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Congress faces upcoming flood insurance vote

Congress faces upcoming flood insurance vote

If you're in the construction industry, you know that you have to guard your sites against all manner of misfortune. One of those is flooding: even a small amount of water can set a project back or submarine it entirely, so any comprehensive commercial property insurance policy will take into account that possibility. Based on what happens in an upcoming Senate debate, that sort of assurance could soon be pricier.By a significant margin, the ...
January 28, 2014By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Flood Insurance 0 Comment Read More »
Worker's comp claims a primary concern for fraud investigators

Worker's comp claims a primary concern for fraud investigators

One of the primary concerns of any insurance company is fraud. The issue of unscrupulous people trying to get money to which they aren't entitled is a problem for any industry, but particularly those that deal so much with self-reported claims. This year, medical, auto and workers' compensation predict to be sectors particularly worthy of keeping an eye on, according to statistics collected by the National Insurance Crime Bureau. The high amount of fraud ...
January 27, 2014By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Fraud, Workers Comp 0 Comment Read More »
Analytics could help claims process

Analytics could help claims process

Underwriting is a complicated endeavor, one that requires a keen sensitivity to a variety of factors. Those myriad inputs are a big part of why using Big Data could very well help to transform the industry, which is good news for both insurance companies and businesses that hire them. One of the advantages of using a more analytical framework is in deciding how to adjudicate claims. Instead of each one going to a random ...
January 21, 2014By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Analytics, Claims 0 Comment Read More »
How the Affordable Care Act will affect seasonal workers

How the Affordable Care Act will affect seasonal workers

Moreso than many other industries, construction work is variable. For one, it tends to be heavily project-based: rather than going into the same office every day from 9-5, employees work on a particular building or structure and then move on to a different site. Also, there are often permits to wait for or paperwork that needs to be attended to before building can start. Even something as ephemeral as weather can affect the ability ...
January 9, 2014By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Affordable Care Act, Seasonal Workers 0 Comment Read More »
Five forces that will influence insurance next year

Five forces that will influence insurance next year

From shifts in regulation to advances in technology, the societal landscape is changing, and insurance companies have no choice but to keep up. In order to keep these external pressures from becoming overwhelming, businesses will have to adjust their policies to account for a new environment. Here are some of the most pressing outside concerns. Changes in legislation:Online poker went under in the United States a couple years ago, but it's popped back up ...
December 27, 2013By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Influencing Insurance 0 Comment Read More »
Amazon drones need high tech insurance

Amazon drones need high tech insurance

Imagine pouring yourself a hot cup of coffee and sitting down to do bit of online shopping. You pick out a small item, put it in your cart and check out. Within minutes, it's floating softly to your doorstep, processed and delivered before the steam is even off of your mug.  Until recently, this sort of scene would be impossibly futuristic. For Amazon, it's tantalizingly close to the present.  The company is close to being able to ...
December 17, 2013By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Drones, High Tech Insurance 0 Comment Read More »
Mississippi business recovers a year after being hit by a van

Mississippi business recovers a year after being hit by a van

While you can never truly know when a disaster is going to occur at your company, some are more predictable than others. This blog has discussed a number of different incidents where extreme weather ravaged an organization's physical structure. While no one knows what kind of damage storms the likes of Hurricane Sandy will cause, businesses at least know they are coming before they hit. Meteorologists can guess the size of a storm and ...
November 18, 2013By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Business Hit By Van 0 Comment Read More »
Why businesses should always expect the unexpected

Why businesses should always expect the unexpected

Being caught off guard is one of the biggest worries we have as individuals, and that concern translates over to business. Many of history's biggest incidents—natural disasters especially—had the lasting impact they did because they were unexpected. At the very least, they were not expected to reach the magnitude they did, so people affected by them were unprepared. Hurricane Katrina is a prime example of an incident where people and businesses were not prepared ...
November 6, 2013By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Business, Unexpected 0 Comment Read More »
How to ensure the success of your disaster recovery site

How to ensure the success of your disaster recovery site

Implementing a disaster recovery system may require the construction of a specific site used to manage recovery efforts across your organization. This could be a source of information when standard systems shut down or a source of power or any other resources required to keep a company running should an incident occur that puts operations in jeopardy. Of course, simply having a recovery site might not be enough, as an article in Forbes pointed ...
November 4, 2013By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Tag 0 Comment Read More »
Study: Injury prevention professionals in Canada are more likely to get hurt

Study: Injury prevention professionals in Canada are more likely to get hurt

Theoretically, those who practice safety and injury prevention are less likely to get hurt as a result of an accident. This should be particularly true in the workplace, which is why organizations spend time and money teaching best practices as they pertain to the safety of workers. However, in at least one instance, those who go above and beyond to protect themselves are no safer than those who don't. In fact, they are actually ...
October 31, 2013By InterWest Insurance General Insurance News Tag 0 Comment Read More »