The 120th annual meeting of the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia was held earlier this month. It began earlier than usual with a two hour legislative panel on Thursday afternoon followed by morning meetings on Friday and Saturday, which ended an hour earlier than usual. However, the information and networking opportunities provided were as valuable as […]
Read more...Category: Practical Tips
What You Don’t Know About a New Employee Can Hurt You
As employers, agency owners need to be aware of the ways they can get in trouble due to the actions of their employees. Many owners are probably aware that they can be held liable for acts of their agency’s employees committed while performing their duties on behalf of the agency. This legal concept is known […]
Read more...Summer Interns – It’s That Time of Year Again
With Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer, fast approaching, it’s a good time to go over the rules regarding the use of interns. Nothing of significance has changed since my post on this subject last year, but it never hurts to refresh one’s memory, as a business that violates these rules can find itself in trouble with the […]
Read more...Employment Termination Notice Periods – Are They Enforceable?
There was an article a few months ago on HR Daily Advisor about what to do if an employee quits their job without giving any prior notice. In the absence of a written agreement to the contrary, there is no requirement that either an employer or employee give prior notice of their intention to terminate the employment […]
Read more...Gamification – What Is It and How Can It Help Agencies?
My last post concerned the use of raffles by insurance agencies and agents to promote the making of referrals. I thought it was an innovative idea, and one that makes use of the insights into human behavior that are the basis for what is known as gamification. Gamification is the application of the principles and techniques used […]
Read more...Raffles – Can They Be Used to Encourage Referrals? (Updated)
A recent caller to the Free Legal Service program that I run for the members of the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia asked the above question. His agency was thinking about running a promotion that gave a raffle ticket for each referral made to the agency during a specified period of time. The winner would receive […]
Read more...Recording Customer Telephone Calls – A Good Idea But Is It Legal?
In a recent post on his blog, Steve Anderson recommended that insurance agents take advantage of the new telecommunications technology that makes it relatively easy to record all incoming and outgoing telephone calls. He suggested that making such recordings could become the primary means by which an agency documents its contact with its customers and […]
Read more...What Rights Do Customers Have to Information in Agency Files?
The above question was recently asked of me by a caller to the Free Legal Service program that I run for the members of the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia. In particular, the caller wanted to know if they could refuse to provide loss runs to a former customer whose policy had been cancelled for non-payment of premium. This customer […]
Read more...Has Your Website Been Hacked?
Mine has. Some of my readers may have noticed that I have not posed anything for the past couple of weeks. That is because I discovered about 10 days ago that this website had been hacked. Anyone who clicked on a search result for it was being redirected to an online gambling website. It is […]
Read more...Payment of Referral Fees – Additional Considerations
In October of last year, I wrote a post that summarized my opinion on the question of when and how an insurance agent may pay a fee to an unlicensed person for the referral of a potential customer to the agent by that person. That post was written from the perspective of whether and when the […]
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