Why Buy Recreational Vehicle Insurance

• Bodily injury
• Property damage
• Medical payments
• Collision damage
• Towing and labor costs
• Vehicle rental costs
• Personal possession coverage

Benefits of Recreational Vehicle Insurance Coverage

• RV Claims Experts - Talk to an RV expert when you file a claim.
• Full Replacement Cost Coverage - Replace your RV if it's stolen or totaled.
• Coverage for Personal Belongings - Cover your RV's contents, including appliances and personal belongings.
• Emergency Expenses Allowance - Pay for lodging, food and travel you may need after you file a claim.
• Service Call Allowance - Pay an RV repair expert to visit your location and diagnose your RV repair needs.
• Hitch Coverage - Replace your entire hitch assembly, including the attachment to your truck or tow vehicle.
• Coverage for Permanent Attachments - Replace awnings, antennas and other permanent RV attachments.
• Storage Option - Pay a lower insurance premium when your RV is in storage.
• Full-Time Coverage - Enjoy coverage similar to a homeowner’s insurance policy and pay any RV association charges if you live in your RV.

Recreational Vehicle Insurance Costs

1. Require non-slip, water proof shoes.
   This is so important as anything from water, ketchup, oil and more can easily spill on the floor. Ensuring all of your employees are wearing proper non-slip and waterproof shoes can keep their feet on the ground.
2. Keep items out of the walkways
   Push strollers to the side, tuck highchairs in to the table and don’t leave brooms or cleaning supplies out. Make sure when you, your employees and your clients are walking no surprises will trip them.
3. Take more than one trip
   Don’t try and take all of the dishes from a 10 party table back at once. Over loading with plates to deliver or take away can not only cause back injuries but risk of dropping the dishes increases tremendously.

Chances are that you’d never buy a new truck or front-end loader without trying it out to make sure it could do the job. Do you do the same for the vehicle’s operators?

Safety experts recommend that any employee who will be driving a truck should receive a road test of his or her driving skills before being hired. The examiner should be fully qualified to operate the vehicle, and familiar with the prospective operator’s past experience. The test should include all the necessary skills:

• use of all controls; traffic operations (including backing, parking, slowing, stopping, passing, and turning)
• general driving habits, such as alertness, stamina, and patience
• driving rules and regulations pertaining to the vehicle
• handling the necessary actions/equipment for loading and unloading the vehicle

For each skill or knowledge area, the applicant should receive a pass/fail grade. Each area of weakness should lead to further training or a corresponding limitation in the scope of the operator’s approved activities. Keep records and scores of these tests as documentation in the event of an accident or claim resulting from a driver’s actions.

For more suggestions on the format or content of driver exams, contact your trade association, state department of motor vehicles. Don’t forget the benefits of a solid driver training and testing program in keeping your Commercial Auto insurance rates under control.

Your drivers are taking your vehicles and your insurance coverage on the road every time they get behind the wheel. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to make sure that they’re capable of protecting both?

For more information, feel free to get in touch with or one of our agency’s risk management professionals.

• A computer error results in the release of sensitive information about a key client.
• An overzealous employee sends a LinkedIn message criticizing a competitor.
• A security guard detains a visitor that he suspects of theft.

Imagine, you’re getting away from the cold weather for a nice Caribbean cruise. You’ve been planning this trip for more than six months. Your bags are packed and ready. then a major snow storm strikes. cancelling all flights out of your local airport.

Let’s say you’re on safari in the African plains when you start feeling ill. You’re hundreds of miles from a hospital. Your guide is driving as fast he can, but it will take hours before you get to medical care, and you’re fading rapidly. To save your life, the guide has to call in a medevac copter.

Under these scenarios, you’d be out thousands of dollars -- unless you have Travel insurance! This invaluable “peace of mind” coverage can provide total reimbursement for a trip that’s cancelled, as well as access to quality hospitals, pharmacies, and health care providers in case of death or illness (as well as other travel-related expense.

Don’t leave home without Travel insurance! For more information, feel free to get in touch with us.

Employers and employees aren't seeing the health and productivity boosts of using their vision plans, especially with an aging workforce. According to Transitions Optical, Inc., nearly half of workers fail to take advantage of their vision benefit, either by not enrolling (24%) or not using their benefit to get an eye exam (32%).

