Navigating Insurance Pitfalls

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Fred Fisher  – Fisher Consulting

 

Podcast Overview:

00:00 Pursuing law to help artists
06:12 Understanding legal claim complexities
14:22 Undisclosed potential claims risk
17:01 Handling an insurance claim oversight
23:41 Managing legal risks and disclosures
31:51 Handling policy order requests
36:00 How Farmers handles declines
39:30 Unexpected renovation challenges
44:34 Understanding building code coverage
48:41 Understanding tech liability policies
55:16 Delayed claims denial examples
01:01:21 Restrictive insurance policy drafting
01:09:55 Choosing not to compete anymore
01:12:29 Challenges in insurance claims handling
01:19:56 Treating renewals as new business
01:22:53 Program introduction and sponsorships

Podcast Transcription:

Fred Fisher [00:00:00]:
I used to tell my staff, never take a renewal for granted. Treat every renewal as new business because our competitor will. They’re going to dive deep, they’re going to find a hole, they’re going to find out that our insured’s doing something new that we didn’t know about, that that we’re not covering. And they can. So treat every renewal as new business because our competitor is going to do that because it is new business for them. So either we dig deep and compete or we lose the account.

James Kademan [00:00:31]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com we are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls On Call Extraordinary Answering Service, the Bold Business Book and as well as Live Switch. And today we’re welcoming, preparing to learn from Fred Fisher of Fisher Consulting. And Fred, I gotta say I’m excited. Though you probably don’t hear this very often, I’m excited to talk insurance with you.

Fred Fisher [00:01:05]:
That’s, that’s really interesting. That’s the fastest way to clear the room is. Oh yeah, we’re talking about insurance tonight.

James Kademan [00:01:10]:
We’re going to talk about insurance. I got a thing at that place, right?

Fred Fisher [00:01:14]:
Absolutely.

James Kademan [00:01:14]:
No, I’m, I am super excited for a few reasons, right? One, I have some property insurance that’s due, so it’s top of mind. Two, I live in southern Wisconsin and we just got hit with I think four out of five days. We had hail, there’s tornadoes. I got some buddies that had some baseball size hail. And I’m like, man, if I was an insurance company, I’d be like, oh, we gotta write checks. We’re supposed to collect the checks, not write them. So anyways, it’s top of mind.

Fred Fisher [00:01:43]:
That’s the product though, that’s the whole problem. The claim department is where, and this is a quote from a colleague of mine, Chantelle Roberts. The claim department is where the product is produced.

James Kademan [00:01:57]:
Ah, I like it.

Fred Fisher [00:01:59]:
I do too. And I will never take credit for it. It’s Chantel’s. No, she’s a phenomenal professional.

James Kademan [00:02:06]:
That’s awesome. So tell me a story about your business and how you got started by accident. Nah, as per usual, it’s all good.

Fred Fisher [00:02:15]:
You know, up until recently, the insurance industry has never been a destination profession. Everybody got into it by accident. You don’t go to business school, say, I want to be working for an insurance company. That just does not happen. It Is more so now, though, because more and more colleges and universities do have risk management insurance curriculums, which is unnecessary. But for me, when I went to University of California, berkeley in the 60s, at least I think I did, and I graduated with a social science field major, but I’m more of a gestalt thinker. And so I couldn’t just take political science because what good is that without knowing something about journalism or know something about sociology or know something about psychology? In the real world, all that works together. And so that’s why I did a social science field major.

Fred Fisher [00:03:06]:
But when you graduate with a degree like that, where you’re going to end up is probably selling life insurance, which is exactly what happened. But I intentionally had already enrolled in law school to go at night. And the reason I did that and the reason why it was intentional is back then, everybody wanted to be a lawyer. And so unless you really were smart, you didn’t get into the top law schools. And even then, if, even if you did, if you didn’t graduate in the top 10% of your class, you probably didn’t have a job waiting for.

James Kademan [00:03:36]:
For you. Wow.

Fred Fisher [00:03:38]:
And I didn’t, you know, and I didn’t want to work for corporate America or whatever anyways. I wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. I wanted to represent artists and musicians because I had a lot of friends who were artists and musicians in Berkeley, in the Bay Area at that time. And I thought, well, I could help protect them, you know, from the evil of corporate America, what have you. And one thing led to another, and I got a job as a law clerk eventually. And the other reason I did this too, is because if you went to the top law schools, like I said, you wouldn’t have a job. But if you went to a night law school and you could get a job in the legal industry during the day, you had a job waiting for you was 90%. I like those odds.

Fred Fisher [00:04:15]:
I like those odds. So I ended up kind of getting a job as a law clerk in what was called an insurance defense law firm. And I have nothing but good experience from that. The gentleman who was heading that firm up, and we were all employees of an insurance company, so this was in house counsel. And he loved teaching, he loved young people and helping them really learn. And as a result, you, if you work there, you, you could move to another law firm, you know, after a year and a half or so, and one thing led to another, and I did that. And then I. And then, unfortunately, the partner of that law firm, after eight months, decided, well, we don’t really need a law clerk.

Fred Fisher [00:04:57]:
What we need is somebody who’s licensed and can do Fred’s job and also go to court, you know, on minor motions, so. Enough to send somebody heavy out. And so I got laid off. Boo. Yeah. But he actually did me a favor. I had friends that were work. I had a couple of friends that were working at this claim adjusting firm, and they were doing something I didn’t even know existed.

Fred Fisher [00:05:19]:
They were handling nothing but what were called professional liability claims. They were handling cases against lawyers, insurance agents, real estate brokers, medical malpractice, which I stayed away from. A little too real for me. And oddball stuff for Lloyd’s of London, including Seedman Zo, you know, for companies that manufacture seed, you know, for. For farmers, so to speak.

James Kademan [00:05:42]:
Yeah.

Fred Fisher [00:05:42]:
Coat it with this little clay stuff so that it could be put into a mechanical planter so they could have control over one seed every six inches. How do you like that? I mean, if you’re. If you’re going to be planting seed in 500 acres, you know, that’s a lot of seed if you don’t manage it correctly. And it’s really expensive. So this was a whole different world. And so I handled a claim involving that where nothing grew. 500 acres, nothing. It was like what happened.

Fred Fisher [00:06:12]:
You know, I’ll never forget the phrase necrosis of the cotyledon boy. There’s a federal regulation on it, and I’ll never forget it. But it was interesting work and I was good at it. And especially when it came to lawyers and insurance brokers, you had what was called a claim within a claim. I mean, at first you had to decide that the attorney screwed up or did the insurance broker screw up, and then what was the underlying matter they were working on? Because that’s where the damages are, supposedly. And so you didn’t know whether you were with an attorney malpractice case, whether you were going to handle a personal injury statute of limitations problem, or the attorney didn’t file the lawsuit on time. And then the next case has to do with a merger and acquisition. Wow.

James Kademan [00:06:55]:
You see, What a variety.

Fred Fisher [00:06:56]:
Yeah, exactly. And the same thing with insurance brokers. I mean, they might forget to renew your auto insurance or increase your limit on your homeowner insurance, or there could be the failure to renew your product liability policy with $150,000 premium.

James Kademan [00:07:14]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [00:07:15]:
Oops. And so. Or real estate brokered malpractice cases, you know, and with insurance broker cases and real estate cases in particular, you could do some creative settlements and the same with lawyer malpractice cases. We did a very creative settlement, like a few of those. And, you know, I was good at it. Plus, the firm I was working for had settlement authority and law firm designation authority for certain clients. They were acting like what’s called a third party administrator. And so, you know, we could choose the law firms.

Fred Fisher [00:07:51]:
So when I graduated law school, I had 11 offers.

James Kademan [00:07:56]:
Wow, that’s a good place to be in.

Fred Fisher [00:07:58]:
Yeah. And I turned them all down.

James Kademan [00:08:00]:
Oh, okay.

Fred Fisher [00:08:01]:
Well, they. And the reason being was that the company that I was working for just opened up an office in Los Angeles and they offered me the job of being manager.

