As an insurance agency, you play many roles in the community. You’re a business, but you’re also there to help people find the protection that they need against disasters and minor crises of all sorts. You provide an educational role in addition to the other roles that you play.
However, as an insurance agency, you also need to make sure that you provide the right information, or you could fail to protect your clients from costly mistakes.
Your Role in Preparedness
An insurance agency can play many roles in preparing people for problems that could impact their lives. You can:
- Provide information online on your blog content, social media, and guest posts, encouraging people to get the coverage that is right for them by outlining some of the factors that they need to consider as they look at their insurance options.
- Develop insurance brochures and other products that formally discuss peoples’ insurance options.
- Provide insurance workshops and talks for your community, helping people explore everything from wildfire preparedness to teen drivers. These talks can incorporate discussion and questions from community members.
- Have informal but very informative conversations with leads or clients to talk about their insurance options, helping them make a decision about the products that are right for them.
- Answer questions about your clients’ current insurance policies and make any adjustments needed.
Liability And Your Insurance Agency
Unfortunately, as you position yourself as the expert in a conversation, you also assume responsibility for informing peoples’ choices to some degree. For instance, you could make a comment in a workshop that makes people think that they don’t need to purchase flood insurance. If their house doesn’t get flooded, they’ll be happy about the cost savings on insurance but probably not give it much of a second thought. However, if their house does get flooded and they have decided not to purchase additional insurance, could you be liable?
E&O Insurance Protects You From Errors and Omissions
This is where E&O insurance comes into play. Sometimes, your employees will make an error while writing up a policy for a client or talking with a client about a product. While you have fail safes in place to help ensure that this does not happen, it could still occur. Everyone makes mistakes, and E&O insurance helps protect your business.
Omissions can also occur as you play the role of educator in your community. For instance, you could have an in-depth conversation with your new client and forget to mention a key insurance product that would be helpful for your client’s home. While most clients don’t turn to litigation, someone who’s experienced a loss and feels that you omitted key information that led to inadequate insurance coverage could decide to file a case against your insurance agency. These kinds of errors and omissions cases can be very damaging to your business, and you don’t want them to derail your good work in the community. Getting E&O insurance helps you ensure that your business will be able to help your clients for a long time.
At American Agents Alliance, we help you prevent mistakes from damaging your business. We provide discounted E&O insurance to insurance agencies, helping you provide service without worry. Contact us to learn more about our E&O insurance and our many other membership benefits.
