Risk & Business

Image by Szilveszter Farkas via Flickr Not exactly exciting reading, to be sure, but I thought it might be useful to review the standard headings in an insurance contract that identify the specific types of general liability (gl) exposures. There are four standard areas of commonly referred to gl exposures - Premises and Operations - the premises liability arises out of injury and damage caused by conditions that exist in and around an insured 's premises and the operations liability refers to liability for injury or damage caused directly by the insured's business operations while those operations are taking place; Products and Completed Operations - refers to injury caused by an insured's product, either made or sold by them and completed operations refers to work that has been finished or completed, given to the client and put to it's intended use; Contractual Liability - this exposure involves the insured's agreement in a contract to take onto itsel

Image by dimiqueen via Flickr According to the ground rules established by the Obama administration, insurance companies will not be receiving any of the money from the federal government 's bailout program. Only financial instituitions that are federally regulated will be eligible to receive funds. The government has a "financial stress test" that will be applied to banking institutions under the plan, which doesn't translate to insurance companies. Apparently a few insurance companies did apply for relief under the plan. That being said, the federal government has another program set up that will allow insurers to sell off troubled assets to the private market using government guarantees. I guess that means that where there is a "plan" there is a way?

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr I recently came across a post on a insurance blog, link above, that discussed the usage of peer group pressure being brought to bear to help decrease workers compensation costs. The idea was to divide your employees into groups to start a competition among them to see who can have the lowest workers compensation claim incidence rate . The article suggested monthly prizes, recognition, etc, to be used as a form of incentive . Obviously a larger motivating factor, often unspoken, would be the peer pressure among team members to keep other members incidence rates to a minimum. Those employers with not enough staff to divide into teams can use the same concept on an individual basis. Each employee would still strive to keep their incidence rate down so as to decrease the chances of having their fellow employees look down on them since results would be publicly posted monthly. There are many good ideas out there, this just being a good