James Kademan [00:08:10]:
Oh.

Fred Fisher [00:08:10]:
So the choice I had, remember, we were also acting as a TPA for a couple of clients, so. And I knew these law firms were wanting to hire me because I had insurance company contacts, I knew how to evaluate witnesses, I knew how to negotiate settlements. So I had a lot of good training. But I turned them all down because if I took a junior associate job at some law defense firm, you know, I’d be taking orders for several years, whereas if I took a job in la, I’d be giving them.

James Kademan [00:08:38]:
Gotcha. All right, so that’s what I did.

Fred Fisher [00:08:41]:
And ultimately, and we were also dealing with something I’d never heard of before. It was called a claims made insurance policy.

James Kademan [00:08:49]:
All right, help me understand what that is.

Fred Fisher [00:08:51]:
One second, though. So I took the job in la and for obvious reasons, and, and then eventually they made me a partner and then ultimately I bought them out, expanded the company. A claims made policy is a lot different than what’s called an occurrence policy for liability purposes. With an occurrence policy, the accident has to take place during the policy term. And that makes perfect sense, Austin, because when you run a red light and hit somebody, somebody’s immediately injured. You may not know how severely or how badly, but you know the car, their car is damaged and you know that they may have been hurt, and it’s immediate. And that starts the clock running. When you’re an attorney, however, you make a professional error.

Fred Fisher [00:09:38]:
Number one, nobody may know about it right away. And number two, they may not even be damaged immediately. So there’s this long, what they call tail out into the future, which meant that you had to keep all of your insurance policies in storage because they were written on the current basis back then. Or, and, or you had to keep all your files forever.

James Kademan [00:10:02]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [00:10:04]:
So in 1964, a fellow named Joe D’ Alessandro came up with the idea of, let’s not have an accident trigger the policy. Let’s have the professional error trigger the policy or more. When somebody over whom you have no control decides to make a claim against you, that triggers the policy.

James Kademan [00:10:31]:
Oh, that’s the moment. So even though this may have happened years ago or even though you made them.

Fred Fisher [00:10:35]:
Yeah, a good example. You screw up, I’m going to do your will and trust. I screw up a generation. Skip tax. Don’t ask me what that is. Nobody’s going to know about it until you’re dead. Now unfortunately, that could be this afternoon or I could be 50 years from now. There’s your problem.

Fred Fisher [00:10:52]:
And with occurrence policies, that meant you have this long tail out there of potential exposure. It’s called incurred but not reported or incurred not. You’ve made the error, no one knows about it, hasn’t damaged anybody. How do you close the books on that? From an actuarial standpoint, how do you predict what can happen out 10 years from now? They usually cut it off by. They usually arbitrarily cut it off after five years.

James Kademan [00:11:17]:
I imagine the insurance company that was insuring you at that time may not even exist in 50 years.

Fred Fisher [00:11:22]:
That’s true too. They may have been acquired. Now you got to track them down. That’s why you have to keep all your insurance policies. Whereas with a claims made policy, the policy is triggered when somebody over whom you have no control says, I’m going to sue you or you made this mistake and I’m going to hold you accountable. And then even back then in the 1970s, my actual policy library goes back to 19, 1972. Back then they even, they didn’t even define what a claim was. They do now, but they didn’t back then.

Fred Fisher [00:11:55]:
They had the courts do it. So, you know, the courts ended up coming out with a decision that said a demand for money or services, which makes sense in a lot of ways. It created its own problems as well. And then eventually insurance companies started coming up with definitions and now there’s like 20 of them.

James Kademan [00:12:12]:
20 definitions for a claim?

Fred Fisher [00:12:14]:
For what the word claim means? Yes, 20.

James Kademan [00:12:17]:
Oh, all right.

Fred Fisher [00:12:18]:
That create its own problems. So I ended up writing a book on that. Actually. I’ve written a lot of articles on the dangers of claims made forms over the years. And I finally took all those articles and wrote a book and it’s called Claims Made Insurance A Policy that Changed the World. And that, you know, it actually is number one in its class for insurance. It may be the only one. But you know, every once in a while it’s number one again.

Fred Fisher [00:12:45]:
But it came out a Year and a half ago. It’s available on Amazon, but it’s gotten 21 five star reviews and it was written for the consumer. Like you. You’re providing a service. I don’t know if you charge a fee for it or not, but you’re charging, you’re providing a service. You’ve got media liability coverage that’s almost exclusively written on a claims made basis. Have you ever read the policy? You know what triggers your policy? Do you have an idea what triggers your policy? Because you better find out.

James Kademan [00:13:12]:
You know, it’s funny you asked that because I had an attorney on the show not that long ago and she said admitted that she doesn’t read her policies.

Fred Fisher [00:13:22]:
Well, there is no doubt about that and I’ll tell you why. All right, Before I did the book, I wrote an article that looked at 224 claim denials. We’re an insurance company, got the claim and says, sorry, you’re not covered. 224 of them. And every single one of them I agreed with. And of the 224 cases, I put it all in a spreadsheet as to who the insurance company was, what type of policyholder was it, a lawyer, real estate broker, what have you. Who are the insurance company, what was the reason for the denial? And I broke it down into six categories. And the categories were not developed by me, the categories were developed by the actual cases I was looking at.

Fred Fisher [00:14:05]:
What was the reason for the denial? We kept all the stat data and then we could sort it. So what was interesting was out of 224 denials, lawyers were the worst at having their claims denied because they weren’t reporting the claim on time.

James Kademan [00:14:21]:
Oh wow.

Fred Fisher [00:14:22]:
Or they weren’t disclosing. They were aware of a potential claim because when you sign an application, you have to warrant. There’s at least one question I’ve sometimes I’ve seen as many as three or four. Are you aware of any fact or circumstance that could give rise to a claim in the future? And if you don’t tell the truth, that’s misrepresentation and they can deny coverage. And a good example of that is a law firm that blew the statute of limitations on a case. And for two and a half years they were trying to refile the lawsuit in other states to keep it alive if they could. But they kept it on the answer to that question on their renewal applications, they said, no, we’re not aware of anything. Well, that was not true.

James Kademan [00:15:04]:
Oh, interesting.

Fred Fisher [00:15:06]:
So when the crap hit the fan, guess what happened. They Got a claim denial. And they finally submitted. Oh yeah, we got a claim. And then Kerry said, you’ve been working on this for two and a half years. Sorry, claim denied. So they had no coverage. And lawyers were the worst.

Fred Fisher [00:15:21]:
The second. Next category or directors and officers, you own your own company, you’re a director of a company or an officer. Okay, dno. If you have DNO claims made, do you have employee. Do you have employees? So you may have employment practice insurance claims made. Do you have employee benefit programs like health insurance and 401k for yourself?

James Kademan [00:15:46]:
We. In this case, we do not.

Fred Fisher [00:15:47]:
Okay, but that would be fiduciary liability coverage would cover you for that claims made. And if you buy separate policies from different insurance companies for each of those four things, your media liability, your dno, your employment practice, et cetera, you’re going to have a different definition of claim in each one of them. Get it?

James Kademan [00:16:09]:
What a mess. You know, it’s interesting. I used to have an office at a. There were condos. So there’s one building split in two and there’s a total of 12 buildings. So 24 condos. Lightning strikes one of those condos, lights it on fire. And so I pull in the office and there’s fire trucks and all this stuff.

James Kademan [00:16:30]:
That fire, the building was close enough to the adjacent building. So that building had melted siding and stuff like that. So they had the condo association insurance building number one that actually got hit by lightning, their insurance that was connected to a second owner in that same building. That’s third insurance, adjacent building, fourth insurance. There was a tarp on both roofs for six months because all the insurance companies kept saying, that’s not us, that’s them. It was a mess. And I’m like, I don’t even know how to solve that.

