best insurance companies

When is the Best Time to Buy Life Insurance

2011-12-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - When is the Best Time to Buy Life Insurance : If you don't have coverage at the moment, now is the right time to buy life insurance! There's no time to waste!

But aside from this, the best time to buy insurance is while you are young and don't have any medical conditions to speak of. If you buy a whole life insurance, the premiums will be low and will not likely change over time.

When you buy life insurance when you are older or after you have been diagnosed with a disease, you are likely to be given rated premiums rates or premiums higher than standard rates. Or worse, you may be denied coverage because of your existing illness. That is why while it is early and you are in relatively good health, you should already get insurance.

However, the consideration would be how much insurance you can afford when you are young and just starting out your career. Aside from the above, you should also buy insurance for the following instances:

You are married and are planning to start a family. Insurance is meant to protect against financial loss in the event of your death. If you are the breadwinner or if other people are dependent on you for even part of the monthly expenses, you should prepare for this by getting insurance. If you are a homemaker, life insurance will still help, because in the event of your death, the family may have to get someone to do the services you are providing for the family, such as cooking and taking care of the children.

You have elderly parents. You should also get life insurance when you have elderly parents who depend on you for financial support.

You want to prepare for your child's college education.

You are paying for a mortgage or for other major and big purchases. Mortgages, car payments and the like still have to be paid in the event of your demise. If you leave your family without the ability to pay for these, they may face foreclosure of your home or car.

You have a substantial estate. If your estate is considerable, life insurance will help prepare money to pay for estate and other related taxes when your heirs come to inherit.

So you see, life insurance is useful for almost all stages of life. Life insurance companies have designed a number of products to fit your changing needs.

Life insurance Terms and Definitions

2011-12-13T10:12:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - Life insurance Terms and Definitions : Life insurance can be confusing in the best of circumstances. We all know we need life insurance, but it can be perplexing to wade through the process. There are so many different types of life insurances with different terminology used with each type. It can be difficult, not to mention stressful, to try and understand the various terms.

An essential first step to understanding the life insurance industry is a comprehensive list of resources. When armed with this important information, it can be easier to make a decision that is best for a family’s present, and future, life experiences.

Terms and Definitions:

BF Message: Basics of Basic and Finance: Delivering the basic terminology of life insurance in easy to understand language, this blog is a must read.
Pure Classa: A Financial Resources Blog: This blog defines some of the more common terms associated with life insurance.
Life Insure: This web site is your source for online help with those often confusing life insurance definitions.
Paid Life Insurance: This article provides the vital definitions to help consumers understand life insurance.
Investor Words: Term Life Insurance: This blog has some basic term life insurance definitions that are well defined to ensure a concrete understanding,
How to Read an Insurance Policy: A detailed rundown of those unfamiliar words that are found in the fine print of every life insurance policy.
Ed Hinerman on Life Insurance: Ed Hinerman expands, in a straightforward way, on the lingo that you will come across when talking about life insurance.
How to Buy Life Insurance: This helpful blog explains the differences between the various kinds of life insurance that are available along with applicable definitions.
Insurance and Annuities Blog: This blog features a complete guide to annuities and life insurance.
Life Insurance Cost: Dealing with only whole life insurance, this blog is a valuable resource for those seeking information about life insurance.
Life Insurance: Because Life is Everything: This blog features an extensive dictionary of life insurance terms and their definitions.
Smart Money: The life insurance glossary at Smart Money is comprehensive without being overwhelming.
Best’s Insurance Resources: True to its name, Best’s does provide one of the most thorough reference guides to life insurance, including a quick jump feature sorted by alphabet.
Insure.com: This blog makes it easy to search for the exact term you are looking for. Or click on the handy alphabetized list.
All Insurance Info: All Insurance Info addresses several of the less common types of life insurance.
Life Insurance Explained: This blog explains some of the commonly heard phrases and terms used in life insurance.
Life Insurance Basics: This blog features an informative video that explains the basics of life insurance that everyone should know.
Life Insurance Terms: This blog offers up some explanations for that perplexing legal language found on the life insurance paperwork.
Ask For Insurance: This web site offers separate links to life insurance definitions sorted alphabetically. They even offer a pocket sized dictionary for when you are on the go.
Understanding Life Insurance: This article explains the need for life insurance.

