks involve hackers using a network of infected computers to send an overwhelming flood of messages to your web server, which effectively takes it out of service until the messaging stop.

Many cyber liability insurance policies cover cyber extortion, but usually by endorsement only (i.e., an addition to your policy’s declarations page). Such policies, called first-party cyber liability coverage, provide financial support for three purposes:

-To meet a hacker’s ransom demand
-To pay for extortion-related expenses, such as hiring a consultant to remediate an attack
-To bring damaged computer hardware or databases back to their original working condition

How can a small business avoid falling prey to cyber extortion?

-Maintain an effective firewall and install antivirus software
-Train staff on email hygiene (i.e., don’t click links in the body of unknown emails or open attached documents or applications)
-Avoid clicking on pop-up ads while working on the internet
-Maintain multiple backups of all your data.

Variable Annuity

An annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company in which you make a lump-sum payment or series of payments and, in return, receive regular disbursements, beginning either immediately or at some point in the future.

A variable annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company. It serves as an investment account that may grow on a tax-deferred basis and includes certain insurance features, such as the ability to turn your account into a stream of periodic payments. You purchase a variable annuity contract by making either a single purchase payment or a series of purchase payments.

Variable annuity is different from fixed annuities in that, fixed annuities provide a guaranteed return. Variable annuities offer the possibility of higher returns and greater income than fixed annuities, but there is also a risk that the account of a variable annuity will fall in value.

The benefit of variable annuities is that it give the contract holder periodic payments for the rest of his or her life, which protects against the possibility of outliving other assets. Variable annuities are also tax-deferred investments, so you pay zero taxes on any income and gains from the annuity until you withdraw the money.

An annuity is a series of payments made at equal intervals. Examples of annuities are regular deposits to a savings account, monthly home mortgage payments, monthly insurance payments and pension payments. Annuities can be classified by the frequency of payment dates.

Producer OR Agent

It is an individual who sells, services, or negotiates insurance policies either on behalf of a company or independently.

Insurance producers are required to be licensed in their jurisdiction of operation in which they sell insurance. This may require passing an examination or meeting specific educational and/or ethical requirements.

Now I'm going to let you in on an industry secret “producers” and “agents” are really the same person. The term “producer” is more of an insurance industry term while “agent” is a more common term but both are used to identify the person you can contact to set up and officially start your policy.

There are basically two broad categories of insurance agents; independent insurance agents who work with every insurance company and Captive agents that sell insurance for one specific company, only. This particular insurance company is, typically, a “name brand” company.
Some of the responsibilities for Insurance Producers are:

-Ability to network and develop leads.

-Use lead lists to establish contact and schedule appointments.

-Meet with prospective clients.

-Meet with existing clients to perform annual reviews.

-Must conduct phone prospecting, face-to-face prospecting and through social media efforts.

If you're thinking of becoming a producer then you made the right decision.