Fred Fisher [00:17:01]:
It’s just that’s where the creativity comes in. I do expert witness work now that I’m semi retired and I was handling a case in, in Florida and couple of very big insurance brokers had had contractually agreed that they would be responsible for reporting claims for this large group. And during a renewal pre, they were going to be had a big renewal meeting with the brokers and whatever to discuss how they’re going to do renewing their coverages. And then it came up that there was a potential claim out there that had just been discovered and it was decided, yeah, we have to report this right away because we’re two weeks away from renewal. Well, they renewed it with the. They reported it, the potential claim to the primary carrier, but not the Excess carriers. It’s like, what, are you kidding? You know who does that? If you’re going to report a claim, you report it to everybody. All the way up.

Fred Fisher [00:18:06]:
All of. All the way up. They can decide whether they want to monitor or not or what’s going to happen, but at least tell them about it. Crying out loud. That’s just like elementary. So they didn’t. So there’s this finger pointing going on between the two defendant brokers and they refuse to settle with the plaintiff. How dumb is that? Take the plaintiff out of the case.

Fred Fisher [00:18:28]:
You cannot win this.

James Kademan [00:18:30]:
Right.

Fred Fisher [00:18:30]:
Get them out and then the two of you can do mandatory arbitration, you know, binding arbitration, to see who’s really responsible for how on a percentage basis. 60, 40, 50, 70, 30, whatever. They wouldn’t do it. They wasted easily $2 million or more.

James Kademan [00:18:49]:
Oof.

Fred Fisher [00:18:52]:
Like, how dumb is that?

James Kademan [00:18:55]:
So is that just job security for the person or the people that are lawyers?

Fred Fisher [00:18:59]:
Okay, I don’t get it. We have to. You know, in one instance, I happen to know that they play hardball on every case because I don’t want to get a reputation of being soft. I get that. But this was stupid, right? And make make matters worse is also the other problem. On the same token is that. May I ask what state you’re in?

James Kademan [00:19:19]:
Wisconsin.

Fred Fisher [00:19:20]:
Wisconsin. Okay. You’re in a. You’re in a state where the insurance broker or insurance agent or producer, whatever they’re called there, has no duty to advise you.

James Kademan [00:19:35]:
Yeah.

Fred Fisher [00:19:37]:
37 states, including California, follows what’s called commonly referred to now as the order taker standard of care. Meaning your insurance broker has no duty to advise you any more than your favorite server of your favorite breakfast diner. Now, now, they could be held to a higher standard of care called a special relationship, which is a legal conclusion. So I’m not allowed to testify to that. I could just say higher standard of care. And they can be held to a higher standard of care if they hold themselves out as an expert or specialist. They agree to do a risk management review for a fee in addition to the commission they get or they misrepresent coverage. Then they’re held to this higher standard of care.

Fred Fisher [00:20:22]:
But absent those three things, that’s it, game over. You have to know more about what your insurance needs than the guy selling it, the guy who has to take continuing education classes. And to make matters worse, California just joined 35 other states that no longer require pre education and insurance. Before you can take the exam to get a license, you do still have to take code and ethics but you don’t have to study any insurance products. So I got to do is read the book on how to, how to, how to pass the exam. And then you can often run into the races guy walk into somebody’s, you know, office and say I can help you with your director and officer liability coverage or your cyber coverage or whatever. And they’re licensed to do it. They don’t know squat.

Fred Fisher [00:21:09]:
Especially if they’re in an order taker standard of care state.

James Kademan [00:21:15]:
You know, I gotta say, hearing that from you in the industry, that helps me understand some of the brokers that I’ve dealt with.

Fred Fisher [00:21:21]:
How dumb is that?

James Kademan [00:21:24]:
I would agree, very dumb.

Fred Fisher [00:21:26]:
Of course, not smart at all. And it’s good for lawyers.

James Kademan [00:21:29]:
It keeps them busy.

Fred Fisher [00:21:31]:
Sure, yeah. I’ve spent and I’m gonna make sure this is really on the record because I wrote an article of how dumb the order takers dad to care is. It’s on my website. It’s called One river, Two currents. Because you have one area of law that’s evolved in a certain manner and gone in one direction and you have the reality of acquiring insurance and how complex it’s gotten moving in a different direction and the two are incompatible. But that’s a personal opinion. I’m a professional expert. And so in the 37 states that follow the order, take or standard of care, I’m going to testify as to the orders take or standard of care.

Fred Fisher [00:22:08]:
It’s not my job to testify as to what I would like it to be. I have to testify as to what it is. And I will not, I will not inject my own personal opinions into that. But it just doesn’t work. And the reason it doesn’t work is simply this. I know that all the major insurance brokerages are jamming it down the throats of their salespeople. Don’t give any advice. We can’t be legally liable.

Fred Fisher [00:22:32]:
Even my own corporate counsel had a fit with me because I owned a wholesale insurance brokerage and we were doing just that. We were getting policies, language amended. We were getting endorsements to fix language I didn’t like. We were making recommendations to our retail brokers because we were wholesale. We weren’t dealing directly with the. You’d be surprised how often that goes on. But I was assisting. This is why we grew from nothing to 3,000 retail producers using us very quickly.

Fred Fisher [00:23:03]:
Cause we had their back. We were teaching them what they needed to know. We were covering their rear. They didn’t know this stuff. They didn’t know anything about professional liability back in the 1990s, it was a growing industry. They knew what I did. I had 20 years experience in claims already, so that’s where my knowledge came from. I knew what were the gotchas.

Fred Fisher [00:23:21]:
This is a trademark or trademark application pending. This is a phrase of mine. We knew. I knew where the gotchas that’ll get you were like that phrase gotcha said, I’ll get you. Yeah, we got preliminary approval. We’re waiting for the final. But that’s going to be the title of my next book. You know, gotchas that’ll get you.

Fred Fisher [00:23:41]:
But I knew where they were, and we’d get them fixed before we even released a quote. And if we couldn’t, we’d make a special disclosure. And my attorney was, you know, crazy. He said, don’t you realize the one time you don’t do that, you could get sued and be liable? I said, yeah, I’ll trade that for the 500 lawsuits we did not have. And another good example of what I’m trying to get across and why it doesn’t work. Like I said, I know that the major brokerages are jamming it down the throats, and their salespeople don’t give advice. We can’t be legally liable. Well, some of these big brokers are publicly traded companies, so they have to file their financial statements every quarter with the sec.

Fred Fisher [00:24:18]:
And I’m not going to mention names, even though it’s a public record. But one of them, one of the biggest in 2023, I looked at their financial statements, and you got to search for it in the notes. But they had $355 million set aside in reserve to pay malpractice cases and defense costs with the cost of defense because they were so big, you know, they’re not. They’re not buying a policy with a $5,000 deductible. They’re buying a policy with a 5 million or even a $10 million deductible.

James Kademan [00:24:46]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [00:24:47]:
And they had 355 million in reserve just to pay litigation costs and settlements. Now, to me, I don’t care how many billions in revenue you got, 355 million is a heck of a lot of money to have set aside. Think of the C suite bonuses you could get if you did the exact opposite. Give the advice. You could cut it by 2/3. You can’t stop somebody from suing you, but you can end it real fast. If you did the recommendations, did the job, and more importantly, you document it. It’s gotta be documented.

Fred Fisher [00:25:24]:
For instance, I would never Recommend under any circumstance what limits you should have, because there may be something else going on I don’t know about. Maybe you’re worth half a billion dollars, so you got real assets to protect. So a $5 million E&O policy or a $5 million DNO policy is nothing compared to the billion, the millions you may have. What I would do in a situation like that, I’d arbitrarily get a ballpark for higher limits. Say you’ve asked for a limit quote on 5 million. Great, here it is. And by the way, if you want 10, the approximate cost might be X. You want 20, the approximate cost might be X.

Fred Fisher [00:26:04]:
Game over. Don’t come back and say, oh, I have this horrible loss. I should have had higher limits. They were offered higher limits.

James Kademan [00:26:13]:
Got it.

Fred Fisher [00:26:14]:
And game over. And I never said I was an expert. I never said you should have higher limits. I said, here’s the quote for another thing that people don’t realize. And this was. This came up in a case in which, again, I was an expert. This agent had asked. Had answered a question.