Understanding Life Insurance:

Understanding Life Insurance: This article breaks down all the key roles that people play in the life insurance industry.
Better Term Life Insurance: Offering an explanation of term life insurance that puts it into simple terms is what you will find in this article.
How to Understand Life Insurance: This article provides a very straightforward explanation for buying life insurance.
When is the Best Time to Buy Life Insurance?: Discover the best time in a person’s life to buy life insurance.
Money Matters Made Easy: This article gives in depth advice and details about how to understand life insurance premiums and charges.
Save Money on Life Insurance: Written in a clear and easy to read style, this article shares many ways to save money on life insurance.
Understanding Life Insurance: Modal Points: This article tackles a confusing topic and explains what it means in plain English.
One Reason Life Insurance is Necessary: A quick reading article that will explain just one of the many reasons why life insurance is necessary.
How to Purchase Life Insurance Policies: This web site article offers a series of questions and answers to address your most pressing life insurance questions.
Understanding Life Insurance Blogs: Featuring a wide range of blog posts about life insurance, you should be able to find the answers to all your questions here.
Life Insurance Policies and Mortgage Protection: A blog that explains the often confusing connection between life insurance and mortgage protection.
Help for Understanding Life Insurance: This article offers a good overview of what life insurance is and what it can do.
Life Insurance for a Better Life: An article devoted to helping you understand why having life insurance is important.
Relevant Information About Life Insurance: A general introduction to life insurance is the basis for this blog post.
Understanding Life Insurance Policies: A complete guide to understanding life insurance policies.
Purchasing Life Insurance: A buyer’s guide to help people who are new to life insurance purchase the best policy.
Understanding Life Insurance and Senior Policy: A guide to the pros and cons of purchasing life insurance for seniors.
Life Insurance and Modal Factors: There is help for understanding life insurance and the often perplexing modal factors in this article.
Understanding the Basics of Life Insurance: This easy to read article explains the basics of life insurance.
Understanding Life Insurance: A Video: This web site offers a unique approach to explaining life insurance by offering both an extensive glossary of terms and a video explanation as well.
Finance Review: Understanding Life Insurance: This article helps to explain why life insurance is necessary at every stage of life.
Life Insurance Rate: Understanding how to save on your life insurance rates is covered in this article.
Life Insurance: Planning for the Inevitable: This article gives a great overview about why we all need life insurance even if we don’t think we do.
Life Insurance Price Quote: A great article and video combination that details the life insurance price quote and the information needed to obtain an accurate one.
Considerations When Purchasing Life Insurance: This timely article goes into detail about the numerous considerations that must be thought out when looking for affordable life insurance.
Understanding Life Insurance Basics: This article explains all about the basics of life insurance in a simple and direct way.
Life Insurance Trust: A well rounded article that explains about a life insurance trust in detail.
What to Expect From Your Insurance Broker: An in depth article that offers a sage look at what your insurance broker can do for you.
Plan Before you Buy Life insurance: This detailed article explains why people buy the wrong insurance at the wrong time in their lives and what should be done instead.
Understanding Life Insurance Policies: This web site offers a discussion about how to understand life insurance as well as the types of policies that are available.

Variable Life Insurance Vs Term Life

2011-12-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - Variable Life Insurance Vs Term Life : For the life insurance policy holders who want to be more in control of their investment, variable life is the probable option. It is also one of the more expensive ways to insure an individual. It does provide the beneficiary with permanent protection, but the amount of the benefit will vary based on how well stocks perform.

Unlike other life insurance, variable life is considered an investment policy and therefore is regulated under federal securities laws. The insurance company must present a prospectus for the policyholder, who can choose from the portfolio offered to invest in stocks, equity, bond, or money market funds. Only a portion of the premiums may be applied to the different funds.

Earnings from investments are not taxed until such time as the policy is surrendered. If these earnings are sufficient enough, some can be diverted toward paying the premiums on the policy.

The Downside to Variable Life

One reason why the word variable is used for this policy is there are many variables that can affect what your beneficiary will receive and what will need to be paid for the life of the policy.

When stocks perform poorly, there is always the chance that the policyholder must continue to pay high premiums, even at a time when that might be difficult. The policyholder does not have the option to withdraw cash from the accumulated value of the policy.

With the stock market in recession, variable life insurance is certainly not as attractive an option as it might have been ten years ago. Poorly performing stocks can lead to little if any cash value and policyholders may need to pay high premiums on into their retirement years.

It is important to obtain several insurance quotes if you are considering variable life. Additionally, the prospectus may be weighted somewhat to give very good possibilities for investments, which may not pan out.

Term Life Advantage over Variable Life

These policies do not have much in common. They are not fashioned for the same thing because term life insurance is only to cover a person's beneficiaries in case of their death; nothing more. The policy is only good for a set time frame and then it is void.

Term life's lower premiums make it possible to invest more money into whatever markets a person chooses. For the person who will dedicate themselves to taking the money saved from permanent life insurance and putting it in savings or a retirement fund, there is a very good chance the capital value will be higher by retirement than it would be with a variable life insurance policy.

