If your agency plans to personally deliver the policies, you should still include this cover letter with the policies. Make it a practice to bring this letter to the attention of the party that you are delivering the policies to. If your customer will be receiving the policy directly from the carrier, it’s still a good idea to use the above letter with a slight modification. Instead of stating “Enclosed please find your renewal,” use a phrase such as:
You will be receiving the renewal of your homeowners policy directly from the carrier, ABC Insurance Co. When you receive it, it is important….. There are tremendous benefits to this approach. Hopefully the coverage provided is what the client requested. If not, the client should discover upon her review those areas of concern. For example, if he asked for full coverage or “protect me from whatever can happen,” he will now find that every policy has exclusions and limitations. Or she may discover that the artwork she asked to have scheduled in her HO policy is missing. Trust that all would agree that catching this “error” before the loss is better than catching it after. The benefits to your agency are also tremendous. It shows that you want your customers to understand their coverage and there may be situations where the customer asks for coverage modifications that resulted in a program that better suits their needs. In addition, there is no
doubt that this letter has dramatically determined the direction of a number of E&O claims. Curtis M. Pearsall, CPCU, ARM, CPIA, has more than three decades of experience in agents’ errors & omissions insurance in various marketing, under-
writing and managerial capacities. He currently heads his own firm, Pearsall Associates, Inc., and is a special consultant to the Utica National Insurance Group for its agents’ E&O program. He provides E&O risk management information with his blog, www.agentseotips.com, and can be contacted at curtis@pearsallassociates.com.
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January/February 2012 :: KANSAS INSURANCE AGENT & BROKER
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