Fred Fisher [00:26:34]:
Do you think $5 million is enough? And he said, yes. Where is he coming up with that? Then they had this horrible loss. I mean, horrific.

James Kademan [00:26:45]:
More than five million?

Fred Fisher [00:26:46]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And same thing he reiterated. Five million. Still enough. Out of your mind? What he never found. Asked about was whether or not the owners of one of the largest water parks in the. The state.

Fred Fisher [00:26:59]:
And I won’t mention which one. One of the largest water parks in the state. The property value alone was 17 or $18 million. Oh, maybe even higher. And I know that the property coverage was probably 30. So why are you insuring liability for 5? That doesn’t make any sense. Number one. Number two, he never found out whether or not the owners, the board members, the officers, whether they had significant personal assets.

Fred Fisher [00:27:31]:
Because two of them were named in the lawsuit.

James Kademan [00:27:34]:
They’re personally named.

Fred Fisher [00:27:35]:
Yeah. You can sue directors and officers personally.

James Kademan [00:27:38]:
Oh, you can. Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:27:39]:
Yeah. But they can be personally liable for the governance decisions they make that could affect third parties.

James Kademan [00:27:48]:
So a kid falls from a water slide

Fred Fisher [00:27:52]:
and they made a decision that they didn’t have enough lifeguards.

James Kademan [00:27:56]:
Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:27:57]:
They could be personally liable for those governance decisions. Wow.

James Kademan [00:28:04]:
And they’re just on a beach in Fiji going, like, what? I don’t know how many lifeguards we have.

Fred Fisher [00:28:09]:
Yeah, but they could be personally liable for it. That’s part of their governance responsibility.

James Kademan [00:28:13]:
Interesting, interesting.

Fred Fisher [00:28:14]:
In Hawaii, for instance, condo associations, they passed a statute some years ago in Hawaii making it mandatory that they have property insurance at a level that would guarantee replacement, full replacement in the case of a total loss.

James Kademan [00:28:32]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [00:28:33]:
Think about Maui.

James Kademan [00:28:34]:
Yeah. Oh my gosh.

Fred Fisher [00:28:36]:
Yeah. I can tell you there’s a number of board members right now that are being sued for it because they turn caught they didn’t have enough coverage to replace. So this is all real stuff.

James Kademan [00:28:48]:
Yeah.

Fred Fisher [00:28:48]:
And so again, who knows this stuff? Yeah. By the way, Hawaii does not adhere to the. Or to take her standard of care. Either does. Either does Florida. How do you like that? Florida holds insurance producers to a fiduciary standard. Do the.

James Kademan [00:29:06]:
So let me ask you something really quick on that.

Fred Fisher [00:29:08]:
Real.

James Kademan [00:29:08]:
Like me living in Wisconsin. Can I reach out to an insurance broker in Florida and get insurance in

Fred Fisher [00:29:15]:
Wisconsin if technically they’re licensed. But remember, the standard of care. Standard of care may be the highest in Florida, but they’re not providing coverage for a Florida person. They’re flying. They’re providing coverage to somebody in Wisconsin.

James Kademan [00:29:28]:
Oh, so goes where the coverage is not.

Fred Fisher [00:29:30]:
Yeah, yeah. They might not. You know, that’s iffy. That’s an iffy problem. What state, what. What law would apply? And that. And I don’t want. I’m not a lawyer, so I can’t advise you on this.

Fred Fisher [00:29:40]:
I only have a law degree, but I think it’s called outcome determinative. If the outcome is determined by the. By Wisconsin and their law, Wisconsin law will prevail. But you have to speak. But do get that confirmed by a lawyer.

James Kademan [00:29:52]:
Sure.

Fred Fisher [00:29:52]:
Not acting as an attorney.

James Kademan [00:29:54]:
All right.

Fred Fisher [00:29:54]:
But this is the kind of stuff that people don’t know about and it’s wrong.

James Kademan [00:29:59]:
It’s bizarre because I go to a restaurant, I’ve never had food there, and I’m like, hey, waiter, waitress, whatever. What’s good here? I presume either they’re going to tell me what’s good here or what they want to get rid of.

Fred Fisher [00:30:09]:
Or they’ll ask what. Yeah. Or they’ll ask you what do you really like? Right.

James Kademan [00:30:14]:
Sure. Something of that nature. Like, you vegetarian? Whatever. Or do you like. Do you like spicy food? Whatever. Some kind of. But I’m expecting guidance from them. And I guess when I’m relating that to the insurance thing that you’re saying, the waiter waitress would be like, you know what? I’m just here to take your order.

Fred Fisher [00:30:29]:
Well, it could be like that, but I’ll take it a step further. How about going to your doctor? And he says, well, John, what’s wrong with you today? And how would you like me to treat you? Oof.

James Kademan [00:30:43]:
Like what do I need you for?

Fred Fisher [00:30:46]:
Exactly right. And it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. If you give the advice and you document it, chances are you won’t be sued. And if you are, it’s going to be over really fast. And here’s the documentation, here’s what we told him, or here’s where it was offered and he declined it. I’ll give you a good example how we went the extra mile. We would often get quotes and there may be improvements in the policy as an option.

Fred Fisher [00:31:17]:
For instance, first dollar defense, where your deductible would only apply to identification, but from $1, they’ll pay the defense costs. That was often an option. And also defense in addition to limits, that would also be an option because more and more policies are being written where the cost of defense reduces your limit of liability. So if you have a million dollar limit, but you had $20,000 in defense costs, you don’t have a million dollars anymore. You got 980,000.

James Kademan [00:31:49]:
Oh, gotcha.

Fred Fisher [00:31:51]:
Okay, okay. And again, that’s usually with professional liability policies. Nonetheless, we would offer, sometimes we would offer defense in addition to limits. We would also as an option, first out of defense and then in comes the order saying please bind, you know, and they don’t mention the, they quote the premium back for just the basic policy, but not the, not the options. Now a lot of people would just say, fine, that’s what they want. That’s a whole order. Not our firm. We write back and say, thank you for the order.

Fred Fisher [00:32:23]:
Are you sure you don’t want defense? In addition, are you sure you don’t want, you know, first out of defense? And 100% of the time they would go, oh my God, I missed that on the quote. Thank you. Buying that too. Because once you bound coverage and you want to go back to the underwriter and say, can we, oh, they want, they changed their mind. They want to, they want to add the options. Sometimes it’s too late once they put it in the computer. And buying the computer might lock the record. And so you have to cancel a policy and rewrite it, so to speak.

James Kademan [00:32:54]:
What a mess.

Fred Fisher [00:32:55]:
So we go the extra mile.

James Kademan [00:32:57]:
All right.

Fred Fisher [00:32:58]:
Is it really that hard? You know, do you want those extra options or not?

James Kademan [00:33:03]:
Right. It sounds like you’re doing what most purchasers are expecting you to do. But most order taker insurance.

Fred Fisher [00:33:11]:
We had their back. We had their back, but again, we would, we were well documented. What if we couldn’t get the guy on the phone? What if he couldn’t respond to the email. Meanwhile, we’d have to have this coverage bound by midnight. So we would bind. Now sometimes we might say, Please give us 24 hours to take the extra exceptions. We’ve, we offered it, we think they missed it. Give me 24 hours.

Fred Fisher [00:33:34]:
And sometimes the underwriter say, yeah, I can do that. You know, so we could hold it open maybe. But you know, you had to be really careful. You didn’t want to have a gap in coverage, especially when you’re dealing with claims made policies. And so we would go the extra mile. And like I said, my attorney was saying, are you out of your mind? They say, no, I’m not. We were never successfully sued ever. I can’t stop a lawsuit.

Fred Fisher [00:33:56]:
But we ended up really fast. Here’s all the documentation. Jerk, you want to be sued for malicious prosecution, dismiss or die, you know, kind of thing. And so that’s how I ran my, my brokerage. And you know, and I, and I knew the coverage because I had 20 years of claim experience. I mean, God, every time I had a claim come in, we go out and investigate it. Boots on the ground. And every time we develop new facts, I’d be looking at the insurance policy.