Damiso Lockhart writes for My Insurance Expert, which will help you find term life insurance that fits all of your individual needs. The world of life insurance doesn't have to be difficult. Damiso is helping to clarify these difficult topics in laymen terms. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Damiso_A_Lockhart

protect yourself from insurance revenge during divorce

2011-12-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - protect yourself from insurance revenge during divorce : In the heat of divorce, spouses who are breaking up often do all kinds of things to get back at one another.

A wife infuriated by her husband's infidelity may go on a shopping spree, maxing out the couple's credit cards or emptying the family bank account. A husband who is bitter about his wife's taking custody of the kids may refuse to provide child support or balk at paying alimony.

When it comes to insurance, individuals dissolving a marriage can inflict serious financial and personal damage on one another or their children. Fortunately, such problems can be avoided. Here are some ways to protect yourself from insurance revenge when you and your spouse call it quits.

Threats to your home and homeowners insurance

Eustace Greaves Jr. is an insurance industry veteran who has owned Greaves Financial Services in Brooklyn, N.Y., for more than 30 years. He recalls one case involving a separated couple where the husband allegedly entered the wife's home while she was at work and put a nail in a basement pipe. "He pulled it out just enough so that a week later the water pressure caused the nail to pop out," says Greaves.

This same couple had a water damage claim on their home insurance three years prior. So this second incident cost the wife dearly.

"Not only did she have a major flood which resulted in a great deal of damage, but at renewal she was canceled," says Greaves.

Although it was never proven that the ex-husband was responsible for the nail-in-the-pipe plot, Greaves' client was convinced of the husband's guilt, since her ex was the only other person with a key and he knew the alarm code. The lesson: If you're going through a divorce, avoid a potential home insurance claim by changing your door locks and home alarm code.

If such precautions seem unnecessary, consider that some divorcing spouses have caused even greater damage. In New York, an angry man going through a divorce blew up the Manhattan townhouse he had shared with his wife. Sadly, he also died from injuries suffered in the blast.

Life and car insurance shenanigans

When underage children are involved, Greaves suggests divorcing spouses make each other the irrevocable beneficiaries of life insurance policies. That way you'll always know that the children will be provided for.

Another tip: In a divorce agreement, include the legal requirement to maintain health and life insurance. Greaves had one divorcing client rush her young son to the emergency room only to find out her ex-husband had dropped the entire family from his health plan.

Watch out for car insurance shenanigans by regularly checking your license plates. Why? In some jurisdictions, a bitter ex-spouse could plot to end a policy mid-term. He or she could remove the license plates from a vehicle, take the title and registration to the DMV and turn them in, then fill out forms with an insurer claiming the vehicle is no longer in use.

"If you're driving around with no plates and didn't notice it, you could easily get the cops behind you, asking for license and registration," says Greaves. "When they run the car and find that you're driving an uninsured or unregistered vehicle, the next thing you know you might find yourself in central booking."

California laws that prevent insurance revenge

Residents of some states have built-in legal protections to prevent abuse of auto, life and health insurance. "In California, we have statutes to guard against insurance revenge," says John Harding, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based family law attorney who runs the law firm Harding & Associates.

"When you file for divorce in California, there are automatic temporary restraining orders that take effect, and standing court orders prohibit either party from canceling any insurance."

You have to get the express written consent of the other spouse or a court order to cancel insurance, Harding notes. What happens if a person allows an insurance policy to lapse out of simple distraction, or actively cancels a policy out of animosity during a divorce? In either scenario "you're in contempt of court," Harding says.

Legalities notwithstanding, some California residents still try to cancel insurance coverage during a divorce, according to Kelly Chang Rickert, a Certified Family Law Specialist in Los Angeles. That's why she recommends sending a "notice of adverse interest" to insurance companies.

"This is simply a letter letting your insurer know that you are going through a divorce and that they are not allowed to cancel you as a beneficiary or to cancel your insurance while the divorce is pending," says Chang Rickert.

Even if the law doesn't require it, Harding strongly advises people in these situations to keep their insurance policies in force.

"It's money well-spent because all of those policies safeguard you against risk and adverse events," Harding says. "This is not an area where you want to be shortsighted, stupid or spiteful."

IFA fined and banned for insurance fraud

2011-11-25T17:35:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - IFA fined and banned for insurance fraud : The FSA has fined IFA John Folan £70,000, ordered him to repay £125,117 in commission, and banned him from carrying out regulated financial services after he falsified insurance applications allegedly for his own profit.

According to the FSA, Mr Folan was the sole director and adviser for Key Mortgage Associates, a small mortgage and insurance intermediary in Brentwood, Essex.

