As an independent insurance agent, I talk with my clients everyday about protecting their assets with insurance and doing that with the least amount of risk. Certainly your premium cost is a significant factor in making a decision but the following 5 tips with help you to make the right insurance decision for the coming year;

1. Insurance price fluctuations. One of the goals of any risk management plan is to be keenly aware that the insurance market has fluctuations. Prices rise and fall regularly and without any rhyme or reason. If prices have been dropping for a few years they will go up again soon. Plan your insurance budget off of the highest rates and you will be pleasantly surprised when your premiums are less.

2. Your company’s loss ratio affects your rates- a simple explanation is that your claims need to be less then the premiums paid.  This ratio of  loss will make your company attractive to insurers, which will result in them competing for your business. This will lead to your business being offered lower premiums.

3. How can you become important to your insurers. Insurance companies can only be exposed to so much risk, hence they have a finite number of accounts they can underwrite. Insurers make regular choices about the most profitable risks to insure. It is important to make sure you are one of the good risks that they want as part of their book of business. CMI Risk can help you with this by evaluation by supplying a detailed risk management plan. With this you will be able to show your insurance professional how you are mitigating risk.

4. Evaluate your deductibles so you optimize the cost of risk. The obvious point is the higher the deductible, the lower the premium. By reviewing your past losses in conjunction with insurance premium quotes for different deductible options, it becomes clear which deductible is best.

5. Review your property values and your policy limits. Your property values should be current and the policy limits should cover your assets and ensure that you aren’t paying an excessive amount.

Insurance and claims represent a large percentage of a business’s expenses but it is an area most business people know very little about. With some simple risk management planning and formalization, many businesses can realize significant savings.

Tags: Church insurance, church liability insurance, insurance price fluctuations, northwest risk insurance, northwets insurance carriers, oregon church insurance, Risk Management, risk management for dummies

This entry was posted on December 31, 2011 at 10:54 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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