eXpress Headlines
Page 1 of 2 | Previous Next
April 16, 2012 is the Fifth Annual National Healthcare Decisions Day. A day created by a coalition of health providers and insurers to remind the public about the critical importance of having advance healthcare planning.
If you do not have any form of advance directive telling your friends and loved ones how to make medical care decisions, you risk losing control of those decisions. "42% of Americans have had a friend or relative suffer from a terminal illness or coma in the last five years and for a majority of these people and 23% of the general public, the issue of withholding life sustaining treatment came up." We do not like to think about disaster, but planning can ease the burden on us and our family.
Advanced planning is important for business continuity as well. If you are a key person in the business and suddenly taken away, have you provided direction as to how to run the business or make decisions.
Good estate planning attorneys are not going to charge you extra for an advanced directive and/or living will as a part of the estate planning process. This is because the legally acceptable forms are free in order to encourage the public to plan ahead. The forms are free and encourage a frank and open discussion with your medical professionals and family about how you want to be cared for in the event of a serious illness or injury.
There is no excuse, download your state appropriate form, talk to your family and plan ahead.
The Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) is a great source of information for companies looking to control risk and control business insurance premium costs. The RIMS professional library is a terific way to learn risk and insurance management.
The Society frequently sends me e-mails about product offerings and I do not receive any compensation from RIMS. I mention their publications because I know they are well written and practical.
Workers' compensation is complicated. It is also mandatory. It is also one area of business insurance where proper preparation and implementation of good company policies can significantly reduce premiums. Often very simple bookkeeping or hiring changes can save 15-20% of premium dollars.
RIMS is offering a 2012 publication entitled Workers Compensation Management Program - Reduce Costs 20% to 50% at its store. "The book guides the user through each aspect of a workers' compensation program, to learn, step-by-step about a variety of techniques that show organizations exactly how to reduce workers compensation costs." If your company has a large workers' compensation premium and doesn't have a good handle on controling costs, this might be a resource for you.
There is this agricultural board in the U.K. called BPEX(British Pig Executive) and it "represents pig levy payers in England. BPEX is focused on enhancing the competitiveness, efficiency and profitability for English pig levy payers and driving demand for English pork and pig meat products in Britain and globally."
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand all that either.
I probably would have little interaction with BPEX as I live in Ohio and my "bangers" come from Ohio. Our state is typically in the top ten in pork production (Iowa beats us every year). But, there are a number of news reports talking about the butcher with the Board whose taste buds are so valuable to them that they have taken out a $1.5 million insurance policy on his taste buds. Yes, when it comes to business insurance you can insure anything of value.
According to the BPEX "who's who," Mr. Keith Fisher is the Butchery Development Manager. He is a master butcher with a lifetime of honed taste buds. In a newspaper interview, Tina Mulholland of BPEX stated, "As a grandmaster butcher and the resident baconologist and head judge for Bacon Connoisseurs' Week, Keith's vast experience makes him the ideal person to lead the judging panel of tasters. As part of his role as head judge he and the rest of the panellists had to taste over 200 different cuts and cures of premium bacon for this year's award. As such, it was imperative that we protect his prize assets for the campaign."
In honor of Spring, I posted an article about insuring a flower shop.
Whether you own a flower shop or if you yearn to own a flower shop when it starts getting nice outside, always consider the proper business insurance for your business.
Today is International Women's Day. A day to reflect upon the role of women in your community and around the world. Google has honored the Day with its own Google Doodle.
According to the organization Women in Insurance & Financial Services (WIFS), "[t]he first recorded women's organization within the insurance industry was the Women Leaders Round Table, founded in 1936 with its membership based solely on production. It served as a recognition program, which met annually." That organization grew into MIFS and it is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. The organization had the honor of ringing The Opening Bell on the New York Stock Exchange on December 27, 2011. The first women's financial organization to do so.
Women still face significant hurdles in the financial services and insurance. Studies show, on average, that women (in the U.S.) earn approximately $.80 for every dollar earned by men for similar work (this figure is somewhat anecdotal as the 2007 study used percentages). And while the opening bell being rung by a well-respected women's financial group is a milestone, the staff of Jersey Shore and the Sport's Illustrated Swimsuit Models got the honor before MIFS. In fact, the NYSE was not open to women as traders until 1943. It is a market-driven and male-dominated industry.
My two daughters will have significantly greater opportunities in their carreers because of the women who came before them as pioneers. So perhaps, rather than focus on all of the disparity today we can look to and honor those women. Happy International Women's Day!
Yesterday a 17-year old kid took a gun to school and shot five other kids. Two of those kids have died.
This violent tragedy occurred about thirty minutes away from where I write.
It reinforces the importance of creating a disaster plan and protecting public places from random violence. Between 2004 and 2008 there was an average of 564 people killed at work each year. In 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 521 workplace homicides, accounting for 12% of the total fatal work injuries in the U.S. Unfortunately, workplace and public violence are not isolated events.