The FSA statement said between January 2008 and September 2009, Mr Folan submitted more than 54 applications for life assurance and protection policies in his name, his wife’s name and the names of family members without their knowledge.

He submitted these applications to get commission payments from product providers.

He was paid £125,117 in commission in relation to 50 regulated insurance policies that were in placed as a result submitting multiple fictitious applications.

The FSA said product providers have tried to claw back commission in relation to these policies, but Mr Folan was unable to repay the debt.

In each case Mr Folan provided his own bank account details so direct debit payments could be taken by the insurance providers, and in three of the applications he falsified signatures of family members.

He used his own address so the people whose names he used would not become suspicious. When documentation was occasionally sent to family members, he said he was submitting sample policies.

Mr Folan aimed to keep up with the premiums, but when his money began to run out he took out further policies to secure more commission to cover the outstanding payments.

This process made the providers suspicious and they contacted the FSA and the regulator issued him with a final notice on 30 September 2011 for insurance fraud.

Mr Folan agreed to settle the matter under the FSA's executive settlement process and the fine was reduced by 30 per cent, otherwise it would have been £100,000.

Mr Folan destroyed policy documents as soon as he received them so there was no audit trail of his wrongdoing.

Tom Spender, head of retail enforcement for the FSA, said: “This is a significant fine to reflect significant failings. Mr Folan took advantage of his position as an FSA-approved individual for his own personal gain, and at the same time took advantage of his close family. The FSA concluded that he lacks honesty and integrity.

Mr Folan's actions tarnish the industry’s reputation and that is why we continue to pursue these cases and publish the findings. Anybody working in the industry who is tempted to commit any type of insurance fraud should note the consequences of their actions.”

Bharti, Reliance end talks on insurance JVs deal

2011-11-25T17:25:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - Bharti, Reliance end talks on insurance JVs deal : Reliance Industries has mutually agreed to end negotiations with Bharti Enterprises to buy its stakes in two insurance joint ventures with France's AXA, the two Indian companies said on Friday.

Reliance said the negotiations to acquire Bharti's 74 percent stakes in the life insurance and general insurance joint ventures were terminated as it was "unable to reach agreement on the long-term vision and joint governance of the ventures" with AXA.

Reliance, India's largest-listed company, had said in June that it would buy out Bharti's stakes, as it sought to build on moves beyond its core energy business.

The parties had not disclosed financial details of the transaction.

Reliance had planned to own, along with associate Reliance Industrial Infrastructure Ltd, 57 percent and 17 percent, respectively, in each insurance venture, it had said in June.

With growth in its core energy business below expectations over the past year, Reliance has been keen to diversify and has ventured into areas such as telecoms and financial services, as well as tried to build up its presence in retail.

Bharti Enterprises, which controls leading Indian telecoms firm Bharti Airtel, had set up the ventures -- Bharti AXA Life Insurance and Bharti AXA General Insurance -- with AXA, Europe's second biggest insurer, in 2006.

It had earlier said the business did not fit in with its long-term plans, but on Friday said the two joint ventures will continue to develop their operations in India.

Bharti's telecoms unit has been weighed down by its $9 billion acquisition of the African mobile operations of Kuwait's Zain last year and huge costs of launching its 3G network in India.

An AXA spokesman in Paris declined to comment.

Ahead of the announcement, Reliance shares ended down 2.5 percent in a weak Mumbai market. Bharti Airtel shares closed 0.9 percent lower.

Health insurance scheme, Malaysia plan back on table

2011-11-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

best insurance companies - Health insurance scheme, Malaysia plan back on table : LABOR will use its new increased majority in the House of Representatives to try to push through stalled policies including means-testing for the private health insurance rebate and the Malaysia plan for asylum seekers.

Labor MPs who have been fretting about the poker machine reforms that Andrew Wilkie has been demanding say they plan to start speaking out for those reforms to be moderated, given Mr Wilkie no longer has the power to bring down the government.

One MP, who did not want to be named, said MPs would call for changes such as insisting on a trial before pressing ahead with mandatory pre-commitment.

'We can't just drop the policy but we'll be pushing for a trial first,'' the MP said. ''This changes the whole dynamic. It's good to have a bit of stability.''

Mr Wilkie has been assured by the Prime Minister that Labor will try to honour its commitment to place mandatory pre-commitment technology on poker machines.

The minority government has 76 votes to 73 on the floor of the House after Harry Jenkins resigned as speaker and went to the backbench, giving Labor an extra vote. The Coalition lost a vote when Peter Slipper replaced Mr Jenkins.