Fred Fisher [00:34:21]:
God, if I read one policy, I read a thousand in those days, maybe more. I knew them by heart.

James Kademan [00:34:27]:
That’s a lot.

Fred Fisher [00:34:28]:
I could see where company A who’s entering the market to write lawyers malpractice and they have their policy. And I could say, oh, I know where this language came from. I know where that language, they’re cut and pasting from somebody else’s policy, like, oh, funny, it’s true, and went on all the time. I could spot them, you know, which is kind of sick it away but you can see.

James Kademan [00:34:46]:
Yeah, well, it’s just. You got the experience, right? Tell me a story just so I understand the layers of insurance. Because you’re mentioning underwriters. We got brokers, we got the sales people, you got people like me that actually have to buy the insurance. Tell me about all the layers. And I don’t know where the top is, so help me understand that.

Fred Fisher [00:35:04]:
All right. Depending on the type of coverage, number one, there’s all kinds of different insurance producers. There are captive agents. They can only sell all state policies, for instance, or farm bureau mutuals or state farm. And they can only sell the products of that company or group of companies. That’s interesting.

James Kademan [00:35:28]:
They got their little office in their strip mall with a little logo on it.

Fred Fisher [00:35:31]:
Sometimes they’re, they could be pretty big too. I mean some of these guys are Fairly good sized. The point is they can only write that company’s products. So if you need something that that company can’t produce, they do have a duty to tell you they can’t get it and so you need to go somewhere else. Then you have Farmers agents, they’re semi captive. They have to give the Farmers first right of refusal.

James Kademan [00:35:59]:
Farmer’s insurance.

Fred Fisher [00:36:00]:
Yeah. And then if Farmers declines it, then they, then if they’re properly licensed, they can go out into the marketplace and find somebody else. Matter of fact, Farmers owns a wholesale insurance brokerage and they encourage the broker that if you, we can’t do it, you could go to this wholesaler and they can get it for you. And, and that, and they’re still kind of keeping it in house because Farmers Group owns that wholesale brokerage. So you have that and then you have the full service brokers, which you used to see on tv, your independent agent, they represent many insurance companies and hopefully they’ll pick the right one. Because everybody unfortunately is programmed to buy on price. We’re programmed. It’s brainwashing.

Fred Fisher [00:36:44]:
I don’t want to say $400 in my auto insurance, I just saved $600 in my homeowner insurance, blah blah, blah. And they’re implying that every policy is the same and that the only difference is price. And that’s not true. It’s not true at all. The departments of insurance all set forth minimum requirements for certain types of policies, like minimum auto limits, minimum homeowner limits, minimum this, minimum that, or minimum coverages. And after that, the insurance companies are free to do whatever else they want to do, so long as a tell the department of insurance in that state this is what we want to do. And the department approves it or doesn’t. That includes the forms, their endorsements, their rates.

Fred Fisher [00:37:26]:
They have to justify it all. And that’s why this company is a little different than that in price. But they’re also giving up some coverage of some kind. And you don’t know what it, what it is. The only time you find out that you don’t have proper coverage is when you submit a claim. And that’s not when you want a surprise.

James Kademan [00:37:46]:
No.

Fred Fisher [00:37:48]:
And that’s the problem. Because when you are saving $400 by going to company A versus the one you’d been with, what have you given up? That’s the question. Because never buy on price. I mean, I realized and I realized for some people the economy’s tough and they’re, you know, they don’t make a lot of money and you Know, for whatever reason. And so, you know, if they could save some money on insurance, okay. And then they think, well, I’ll never. I’m not really worried about it. I won’t have a claim.

Fred Fisher [00:38:18]:
My house isn’t going to burn down. Yeah. Tell that to the 10,000 people that lost their homes in one night in Los Angeles.

James Kademan [00:38:26]:
But help me understand this, because I guess from my point of view, people buy in price when they don’t understand what they’re getting. So. And if the insurance broker salesperson isn’t going to tell you what’s good and what’s bad, where are you supposed to get the information to know what the $400 plus or minus is getting you from company A versus B?

Fred Fisher [00:38:47]:
You don’t. But I’ll tell you, I’ve seen lawyers get sheep, too.

James Kademan [00:38:53]:
Oh, no doubt, no doubt.

Fred Fisher [00:38:55]:
Oh, I’m telling you, this guy built. I know one, one person, one group built this magnificent log cabin home in Colorado on 35 acres. It took special. It took special lumber come down from Canada to get a full log that wasn’t split. This was full log. And to have it properly treated, it was a. And this was a 10,000 square foot house. It was enormous on 35 acres.

Fred Fisher [00:39:30]:
Who would have thought that it would all go up in smoke? It was a million dollars just to do the debris cleanup. And he got cheap. Ultimately, he decided, I want to rent this out as a B and Airbnb thing during the ski season. I mean, this thing was like a Soleil. I mean, it probably. You could probably have 10 or 15 people staying there. And because he was budgeting everything, he wanted to keep the premium the same or really low. And so at one point, the square footage was way off, but the price per square foot was probably closer to good replacement cost.

Fred Fisher [00:40:07]:
Maybe about $400 a square foot at the time. But the price. But he only was insuring 6,000 square feet, not 10.

James Kademan [00:40:15]:
Oops.

Fred Fisher [00:40:16]:
So all of a sudden I noticed in. In the policy chain that all of a sudden it changed insurance agents. And now the square footage is correct. 10,100 square feet. Price per square foot was down to $30 or $300 drop price per square foot.

James Kademan [00:40:35]:
All right.

Fred Fisher [00:40:36]:
Premium was about the same. Didn’t want to spend more. $1,000 more a year. A thousandth. Right. How dumb is that? And then he moved the property out of the name of his, himself and, and his wife and put it into a trust. His wife was a trustee as well as he was, but she was the one that was calling the Shots on the insurance. So now she’s in a fiduciary capacity to the trust and that.

Fred Fisher [00:41:05]:
And of course the place burns down. They’re underinsured and it says all of a sudden it’s the insurance agent’s fault. You should have seen the guy’s face in deposition when he asked me about this and that and whatever said. Look, counselor, the wife was in a fiduciary capacity as a trustee. Why didn’t she question it? She had a fiduciary responsibility to do that. She never raised the question. And you’re asking an insurance agent in California running this big property in Colorado to know what the price per square foot is in the event of a total loss back then. That’s insane.

Fred Fisher [00:41:44]:
Boy.

James Kademan [00:41:45]:
I would argue that the insurance broker should know because what they should know what they’re selling.

Fred Fisher [00:41:50]:
No duty to advise.

James Kademan [00:41:51]:
No duty, Colorado.

Fred Fisher [00:41:56]:
But you’ve got. You’ve got a woman acting, you know, the wife in the fiduciary capacity as a trustee. Sure.

James Kademan [00:42:03]:
It seems like since the insurance broker salesperson, order, take or whatever. Doesn’t have to.

Fred Fisher [00:42:09]:
And like I said, I never would

James Kademan [00:42:11]:
know what to ask. But would she? I mean, I don’t know if I would. Yeah. Colorado.

Fred Fisher [00:42:16]:
How would he know where the price per square foot replacement cost would be there? I don’t know anybody that would know that. You’d have to talk to a general contractor and somebody who, you know, has built log cabin homes. They ain’t cheap. I can’t even imagine doing it now because of our political situation with Canada. The lumber would have to come down from there. Right.

James Kademan [00:42:38]:
Interesting.

Fred Fisher [00:42:40]:
It gets complicated. And so at the bottom line, you know, one of the. One of the. I think one of the takeaways that should come from this. Number one, there is a way in which you can get more from your insurance agent. Number one, demand more. You cannot tell your broker or your agent. I want to be covered for everything.

