In February 2011, Risk Management Monitor posted the article 10 Best Industry Blogs, highlighting the top blogs in the risk management and insurance industry.
Here at ClearRisk, we are more than honored that our Risk Management blog was chosen as one of the top 10 industry blogs for risk management information.
Recently, I wrote a guest post for our partners Sitkins International. ClearRisk is a strategic partner of Sitkins International and provides Sitkins members with a way to deliver the risk reduction approach online ™.
This post summarizes the first of three steps in helping your clients understand the value of risk management.
The insurance market is fiercely competitive. Insurance agents and brokers (hereinafter agents) need ways to create a competitive advantage to attract and retain business. There is a great opportunity for agents to really differentiate themselves by helping clients to manage risk more broadly than just providing insurance coverage. The greatest challenge is that most of your clients don’t know anything about risk management; so how do you make them see the value?
Here are 3 how-to steps:
This is the second installment of five blog posts that summarize the 25 quick tips from my eBook, “Insurance Premiums Are Killing My Business”. This risk management ebook is a great start for small to medium-sized business owners that are curious about starting the risk management planning process.
The tips below have been written with small to medium-sized businesses in mind, although the same principles should be employed by very large businesses.
Click here if you want to review risk management tips 1 – 5 before going on.
Work with your insurance broker/agent to make sure you have all the coverages you need without paying for bells and whistles you don’t need.
Often a topic for debate, the issue of insurance as a commodity sparked a great discussion on LinkedIn. I’d like you hear what you have your say in own comments section below.
A commodity is defined a good that is the same no matter who supplies it, and can be differentiated based on price.
Is it true that all insurance is the same aside from price? How do most companies decide where to purchase their insurance?
This is the first installment of five blog posts that summarize the 25 quick tips from my eBook, “Insurance Premiums Are Killing My Business”. The risk management ebook is a great start for any small to medium-sized business owners that are curious about starting the risk management planning process.
The tips below have been written with small to medium-sized businesses in mind, although the same principles should be employed by very large businesses.
1. Budget for Insurance Price Fluctuations. A key goal of any good risk management plan is to be aware that the insurance market is cyclical and that if prices have been flat or dropping for a few years that they will go up again. Plan for it by budgeting at the top end of the market.
This week ClearRisk is proud to provide a guest post by Bert Fens of Forces Risk Management. Bert is a risk professional with 20+ years of international experience in risk management, holding several senior management positions. He is also a member of the Risk Management Consultants of Ontario (RMCO).
Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMB’s) can benefit considerably from a simple but effective risk management program.
Consider this: more than 2 out of 5 small business owners in Canada have experienced a significant disruption to their businesses; 80% of businesses affected by a major incident have to close within 18 months, yet 62% of business owners have placed business continuity planning low on their to-do-list and 18% of them admit that it is not even on their radar. These numbers are a clear and very scary indicator that the odds of survival for companies that have been hit by a major loss are incredibly low.
Throughout the lifespan of a corporation, stakeholders can be faced with the risk of economic crime. Often, it becomes a reality long after the issue should have been brought to the attention of the board of directors. Entrepreneur that have invested a great deal of time and energy building a company from the ground up, find it hard to imagine that something as intrusive as economic crime can happen to them.
Do you have the processes in place within your company to mitigate this risk? If you don’t have a plan and solutions in place, there is a possibility that you will be blindsided by fraud, worse yet – there’s a chance it could have been prevented.
This is the first of a series of blog posts titled: Best of @ClearRisk – Our Risk Management Twitter Feed
Twitter is an amazing resource to stay current on what’s happening in the risk and insurance industry. Every day we sift through the mounds of new articles and websites to suggest things that many of you would find helpful or interesting ( in 140 characters or less). For our readers who aren’t familiar with Twitter, here is a brief explanation of how it works: http://twitter.com/about and here is a link to ClearRisk’s Twitter feed where we publish information daily: http://twitter.com/clearrisk
We’ve been fortunate enough at ClearRisk to meet a lot of interesting people that we follow daily to keep up on what’s happening across the globe in the risk and insurance industry.
There are a few thought leaders who regularly grab our attention with new blog posts and tweets. After you follow us on Twitter, be sure to check these guys out:
@RiskMgmt. Jared Wade is the editor of the RIMS-published magazine, Risk Management and the RIMS-published blog Risk Management Monitor. This particular blog post outlines the reality of what a risk can do to you in your industry by pointing out the net income of different players in the energy industry (http://www.riskmanagementmonitor.com/)
“RIMS-published magazine Risk Management” and “RIMS-published blog Risk Management Monitor”
Time will tell if the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will kill BP or just severely cripple it, but whatever the case I’ll bet they didn’t see it coming! Will you?
It looks like this spill will be (if it isn’t already) the biggest man-made disaster ever. The extent of the spill, the scope of damage and the resulting impacts on the environment, marine life, economies, and people remains to be seen, but catastrophic sums it up. BP and all of the other world’s oil companies plan for spills. They build complex risk models, examine alternative worst case scenarios, look at maximum probable losses, and they are generally very good at measuring and managing risk. But what if the worst case scenario that you imagined turns out to be wrong?
Today ClearRisk Inc is proud to announce the launch of version 2.0 of its ClearRisk Manager application. Version 2.0 is built to improve every user’s experience. The site is faster, it enables easier collaboration and includes functionality that will allow our users who are Insurance Brokers to interact with clients in ways they’ve never been able to before.
ClearRisk Manager Version 2.0 is designed to be lightning fast. “We’ve increased the speed of the site by almost 4x,” said John Downey, Director of Systems for ClearRisk Inc “we’ve created a seamless experience for brokers; almost unnoticeable page loads and large reports take only a few seconds, unlike minutes or hours for some competitive systems.”
Clients of Insurance brokers are demanding risk management options that go beyond insurance coverage. Some brokerages are struggling with how to effectively provide these services to their clients. That’s why we built ClearRisk Manager. We want Insurance brokers to have an affordable way to provide their clients with risk management plans, risk maps and risk management resources – even if they have little to no risk management training.
Using ClearRisk Manager to help identify, prioritize and manage client risks, brokers can offer affordable risk management support to clients; helping clients get the best terms in the insurance market
We’ve built on this concept in Version 2.0, by adding more client and broker collaboration tools, and increasing the speed of the site even more. ClearRisk Manager 2.0 can be used to store, track and share all relevant risk and insurance information such as insurance policies, claims documents, and insurance certificates. It gives Brokers and their clients the ability track progress they make over time.
In addition, ClearRisk Manager 2.0 introduces functionality that allows Brokers to Co-Brand the secure online portal. It’s important for Brokers to have multiple touch points with clients throughout the year. Every time a client logs on to ClearRisk Manager to work on their Risk Management plan, the host Broker’s logo can be prominently displayed. From the client’s perspective, the Broker is providing them with a software solution comparable to those offered by only large multinational brokers. This, in combination with the collaboration tools above, shows the clients firsthand the value the Broker is bringing to their business.
ClearRisk’s focus has been on increasing broker profitability with mid-market Risk Management Solutions. ClearRisk Manager 2.0 provides brokers with even more functionality to help them become the preferred provider of risk management and insurance products and services.
The following video is a popular resource for insurance brokers who are evaluating the use of risk management as a value added service.
Top 10 ways to use Risk Management to Increase Brokerage Revenue
Come view the new functionality with a 30-day free-trial
or let one of our associates walk you through ClearRisk Manager 2.0 with a 20 min tutorial
© 2011 ClearRisk Inc. All Rights Reserved.