This means Labor now needs the support of three of the six crossbenchers instead of four to pass a bill. The 76 votes gives Labor an absolute majority and much greater powers to control events in the House.

As the opposition railed against the ambush as a grubby deal, recriminations inside the party began, with enemies of Mr Slipper saying he should have been disendorsed years ago.

The federal Liberal National MP Alex Somlyay said the LNP executive, which had been debating this week whether to expel Mr Slipper or fast-track his preselection defeat, should have moved long ago.

''People like me and many other branch members have been warning the party this was going to happen … that something should have been done years ago,'' he said. ''It has all come to a head now, and we'll have to live with the consequences for the next two years.''

It needs now just one vote to means-test the private health insurance rebate, which is worth $2.9 billion to the budget.

It has the numbers to pass through the lower house the legislation for the Malaysia plan in a bid to increase the pressure on the Coalition to back down and allow it through the Senate.

The manager of government business, Anthony Albanese, who lined up Mr Slipper on Thursday morning after Mr Jenkins resigned, denied yesterday that he had advance knowledge of Mr Jenkins's decision. It emerged that Mr Jenkins had consulted Simon Crean on Wednesday and then contacted Government House to arrange his resignation.

Irene Sends Floundering Flood Insurance Program Further Under Water

2011-08-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

best insurance companies - Irene Sends Floundering Flood Insurance Program Further Under Water : The only thing worse than getting flooded out of your home once is getting flooded out of it twice. Or, for that matter, over and over again.

Margaret Wert bought her Wayne, N.J., house in 1999, relying on assurances from her real estate agent that any occasional flooding would only amount to an inch or two of water. A week after closing, Hurricane Floyd put four feet of water in her basement.

Earlier this year, Wert, 45, got flooded again and received a pay-out of $5,000 on her government flood insurance, which costs her $1,200 a year. It wasn't enough to cover her bills, but it helped with the new stove, refrigerator and boiler.

But all of Margaret Wert's new appliances and much of her house are now ruined, after Hurricane Irene flooded broad swaths of New Jersey. This time, though, she has a message for the government insurance program.

"If they don't buy me out and give me what I want, I am going to walk away, and they can keep it. I will tell the insurance company 'give the check to the bank.' You can do the repairs. You can live there in mold, you can live there in smell, I am done."

In the United States, uniquely in the developed world, insuring homeowners against flood damage is the sole province of the federal government. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is virtually the only place to get protection against the disasters of flood and storm surge.

The problem is that the NFIP is a disaster itself, hanging on by a series of hard-fought annual extensions and the subject of a stalled reform bill in Congress. Only six years ago, taxpayers had to bail out the program after losses from Hurricane Katrina proved too much to handle.

But bailouts are not popular in Washington these days. With Congress locked in battle over the national deficit and recession fears looming, House Republicans are already warning that any extra money spent needs to be offset by cuts.

While Hurricane Irene was not as strong as Katrina, it has caused severe and widespread flooding in some of America's most populated - and most expensive - areas. The storm killed at least 38 people in 11 states, in addition to three who died in the Dominican Republic and one in Puerto Rico.

In New Jersey alone, Governor Chris Christie has estimated losses could be in the tens of billions of dollars. The state has nearly $52 billion in flood insurance in force from the NFIP.

The question is whether the NFIP can handle it, and whether the losses it faces from Irene are enough to spur the U.S. Senate into passing a major reform bill that made it through the House of Representatives last month.

Moreover, if climate change believers in the insurance industry are right, and the environment is changing in unpredictable and severe ways, the flooding that results could worsen an already bad situation for the NFIP and for homeowners.

"What I do regret tremendously is because the federal government can undercut the private sector, it is now the only insurer in the floodplain management arena," said Joe Allbaugh, the former director of FEMA under President George W. Bush, who now runs his own disaster management company.

"It spends most of its time in the red. That's because it's another government program (where) the premiums that are charged are way under market value, in my opinion."

History

The NFIP dates to 1968, when Congress created it to help offset flood damage in quickly developing parts of the country, as well as to give communities an incentive to manage their flood risk more effectively.

From an insurance standpoint, the program is much like any other private-sector program: pay the government a certain amount and when a flood happens, receive coverage for repairs. As of June 30, the program had nearly 5.6 million policies in force with a total insured value of $1.246 trillion.

But from a fiscal standpoint FEMA does not manage the NFIP like a traditional insurer. Most insurers use a measure of solvency that looks at their capital and reserves and their ability to pay claims. In particular, regulators require insurance companies to keep a statutory reserve of liquid assets to cover potential future losses.