Fred Fisher [00:42:59]:
I’m, you know, blah, blah, blah. That’s just way too broad to have any merit. Okay, what you can say, I need. I need you to sit down with me and tell me what I need to know. Especially not. Not just on a fire limit, whatever. How about your personal property? Do you have any idea how much it’s really worth to replace today? Or all your records, all your CDs, all your clothes, all your. I mean, believe me, it’s higher than you think.

Fred Fisher [00:43:27]:
And number two, what about actual. How about the extra additional living expense while you’re waiting for your house to be built? How much Time do I have a year, two years? How much is there a cap on the amount of money they’ll pay for my renting a decent place to live? I have a policy that’s actual loss sustained. In other words, there’s no limit. There’s no time limit. But I know there are policies that do. All right, how about debris removal? Here’s the big one. Code and ordinance coverage. I’ll tell you what that means.

James Kademan [00:44:03]:
What does that know?

Fred Fisher [00:44:04]:
I’ll tell you. When you buy a house and you have. Even if you have full replacement cost, okay, if you’ve got Corian counters, they’re not going to allow you to suddenly upgrade to marble or granite. They’re not going to improve it. They’re going to pay for what was there to replace. And I have no problem with that. But what do you do with building codes? My house is as old as I am, 76 years old. That’s how old my home is.

Fred Fisher [00:44:34]:
So if I had to rebuild my house today, how much of the cost of rebuilding constitutes an improvement because of the building codes have changed originally. Now, that is a separate line item in the policy. But, you know, you got to look for. For it. It’s not on the declaration page. You know, I. I was shocked to find out that Nicode and ordinance coverage at my home, and I’m supposed to be an expert, I was shocked to find out that it was 10% of the fire limit. That at the time, I think my fire limit was a half a million dollars.

Fred Fisher [00:45:06]:
And, and that was low. But I only had 50,000 for code and ordinance coverage. And so I asked the underwriter, how much, how high can you go? She says, 90%. I said, go do it. I want 90%. And I was willing to pay for it. And now I think I’m now looking at a home I’ve insured $450 a square foot for replacement cost. I took it up, and I’ve got 100% code and ordinance coverage, and I’ve got actual loss sustained for additional living expense, etc.

Fred Fisher [00:45:41]:
Etc. And, you know, and I’m willing to spend the money, actually, I took. I took my deductible up to reduce the increase in premium somewhat. So that. And, you know, I’ve done retrofitting for earthquake protection, you know, on the foundation, you know, anchoring the house to the foundation. You know, whenever we do a major improvement to the house, I make sure the insurance company’s got copies of bills and, and the invoices. And here’s what we just spent to Put in a new roof and all that. And they’re very appreciative.

Fred Fisher [00:46:07]:
Actually, I think they’re kind of annoyed by it because now I can prove I did everything. Matter of fact, it’s in their underwriting file.

James Kademan [00:46:15]:
Now, you mentioned deductibles. I’m going to ask you about that because that’s a big deal as far as insurance goes. So tell me about deductibles and what. I don’t want to use the word recommend. So tell me about how that changes your policy premium.

Fred Fisher [00:46:29]:
My original. It can make a significant increase. I think my deductible on my fire insurance was $1,000 is nothing. And to me, at least. And when I increased the price per square foot significantly and the code ordinance significantly, I knew what the increase in premium was. But I said, let’s take the deductible up to 5,000. And I think I went to 7,500. And ultimately.

Fred Fisher [00:46:54]:
And that reduced the impact of the other limit increases dramatically. And I can, knock on wood. I can afford it. So I can write that check. But some people may not be able to do that. So there is the economics of it. But at least from an insurance broker standpoint, if he makes a recommendation of here’s what you can do and here, or here’s what you might want to consider. Here’s the cost, you’re making a decision.

Fred Fisher [00:47:24]:
And if he documents it, it’s going to be harder for you to make an ENO claim against them for being wrong. But right now, insurance agents are being thrown under the bus about the insurance.

James Kademan [00:47:33]:
Insurance agents are.

Fred Fisher [00:47:34]:
Oh, yeah. Well, they want to take her standard with a start. And then, of course, you get into the commercial world. You know, when I first got into claims in the 1970s. 1975, I think it was. Yeah. March. March 15, 1975.

Fred Fisher [00:47:51]:
Beware the Ides of Bart stock. That’s when I got hooked. Right. Back then, a business needed five policies. Really? Five?

James Kademan [00:48:02]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [00:48:03]:
General liability property, maybe an umbrella. There’s three. Workers comp. There’s four. And then employee benefit programs back then, that’s five.

James Kademan [00:48:12]:
That’s it.

Fred Fisher [00:48:13]:
Now you got those five. And then you might have environmental employment practice, professional liability. You know, D O epli, Fiduciary liability. You know, you might need special product liability if you’re a manufacturer. And on and on. The list could be as high as 15 different policies today for hazards that didn’t exist back then. Whoever. We didn’t need to worry about cyber liability back then.

James Kademan [00:48:39]:
Oh, my gosh.

Fred Fisher [00:48:40]:
You don’t need to worry about tech liability back then, you know, and a lot of these policies are written on claims made basis and some aren’t. So how do you keep track of all? And then the idea, oh God. If, you know, if I’m going to report my, if I’m going to report a potential claim on my claim aid policy, my rates are going to go up or they may not renewing, blah blah, blah, blah, blah. No they don’t. That’s a fantasy. I know. If the industry is mandating you report potential claims and disclose them, they can’t hold it against you for doing just that. They’re not going to, they’re not going to do anything until it actually becomes a claim.

Fred Fisher [00:49:20]:
And you’d be surprised how often that does not happen. I know a major engineering firm, they do water treatment stuff. They’re big. Billions and billion dollars in revenue. Billions. They report close to 200 potential environmental claims and, or design and construction potential claims a year. 200, wow. Never had a rate increase.

Fred Fisher [00:49:51]:
Never got, never got an underwriter saying we’re not renewing you. We’re not renewing. We’re not going to quote it too much claim frequency. No, the claim frequency is zero. When it becomes a real claim, that’s when the insurance company will start posting claim reserves and whatever. And now they got some data to work with. Do we want to renew, do we want to increase the premium, whatever. But when you’ve got a track record of close to 200 claim potential claims a year being reported and nothing has happened with them ever, it’s a clean record.

Fred Fisher [00:50:22]:
They’re just doing what the policy requires.

James Kademan [00:50:24]:
Tell me a story about that. Because I have so residential. I got a roofer that comes to my house because I was looking to get solar panels on there. And I’m like, I need somebody to look at the roof to tell me if it’s worth putting solar panels on here. Cause I don’t want to put solar panels on a roof that’s all beat up. Roofer comes out and he’s like, oh dude, you got all this hail damage. And so I’m like, okay, I call my insurance guy. Hey, insurance guy.

Fred Fisher [00:50:47]:
Yeah, probably too late to report it too.

James Kademan [00:50:50]:
Well, it was within six months maybe. So I knew there was hail, but it was one of those like, I don’t think it was that big of a deal. The hail wasn’t that big.

Fred Fisher [00:50:59]:
Well, there may be a time limit to report potential claims is what I’m getting at.

James Kademan [00:51:03]:
Oh, interesting. Okay, well what happened was that’s a First party claim. What’s that?

Fred Fisher [00:51:09]:
That’s a first party claim. The damage to your roof.

James Kademan [00:51:11]:
Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:51:13]:
What I was describing to you was a third party liability claim.

James Kademan [00:51:16]:
Okay, gotcha.

Fred Fisher [00:51:17]:
Right there. There’s a difference. But the advice this guy was giving you, that could be, that could be an E and O problem for him.

James Kademan [00:51:24]:
So what is E and O?

Fred Fisher [00:51:26]:
Errors in a mission.

James Kademan [00:51:28]:
Gotcha. Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:51:30]:
And error and emission is usually something that professionals will have. So when a roofing company comes out and says, starts giving you advice, I don’t know that they’re covered for that.

