Stay safe online Advice for staying more secure on the web and an overview of some of the security tools that Google offers.

Insurance Carrier Service Centers can save time in your agency and increase retention if used correctly.  In our agency, we have discovered three key elements for very successful results: Transfer Your Clients – Don’t just give them the phone number Let Clients Know at Point of Sale that Service Centers Exist Proactively Contact Your Clients 1. Let’s face it:  if a customer calls you to help them with a problem and you tell them to call another number, you might as well have shut a door in their face.  The effective way to utilize a service center is to transfer…

By Laura Mazzuca Toops, PropertyCasualty360.com November 11, 2011   In spite of its stellar reputation as an educational institution, Penn State failed to communicate and execute the most rudimentary risk management protocols in the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal, risk management experts say. With a timeline dating back to 1994, when Penn State defensive line coach Jerry Sandusky launched The Second Mile nonprofit program for at-risk boys, multiple incidents of alleged sexual abuse went unreported to the appropriate authorities, resulting in a situation where liability escalated from potentially damaging to devastating—with the university and even third parties now potentially liable.

The article below does a good job of explaining the magnitude of the earthquake and recent Midwest earthquake trends for our insurance agents. Geological events aren’t something that our insurance agency group can ignore anymore.  What are your thoughts on the recent activity? –Josh Nordin For a Weekend, Oklahoma is Earthquake Country By SARAH MASLIN NIR Published: November 6, 2011     Usually, the earth-moving events on an autumn weekend in Oklahoma are at the college football stadiums in Norman and Stillwater. But on this Saturday and Sunday, the earth moved — at least 23 times — and football was not involved….

By Leslie C. Thorne November 3, 2011  Nature has done a number on the U.S. this year. With two months remaining, 2011 already set the record for the most FEMA-declared disasters since the agency began keeping track in 1953. Between Midwestern and southern tornadoes, Texas fires, and northeastern blizzards and hurricanes, no corner of the country has escaped without being affected in some way. Domestic weather losses have exceeded $35 billion, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association, and the damage doesn’t stop stateside. With a tsunami in Japan and flooding in Australia, the rest of the globe has been…

 MIAA just gained access to Trinity Underwriting Managers, Inc. (TUMI) for our insurance agents! Our insurance agency group members can now access the program directly through www.apsmarketfinder.com for writing Towing Operations.

Notices of Public Hearings to Adopt Rules Notice of October 20 Hearing A public hearing will be held in Conference Room 3, Kneip Building, 700 Governors Drive, Pierre, South Dakota, on October 20, 2011 at 10 a.m. to consider the adoption and amendment of proposed rules to the following: Chapter 20:06:28 The effect of the rule is to require workers’ compensation insurers to file claim expenditure reports. The reason for adopting this rule is to adequately monitor claim expenditures by worker’s compensation carriers.

By Associated Press, Published: October 24 ST. LOUIS — Mark Lindquist, whose against-the-odds story of survival and heroism in the Joplin tornado touched people around the world, got some good news Monday: The insurance company that initially denied his medical claim agreed to pay. Lindquist, 51, was hurt while trying to protect group home residents during the May 22 twister. Lindquist and a co-worker placed mattresses on top of three middle-aged men with Down syndrome in an effort to protect them from the tornado, even climbed atop the mattresses for added weight.

Below are the top ten insurance business classes written through AccessPLUS for our insurance agents in our insurance agency group in the last three months:

“More talk of a hard market coming, but there is debate as to when it will really hit.  Our insurance agency group will continue to monitor the trends for our insurance agents.” –Josh Nordin October 13, 2011 | Subscribe Now By Phil Gusman, PropertyCasualty360.com NU Online News Service, Oct. 13, 1:10 p.m. EDT SAN DIEGO—While property and casualty pricing seems to be flattening and even improving in some lines, excess and surplus-lines professionals say they are hesitant to declare a market turn due in part to the ongoing heavy presence of standard-lines carriers in traditional E&S business. In an interview…