FEMA, on the other hand, has said it manages the NFIP to generate enough premiums to cover expenses and losses for an average loss year, rather than keeping capital for the long term. Even former agency officials admit it charges rates that dramatically underprice the risks faced.

That is all well and good in a normal year and when business is good, but when a worse-than-average loss year happens, the consequences are disastrous.

After Katrina and Rita struck in 2005, the NFIP was more or less insolvent, without the capacity to pay the huge volume of claims those hurricanes created. Congress reacted by increasing the NFIP's borrowing ability from the U.S. Treasury more than 13-fold, to a level of nearly $21 billion.

That debt burden is, by all accounts, unsustainable. The Government Accountability Office, in a late-2006 report, said FEMA would never be able to pay off the NFIP's debts given the level of business it was doing at the time.

While Irene was no Katrina, it comes on top of serious Midwestern flooding that the program has already had to deal with this year. Some people believe NFIP will stretch its debt boundaries and may well end up needing more assistance.

"It may be a little bit too soon to tell but it's certainly not going to be a very good year for the NFIP and we've not finished the year yet," said Robert Hartwig, an economist and the president of the Insurance Information Institute.

Hartwig said a private insurance market for flood coverage is absolutely possible, with plenty of insurers and re-insurers willing to get into the business -- but only if the NFIP raises its rates and if insurers get assurances from state regulators that they will be able to do the same.

But failing those changes, the NFIP will remain the only game in town. If its already unsustainable indebtedness gets any bigger, that leaves two potential solutions to the problem: make the program bigger or forgive the debt.

Small and staying that way

The flood program would seem to have ample room to grow, given that fewer than one in 20 American households have a policy.

It is also cheap for most people. The former FEMA director Allbaugh calls it one of the best buys for taxpayers, and with average annual premiums of less than $500, it's hard to argue.

And yet take-up is and has been anemic. Many people who buy flood insurance do so only because their mortgage lender requires them to do so as a condition of their loan. Many of them, insurance agents say, take the first opportunity they can to let the policy lapse.

"We are seeing a definite uptick in policies that are being non-renewed because people just can't afford it," said Patty Templeton-Jones, vice president of operations and principal NFIP coordinator at Fidelity National Indemnity Insurance Co., which is the largest writer of flood insurance policies in the United States. The NFIP largely uses private insurance companies to write and administer policies on its behalf, paying them a fee for the service.

Templeton-Jones said there is no question that Fidelity National and other flood insurance writers will see business pick up in the near term, but there is also little doubt that many of those new customers will let their policies go in two to three years, absent another disaster in their area.

Therein lies the problem, for the government and for communities that are already financially strapped: people just do not see the point of a flood policy.

Among them are Kevin Putnam's parents. Their Brattleboro, Vermont house is now full of water, thanks to Hurricane Irene, and the potentially crushing burden of rebuilding could be stuck on their shoulders. "They have been here 50 years and this is the first time this has happened," Putnam said. "The premium just isn't worth it."

Take that sentiment, multiply it across an entire town, and the result is nothing less than financial disaster.

"It's a small state and we're overwhelmed," Brattleboro, Vermont town manager Barbara Sondag said. The state suffered its worst flooding in 80 years, with some 260 roads damaged or washed away entirely in the storm.

According to NFIP data as of June 30, Vermont ranks 47th of the 50 states in the number of flood policies in force, with just 1.5 percent of households covered.

In Brattleboro there are all of 99 policies on the books for a town of more than 12,000 people. Insurers like Fidelity National say there are some limited FEMA loans those people may be able to apply for, and even more limited (in size and availability) grants. But by and large, they are on their own.

Reform battle

If FEMA can not find a way to generate more revenue, then the only other hope for dealing with its debt is political reform. As with anything else in Washington, that is easier said than done.

In July, the U.S. House of Representatives, in a rare display of overwhelming bipartisan unity, passed an NFIP reform bill on a 406-22 vote.

The U.S. Senate, faced with the Sept. 30 end of the current legislative session, will almost certainly not even bring that bill, or its own differing version, to a vote.

The House bill would make changes to requirements for mandatory flood purchase, as well as long-sought reforms to both the terms and rates of flood policies.

The Senate, on the other hand, is focused on its own measure, modeled on one that passed in 2008 but went nowhere thereafter. One of the cornerstones of that bill, unusually enough in the current deficit-cutting environment, is forgiveness: writing off the NFIP's unsustainable debt entirely and essentially starting the program over from scratch.

"There is no solution that doesn't gore somebody's ox," said Drew Sachs, vice president of disaster services at Witt Associates and an eight-year FEMA veteran himself.

But the man who ran the flood program during the Katrina bailout, and who spent 25 years running his own insurance agency, said the solution should be obvious.