Business owners can take steps to secure their workplaces and insure the risk. The typical commercial general liability policy does not cover workplace violence or intentional violent acts. However, there are business insurance products that do provide coverage for such events.
One of the benefits of such business insurance is that the policies typically require the business or property owner to take rudimentary precautions in order to secure coverage. Businesses get the benefit of professional expertise in reducing workplace violence.
And that training and planning cannot be overlooked. One of the only positive things that resulted from this tragedy is the knowledge that pre-planning paid off in saving lives. Chardon school-district Superintendent Joseph Bergant II was quoted today stating, "We've had a number of disaster drills in the past. Thank God we put those in place."
Tax filings for corporations and S corporations are due on March 15. The deadline quickly approaches!
The health care tax credit is part of the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. For small businesses the Act includes a tax credit of up to 35% for the cost of employee health care. I have posted an article about the credit.
The credit has been in place since 2010 and increases in 2014. However, it appears that few eligible businesses are taking advantage of the credit. It was predicted that nearly $2 billion in claimed credits would be forthcoming for the 2010 tax year. By the end of 2011, however, it appeared that only $435 million in credits had been claimed.
This is a valuable credit that can be rolled forward or back. Talk about the credit with your tax and insurance professionals.
Valentine's Day is tomorrow February 14, 2012. I thought I would post the day before and mention the holiday so those of you who may have forgotten flowers or chocolate still have time.
It is a tradition without a clear beginning. I was always taught that St. Valentine was a martyr killed for performing Christian marriages in ancient Rome. The date, February 14, being his date of martyrdom. Over time the holiday developed as a recognition of the importance of marriage and bonds between lovers. So, I'm going with that for purposes of this post.
As a tradition, we honor the relationship. We recognize the importance of love and connection with others and set out a day to celebrate those connections.
And those connections are critically important to our well being. In fact, long-term healthy relationships can significantly improve physical and mental health. The effect is significant. Men who are divorced and single at age 48 have a statistically lower chance of living to age 65 compared to their married friends according to studies relied upon by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher in the book, The Case for Marriage. According to those studies men and women are more prone to alcoholism, heart disease, cancer, and psychological ailments when single as opposed to those people who are in a committed long-term relationship.
Tying all of this into business insurance, a healthy person in a long-term committed relationship is healthier, less prone to error, and more stable. All of these factors save insurance premium dollars for employers.
It all starts with remembering the flowers.
For Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I thought I would write a quick post about the Civil Rights Movement and its effect on the services afforded to poor urban communities by the financial industry including insurance and banking.
"Redlining" was a process used by financial institutions to exclude investment in particular sections of an urban area. Look at the picture - that is a redlined map of Philadelphia from the 30's as an example. Overwhelmingly, the excluded investment areas consisted of poorer white, immigrant, and African American neighborhoods. You wanted to build a business, a home, a daycare, or any business in a "redlined" neighborhood chances are that was not going to happen. Not because of your character, credit, or any other reasonable financial reason. Rather, because of a line on a map drawn, most often, because of the color of your neighbors.
That logic was not limited to the real estate market. Insurance companies, evidence overwhelmingly suggests, redlined and "reverse redlined." Meaning, certain coverages were excluded from certain neighborhoods while other (usually questionable) coverages were sold and marketed to such neighborhoods.
The Drum Major Instinct sermon, the issue of some controversy concerning the King Memorial, includes a great story by Dr. King where he tells of trying to do a little "converting" of white jail guards while he was in jail in Birmingham. He asked the guards "about where they lived, and how much they were earning." He told the guards they should be marching with him because it was only by prejudice that they did not realize that they were in the same economic boat as the civil rights marchers. Denied opportunity and fair pay by forces beyond their control.
It sounds a bit paranoid until you look at a map that was marked by someone, somewhere, and used as a tool of the trade to decide where capital would go and where insurance would be written.
Seven days after Dr. King's death, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law. Title VIII of that law is commonly known as the Fair Housing Act and prevented redlining based on race and the Community Reinvestment Act a decade later did much to eliminate overt use of redlining and require unifom credit criteria.
Also in 1968, the Urban Property Insurance Protection and Reinsurance Act, started Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) in response to the refusal of insurers to write policies in certain neighborhoods of several major U.S. cities. Specifically, urban riots in 1967 and 1968 led to the cancellation of policies and refusal to underwrite in certain areas considered "riot prone" after insurers and reinsurers suffered major riot related claims losses. Again, these were overwhelmingly African American neighborhoods. FAIR plans now exist in 32 states. Businesses and home owners can secure insurance through a FAIR plan where the private market will not support insurance.
Dr. King was present and prominent at President Johnson's signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. His continued activism and increased focus on economic gross inequlities affecting all Americans led to the 1968 Civil Rights Act. Building a business, working hard and taking a risk, garnering capital investment, and working to insure that investment is the basis of the American economy. And that possibility is just a little more fair and acheivable because of the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King.