That’s unfortunate, because helping employees see well offers a number of benefits:

• Good eyesight boosts productivity. Nearly 35% of people age 40+ have trouble seeing print or numbers on reading materials, or signs, even with glasses, One in four employees age 45 or older take breaks to rest their eyes at work, because of fatigue or eyestrain. Uncorrected vision (so slight that an employee might not notice) can reduce productivity up to 20%.
• Mental health and eye health are connected. Vision problems can worsen mental decline. Older employees with poor vision are five times more likely to develop cognitive decline than their peers with good or excellent vision. Untreated poor vision in the elderly is also linked to dementia; older adults who have poor vision without intervention (such as eye care visits and cataract surgery) are almost 10 times more likely to develop Alzheimer’s.
• Glare bothers most workers. Almost all people say glare affects their vision outdoors, and seven in ten agree that their eyes are sensitive to light. Glare due to reflections from a lens surface can also be present indoors, leading to eye fatigue. The right eyewear can help employees overcome their discomfort.
• Employees think vision plans are important. More than 90% of employees that agree this benefit will be more important to them as they age.

To learn more, just give us a call. We’re here to serve you.

Demographic changes in today’s workplace are impacting the way risk managers handle lost Productivity, the cost of wage replacement, and skyrocketing workers comp premiums that are created by the health problems their employees face. Chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, arthritis, back problems, respiratory disease, and diabetes are far more prevalent among workers aged 55 and above. These workers account for an ever-greater share of the labor force, than among younger employees.

Employers who promote healthy life style choices offer an effective way to reduce health related costs. Experts recommend taking these steps:

• Encourage workers to educate themselves about their health problems.
• Offer health risk appraisals to employees.
• Introduce disease management programs to promote healthy behavior.
• Make healthy food options available.
• Encourage exercise.
• Discourage unhealthy habits. For example, make the workplace tobacco free.
• If you have a fairly large workforce, provide on-site medical facilities.
• Use employee assistance programs (EAPs) to help with family and home issues that often emerge when managing long term chronic conditions.
• Create mobility throughout the day. Being sedentary or standing for long periods can create problems for employee with health conditions.
• Conduct periodic ergonomic assessments.
• Encourage breaks in concentration and focus by dividing tasks into shorter cognitive units.
• Establish a safety committee that recognizes and rewards valuable safety suggestions.
• Build in accountability for the workplace health and safety committee at the supervisory level.

Of course, these guidelines apply equally to all of your employees.

To learn more, feel free to give a call.

As your business grows, the risks you face become more complex, potential losses grow, along with your insurance premiums. At some point, you’ll need to decide whether it makes sense to turn over the responsibility for risk management to a full-time professional.

Before making this decision, experts recommend that you weigh two key factors: 1) the cost of paying a full-time risk manager, and 2) the potential savings that this manager can generate.

The first element is relatively easy to determine, it’s the salary and overhead of the manager, plus whatever clerical support that he or she needs.

The second item requires you to analyze the extent which a full-time risk manager can:

• Centralize and compartmentalize responsibility for risk management in a single department. This improvement in efficiency should more than offset the increase in administrative costs.
• reduce losses by providing analysis of loss control needs, careful scrutiny of reports, and knowledge of whom to contact for specialized help. Careful attention to loss reserves and adjusting practices can help cut costs dramatically. For example, adjusting liability and workers compensation claims requires special expertise. Insurance companies generally provide adjusters, it’s always helpful to have someone on your team who can evaluate their conclusions.
• help lower your premiums by paying closer attention to coverage criteria, negotiating with agents, brokers, and insurance companies, and using familiarity with industry terminology.

If you’d like our input on making this key decision, feel free to get in touch with the risk management professionals at our agency at any time. We’re here to serve you.

If you rent out residential property, you face a variety of financial risks, everything from damage from fires and windstorms, through fines for building code violations, to a disgruntled tenant who sues you.

Landlord insurance to the rescue! These policies cover losses to the property, medical payments for tenants or visitors injured on the premises, and your personal liability for alleged negligence.

The amount of coverage depends on your financial situation. If you've taken out a mortgage on the property, the lender will probably insist that you buy a policy large enough to cover the loan balance. As a rule of thumb, the higher the value of the property and the greater the risk of potentially catastrophic liability, the more coverage you’ll need.

Your premium will depend on the type of losses covered and the extent of reimbursement. If you choose comprehensive or all risk coverage (which will pay for damage from all causes unless specifically excluded), your cost will be higher than if you buy “named perils” coverage (which covers only losses due to specific causes). Expect a higher premium for replacement value, which will reimburse you fully for rebuilding your property, than for actual cash value coverage, which will pay only the value of the property, less depreciation.

You can also reduce your premium by increasing the deductible (which usually range from $100 to 5% of the building coverage).

Optional coverages include repayment for rental income lost if the property becomes uninhabitable, and for risks of doing business with tenants, such as legal fees and liability against claims for libel, slander, and discrimination.

Our personal insurance specialists would be happy to help you choose the landlord coverage that offers the best value. Just give us a call.