"The debt should have been forgiven five years ago. The debt was an obligation of the federal government. The program did exactly what it was designed to do," said David Maurstad, who was administrator of the NFIP from 2004 to 2008.

Maurstad, who is now the national director of water policy and planning for infrastructure services company Atkins North America, said it made little sense for the government to bail out insurers like AIG during the financial crisis and yet leave its own insurance program with an unsustainable debt.

Yet neither chamber is even close to agreeing with the other, which means that sometime before Sept. 30, Congress is likely to do what it has done annually in recent years -- pass a one-year reauthorization for the NFIP that solves nothing but lets the program stay in business.

"Irene will highlight the need for renewal (of the NFIP), but it will not remove the obstacles to passage," said Robert Gordon, senior vice president for policy at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America.

The other complication is immediate cost. If NFIP does need more money, House Republicans quickly made clear those funds would have to be at the expense of something else.

"We'll find other places to save so that we can fund this kind of role that the federal government needs to play," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor told Fox News this week. "In instances like this, yes, there's a federal role, yes, we can find the money. We're just going to need to make sure there are savings elsewhere to continue to do so."

Legal fight ahead

People who were flooded have 30 days from the storm's impact to file claims. When they get paid, though, will depend in large part on whether the NFIP accepts their claims or not.

One of the problems that is likely to emerge in "Irene country" is one that people in Texas, Louisiana and Florida already know all too well -- the legal conundrum of wind versus flood.

Simply put, in many cases an insurer will tell a homeowner their damage was caused by flood, and to call FEMA. In some cases, FEMA will tell the same homeowner that no, their damage was caused by wind, and instruct them to call the company that provides their homeowners' insurance.

Enter the lawyers.

"There's a big issue under homeowners' insurance, and I would say maybe the most common issue, would be causation," said Robert Berg, an insurance litigator and partner at Michelman & Robinson in San Francisco.

"It's a problem with the legal process. If you have somebody at your house and they're doing work, a contractor will say 'It's not my fault, it's the other contractor's fault.' It's the same thing."

Berg and other attorneys say the legal issue of causation is, especially after Hurricane Katrina, fairly well defined in the more traditionally hurricane-prone parts of the country.

But in the northeast, where for some places a hurricane is a once-a-century event, the case law does not yet exist.

"Because there hasn't been as much litigation in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast as there has been down south, it's hard to say," said Barry Buchman, an insurance litigator with Gilbert LLP in Washington.

Michelman & Robinson's Berg said in a situation like this, the law may well be written on the fly.

"If it's really horrific and you get enough attorneys involved, then they'll think of ways to create coverage," he said.

Struggle to survive

While politicians and lawyers battle over who pays, it's the homeowners who suffer.

According to catastrophe modeling company Eqecat, Irene was an unusually wide, wet and slow storm, which made for ideal flooding conditions in parts of the northeast that had already experienced one of the wettest Augusts ever.

For people who live in New Jersey and suffered flooding damage earlier this year, having to suffer it again - and deal with insurance claims all over again - may be too much to handle.

Jonathan McNamara of Fairfield, New Jersey, said his parents just got their insurance checks a week ago for flooding from March, and now their home is flooded again.

"They have given us money but getting it is a whole other story," said McNamara, 22, who lives with his parents. It's very time consuming and a very frustrating process." (The Associated Press)

One-third of U.S. adults who have a financial adviser

2011-08-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

best insurance companies - One-third of U.S. adults who have a financial adviser : Results of the survey, conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of Saybrus Partners Inc. showed that about 49 percent of U.S. adults who have a financial adviser and a financial plan have spoken with their adviser about adding life insurance to their financial plan. Among those who have discussed life insurance with their advisers, 15 percent said the conversation took place more than 10 years ago, while 40 percent have discussed it within the past year. While this may indicate that discussions about life insurance are becoming more common, they do not necessarily include a review of existing policies for critical issues such as performance, affordability and potential policy lapse. According to the study, 47 percent of U.S. adults who have a financial adviser and have life insurance said their advisers have never reviewed their existing life insurance policy with them.

One-third of U.S. adults who have a financial adviser and a financial plan said that over the last two years, their adviser has recommended that they add some form of insurance to their financial plan. However, less than 24 percent were advised to include life insurance specifically. Only 10 percent said their adviser had recommended long-term care insurance.

“The survey affirmed statistically what we have heard anecdotally for years—financial advisers often do not discuss life insurance during the financial planning process,” said Kevin Kimbrough, national sales manager for Saybrus Partners, a subsidiary of The Phoenix Companies. “They are missing an opportunity to fill a critical gap in some existing financial plans while at the same time differentiating themselves and expanding their practices. Additionally, there are benefits to including assets such as life insurance that are not tied to the financial markets and therefore not subject to the same volatility we are currently seeing.”