James Kademan [00:51:40]:
All right, so here’s what happened. Insurance guy comes out and he’s like, you got some hail damage, but it’s not enough to justify a new roof. So therefore, claim is denied. And so then I’m like, hey, roofer guy. Insurance guy says, there’s not enough hail damage, and you are telling me it’s catastrophic. Which one is it?

Fred Fisher [00:52:01]:
Get a third party inspector out.

James Kademan [00:52:04]:
So, so I was assuming that the roofer, the roofing company was the third party.

Fred Fisher [00:52:10]:
They’re not being. But they’re also bidding on a job. And so they’re not being, they’re not being objective. All right, you wanted something objective to come out and say, yeah, there’s some serious damage here. Now, it may already be too late to report it and get it fixed, so you’re stuck anyways. But you might want to hire a different general contractor.

James Kademan [00:52:27]:
Okay, so here, the point that I have is that the insurance company treated that as a claim, even though they didn’t pay out.

Fred Fisher [00:52:37]:
So there’s no because. Well, here’s the thing. A lot of times when you renew, especially in commercial insurance, they ask for loss runs from the existing carrier.

James Kademan [00:52:44]:
Okay?

Fred Fisher [00:52:45]:
Your loss, one will be zero.

James Kademan [00:52:47]:
Okay, so. But there was some company, I forget how, because I went down this rabbit hole thing. Like, what do you mean? Because we tried to renew insurance. This was years ago, different roof, different house. And one of the insurance brokers I talked to said, oh, you had a roofing claim. And I was like, no, he didn’t. We never got paid from insurance. And they’re like, oh.

James Kademan [00:53:08]:
And they gave a date. And I was like, oh, that’s when another hailstorm. Roofer came out, said he got damaged. Insurance guy came out, said, no, you don’t. That was marked as a claim. It dinged our account or address.

Fred Fisher [00:53:22]:
Well, I don’t think that. I don’t agree that that should have been done because I didn’t pay any money out on it.

James Kademan [00:53:26]:
I would totally agree with you, but it was on our record. Insurance record.

Fred Fisher [00:53:33]:
I don’t know. Usually they only go back three to five years.

James Kademan [00:53:36]:
This would have been within that five year window. Yeah. So even though there was no claim made. No, I’m sorry.

Fred Fisher [00:53:44]:
Our claim was submitted. Was denied.

James Kademan [00:53:46]:
Okay. So that was the question I have is when do they actually consider the claim? Is it when you make the phone call and say, hey, I got a call?

Fred Fisher [00:53:52]:
They’re supposed to. When you pay something out. My position on that, as I was said, was under the deductible.

James Kademan [00:54:00]:
Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:54:03]:
The easiest way of dealing with that is under the deductible. We paid it out of her own pocket. So in other words, it’s a minor claim. It shouldn’t have danger at all.

James Kademan [00:54:10]:
Yeah, it was definitely there.

Fred Fisher [00:54:11]:
But you cannot misrepresent, you cannot lie.

James Kademan [00:54:15]:
Okay. I like me.

Fred Fisher [00:54:18]:
Yeah. You can’t say we never had a claim.

James Kademan [00:54:20]:
Oh, yeah, I guess.

Fred Fisher [00:54:22]:
Or we never. We don’t have a claim that’s more than five years old.

James Kademan [00:54:25]:
Well, much like the insurance companies have hundreds of different ways to define claim. Mine is when I get a check from the insurance company, that’s a claim. If I don’t get a check from the insurance company, that’s a paid claim. That’s a paid claim. Okay. So I never had what I considered to be a claim by my definition. But apparently insurance company’s definition was different.

Fred Fisher [00:54:46]:
Look at the dictionary. Because ultimately that’s where it’ll be.

James Kademan [00:54:49]:
It sounds like there’ll be 20 definitions though, right?

Fred Fisher [00:54:52]:
Yeah, but I’m telling you that even the courts use Webster’s, okay?

James Kademan [00:54:56]:
Oh, interesting. Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:54:57]:
It’s not defined in the policy. The word claim is very ambiguous.

James Kademan [00:55:02]:
No doubt. Totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I want to tackle some other things here. You had mentioned the crumble copyright lawsuit and. Crumble.

James Kademan [00:55:12]:
The way it’s spelled. Is this crumble cookies?

Fred Fisher [00:55:16]:
It might be. Yeah. But that was another example. There have been some. Some major organizations that have had their claims denied because they didn’t report them in a timely banner. All right, there’s been several of them. Harvard, usc, the Blake Lively lawsuit, Cedars Sinai have all had claims denied because they had been investigating him by if their arrest risk management department for some instances several years before this proverbial crap hit the fan. And then they reported to their claims made insurers and they all denied coverage, saying, you’ve been knowing.

Fred Fisher [00:55:56]:
You’ve been known about this for years.

James Kademan [00:55:58]:
Huh?

Fred Fisher [00:56:01]:
Remember the. Remember that gynecologist? Or that. No. Or the sports guy at USC who was, you know, abusing all those girls, the gymnasts, had been going on for years when it hit the fan. USC got sued and their carrier said too bad.

James Kademan [00:56:22]:
Oh, interesting.

Fred Fisher [00:56:24]:
Because they knew about it. They remember the application. Are you aware of any fact or circumstance that could give rise to the claim? And they denied it. Same thing with Cedars Sinai. A gynecologist accused of the same thing. The Risk Management department had been informed and they were investigating it and never disclosed it.

James Kademan [00:56:40]:
Oh, interesting. Okay.

Fred Fisher [00:56:42]:
The same with the Blake Lively lawsuit. She had been complaining about problems. A lot of it’s since been thrown out, grant you that. But some of the allegations, not all. But she’d been complaining about it for two years. Same thing. They could have lit on it. The HR department is not your friend.

Fred Fisher [00:57:01]:
The HR department’s there to protect the company. But as soon as they start an investigation of some kind, that’s when you have to report a potential claim. Because you know, if it’s going to blow up, it’s going to be bad and it’s going to blow up sometimes. And of course with urc, it was, you know, look how many gymnasts were, you know, drowned into that thing. It was unbelievable. How do you keep a. If you’re going to keep a lid on it, that’s one thing. But at least, you know, report it to your insurers.

Fred Fisher [00:57:27]:
And for Christ’s sake, don’t have an application signed by the CEO saying we’re not aware of anything. The hell you’re not. That’s what that was with all that about. All right? And it’s to me, 100% preventable. But it’s also, again, shows you the dangers of existing claims based policies. But I’ll go you one more. Here’s a gotcha that’ll get you. That just to me is still mind blowing.

Fred Fisher [00:57:55]:
Ever heard of Pharmacy Corp?

James Kademan [00:57:57]:
Yeah.

Fred Fisher [00:57:58]:
Big pharmaceutical company. Okay, so you can imagine the towers of insurance they have. Probably they’re self insured for the first 5 or 10 million, then they start buying excess insurance. And if they want to enter into a settlement, they’ve got to get prior approval from all their insurance companies. Because you can’t commit. You can’t expect somebody else to write a check without telling them about it. Okay, so I don’t have a problem with that. So they entered into a $207 million settlement.

Fred Fisher [00:58:29]:
They got approval from all the insurance companies that were going to have to write a check. The sixth layer of excess was at the $160 million layer, which means 160 million on the table already.

James Kademan [00:58:44]:
Wow. That’s a healthy amount of money right there.

Fred Fisher [00:58:50]:
So this insurance company was Hartford, not a fly by my company, no big company, Twin City Fire. They had a sentence in their policy that still to my this day, two years later, I’m still mind blown over. The first part said all underlying insurers had to have exhausted their limits. Oh, I don’t have a problem with that. You want 160 million on the table? Okay, they had the 160 million on the table, so that’s not a problem. It’s the second part of the sentence that got me. And all underlying insurers had to admit liability. Yeah.

Fred Fisher [00:59:35]:
You ever heard of anybody admitting liability in the settlement, let alone the insurance companies? No, of course not. I was like, what? And that was upheld in New Jersey. So now because that carrier was out, everybody above them was out as well. Because remember you got all underlying insurers, right, you got to pay in. Well, this company didn’t. And everybody above them. So at the end of the day, pharmacia had to cover 40, 47 million dollars.