According to the survey, more than four out of five U.S. adults who have a financial adviser and life insurance said they would be interested in life insurance policies that carried additional features not present in their current policy, with varying degrees of interest in specific features. For example, 30 percent said they would find a feature that would allow them to receive the life insurance payout as income if they were diagnosed with a terminal illness beneficial. Another 28 percent of indicated coverage for long-term care needs would be beneficial, and 18 percent thought a waiver of premium payments if they became disabled would be a beneficial addition to their policy.

“Clearly, consumers are interested in getting more from their life insurance policies,” Kimbrough said. “Given the well-known concerns about health care costs that dominated the national news last year, this relatively modest interest in health-related benefits is likely due to lack of knowledge of how they would work. This is another opportunity for financial advisers to help their clients maximize the benefits they can get from their life insurance.”

21st Century Insurance company

2011-08-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

best insurance companies - 21st Century Insurance company : 21st Century Insurance is an auto insurance company and is wholly owned by the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies®, the third largest personal lines insurer in the country. They are headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, and provide private passenger auto insurance in 48 states and the District of Columbia. As of 2010, 21st Century Insurance insured over 2 million vehicles.

21st Century Insurance History

21st Century Insurance was founded in 1958 by Louis W. Foster as an inter-insurance exchange offering auto insurance, primarily in California. Initially, the company was called 20th Century Insurance.[3]

The company was purchased in 2005 by AIG and then later sold in 2009 to Farmers Insurance Group of Companies®.

History of insurance

2011-08-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

History of insurance ; n some sense we can say that insurance appears simultaneously with the appearance of human society. We know of two types of economies in human societies: natural or non-monetary economies (using barter and trade with no centralized nor standardized set of financial instruments) and more modern monetary economies (with markets, currency, financial instruments and so on). The former is more primitive and the insurance in such economies entails agreements of mutual aid. If one family's house is destroyed the neighbours are committed to help rebuild. Granaries housed another primitive form of insurance to indemnify against famines. Often informal or formally intrinsic to local religious customs, this type of insurance has survived to the present day in some countries where modern money economy with its financial instruments is not widespread.

Turning to insurance in the modern sense (i.e., insurance in a modern money economy, in which insurance is part of the financial sphere), early methods of transferring or distributing risk were practised by Chinese and Babylonian traders as long ago as the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC, respectively. Chinese merchants travelling treacherous river rapids would redistribute their wares across many vessels to limit the loss due to any single vessel's capsizing. The Babylonians developed a system which was recorded in the famous Code of Hammurabi, c. 1750 BC, and practised by early Mediterranean sailing merchants. If a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he would pay the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender's guarantee to cancel the loan should the shipment be stolen or lost at sea.

Achaemenian monarchs of Ancient Persia were the first to insure their people and made it official by registering the insuring process in governmental notary offices. The insurance tradition was performed each year in Norouz (beginning of the Iranian New Year); the heads of different ethnic groups as well as others willing to take part, presented gifts to the monarch. The most important gift was presented during a special ceremony. When a gift was worth more than 10,000 Derrik (Achaemenian gold coin) the issue was registered in a special office. This was advantageous to those who presented such special gifts. For others, the presents were fairly assessed by the confidants of the court. Then the assessment was registered in special offices.

The purpose of registering was that whenever the person who presented the gift registered by the court was in trouble, the monarch and the court would help him. Jahez, a historian and writer, writes in one of his books on ancient Iran: "[W]henever the owner of the present is in trouble or wants to construct a building, set up a feast, have his children married, etc. the one in charge of this in the court would check the registration. If the registered amount exceeded 10,000 Derrik, he or she would receive an amount of twice as much."

A thousand years later, the inhabitants of Rhodes invented the concept of the general average. Merchants whose goods were being shipped together would pay a proportionally divided premium which would be used to reimburse any merchant whose goods were deliberately jettisoned in order to lighten the ship and save it from total loss.

The Talmud deals with several aspects of insuring goods. Before insurance was established in the late 17th century, "friendly societies" existed in England, in which people donated amounts of money to a general sum that could be used for emergencies.

Separate insurance contracts (i.e., insurance policies not bundled with loans or other kinds of contracts) were invented in Genoa in the 14th century, as were insurance pools backed by pledges of landed estates. These new insurance contracts allowed insurance to be separated from investment, a separation of roles that first proved useful in marine insurance. Insurance became far more sophisticated in post-Renaissance Europe, and specialized varieties developed.