James Kademan [01:00:10]:
Wow. On top of the initial that they

Fred Fisher [01:00:14]:
had, you had to write a check for another 47 million. And it turned out this wasn’t the first time that policy had been tested. In 2012, same thing happened in New York and New York upheld the language as well as clear and unambiguous. And same thing happened. I don’t remember any write ups on that at the time because I get all these feeds every day from a variety of sources telling me the latest and greatest appellate decisions on and stuff I’m, I’m interested in. And I don’t remember that case in 2012 being reported. It was cited as a, it was cited in the opinion on, on the pharmacy matter. And that’s where I saw, it was like, wow, 2012, the same thing happened.

Fred Fisher [01:00:57]:
Wow. I didn’t know that. But what was interesting is that, you know, I get all these feeds often from law firms who review a case. And some of them, they even give you really good takeaways, what you need, what you need to learn what to do about this decision. And so there was this one law firm that did a review of the pharmacy case. So it was spot on. It was the last sentence. It would behoove insurance companies to hire knowledgeable coverage counsel to help them draft policy language so as to be able to avoid paying claims and expenses.

Fred Fisher [01:01:32]:
In other words, it’s intentional. Lawyers are helping insurance companies write policies that are more and more restrictive. The courts are informing are enforcing the language because to Them, it’s clear and unambiguous. But like to who would a policyholder catch that? You know, and, and you got courts saying if only one type of claim is covered, the policy is not illusory. So instead have 20 or 30 or 40 different types of things that you would reasonably expect to be covered. They could take away 39 of them. If one type of claim is covered, policy is not illusory. And the naic, the national association of Insurance Commissioners.

Fred Fisher [01:02:20]:
Mum. Not a word. Which is contrary to their mission statement. Their mission statement is about protecting the policyholders. And here’s the other thing. We could have a debate on whether this is supply side versus consumer and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, and all this political nonsense. But the end of the day, the suppliers are consumers too. And that’s certainly true of pharmacia.

Fred Fisher [01:02:47]:
It’s also true lawyers. Don’t even get me started on absolute exclusions. Lawyers helped them create that problem. It gave the insurance companies a valid basis about which to deny coverage. They’re doing it all the time. And at the time I wrote my article about absolute exclusions in 2021, lawyer malpractice policies had very few, if any absolute exclusions. Well, not anymore. Guys, welcome to the club.

Fred Fisher [01:03:12]:
You know, I’ve started looking at some of the filings in California by admitted carriers and some other states as well. And more and more absolute exclusions are being put into lawyers professional liability policies. We don’t need you anymore, guys. We don’t need your help. Thank you. You’ve done your job. Now we’re going to screw you too.

James Kademan [01:03:28]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [01:03:29]:
Including bodily injury and property damage. We don’t cover any claim arising out of any bodily injury or property damage, period. If it’s in a lawyer’s policy, when they’re handling a car accident, guess what? They’re not covered. And there’s three cases that have already been around the United States in New York, Texas and Louisiana that have enforced the bodily injury and property damage absolute exclusion. Welcome to the club.

James Kademan [01:03:58]:
Oh, that’s surreal. This is, it’s, it’s gross, I guess. Seems abusive. Interesting. Not a fan. Not a fan. So tell me, I mean, this language and stuff in the policies, some of it, as you’re reading it, you kind of gloss over, glaze over, you know, like this is tough to read. It’s in lawyer speak.

James Kademan [01:04:22]:
Presuming presumably to be too confusing for the average consumer to read and understand. That’s what typically lawyer speak is for. Help me understand the things that you can understand where it’s like, you mentioned the cyber policy or the, the terrorist. What do they call that?

Fred Fisher [01:04:39]:
Coverage terrorist. Yes, they call me a coverage terrorist.

James Kademan [01:04:43]:
They’re like, do you want to pay extra for this terrorist add on or something like that?

Fred Fisher [01:04:46]:
Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah. Yes, I would do that, especially now.

James Kademan [01:04:54]:
But so my point of view is like, if we got nuclear fallout or something like that, my first phone call is not going to be to my insurance company.

Fred Fisher [01:05:02]:
How about. How about Iran shutting down your computer because they’ve got a bug in it?

James Kademan [01:05:09]:
Probably same situation. I’m going to. It’s not going to be the first call to the insurance company.

Fred Fisher [01:05:13]:
I’d be very concerned about what Iran is going to do.

James Kademan [01:05:16]:
Me too. Totally, totally Russia.

Fred Fisher [01:05:18]:
And the problem is that the United States isn’t really enforcing corporate America to upgrade security cuts into profits.

James Kademan [01:05:27]:
I would totally agree.

Fred Fisher [01:05:29]:
And we’ve known about it for years. Our electrical grid is very, very insecure. And a lot of different things are not secure because of this corporate greed that we got to squeeze every penny out of profit. Right. As far as I’m concerned, and this again, is a personal opinion only, I don’t believe any company deserves to earn a profit when they’re making shit products.

James Kademan [01:05:55]:
Oh, agreed, agreed, agreed.

Fred Fisher [01:05:58]:
I mean, did you ever think you’d be scared to fly on a Boeing aircraft?

James Kademan [01:06:03]:
No.

Fred Fisher [01:06:04]:
Or Nabisco, which is now owned by some big conglomerate, stopped using butter and Ritz crackers 20 years ago, and now it’s filled with garbage to the point where you cannot even export it to Europe. They won’t buy Ritz crackers or cannot be imported. And, and in addition, they’re made in Mexico.

James Kademan [01:06:25]:
The margin on that has to be insane.

Fred Fisher [01:06:28]:
Yeah, and it’s shit. I won’t even. I don’t. I don’t buy them anymore. I haven’t bought them in years. Yeah, and when. When they were originally made with butter, boy, you buy that with some seafood for a seafood stuffing, man. You have my baked stuff, Lofter.

Fred Fisher [01:06:41]:
You’re going to want to die after that. You eat that, I’m dead. I’m done. Nothing could be better than that.

James Kademan [01:06:48]:
It’s interesting how just corners are cut and cut and cut, cut. And you realize the margins that some of these companies are making.

Fred Fisher [01:06:56]:
It’s all about profit. Yeah, it’s all about squeezing profit. You know, listen, they all go back to, you know, what Jack Welch said about creating shareholder value at that business lunch he did in New York in the early 1980s. And that’s true. He started the speech out talking about, you know, create. His job was to create shareholder value. But people forgot the second part of the second sentence. You create shareholder value by creating the best products and giving the best service in your competitor.

Fred Fisher [01:07:26]:
And that has fallen by the wayside. That was one of the reasons I left the company that I founded. We got sold. I sold it 2008. We were. It was a stock sale, so we were wholly on subsidiary and there was not an asset sale. And then we were sold again in 2010. And I have nothing but nice things to say about them.

Fred Fisher [01:07:49]:
It was a third buyer. They were private equity driven. I could have been selling vacuum cleaners door to door and they wouldn’t have cared as long as I was putting money on the books. And the one thing they didn’t want us to do was give any advice. They wanted us to cut back on our service. And what they didn’t seem to understand and they couldn’t grasp is that, look, all of our customers are coming to us because they want to, not because they have to. We don’t have anything exclusive here. We don’t have any underwriting and binding authorities like we used to have.

Fred Fisher [01:08:17]:
If they. They’re using us because they want to, and when we stop giving the service that you want us to stop, then there’s no reason to continue using us. They can go to some other wholesaler where they’ve already got all their casualty business because we don’t do casualty. They’re going to go to another wholesaler that has not only a casualty division, but a professional liability division. But they’re coming to us because we’re not giving a mediocre service when we’re as mediocre as our competitors. No reason to use us anymore. And that’s exactly what happened.

James Kademan [01:08:46]:
Wow. So. And you left that company.

Fred Fisher [01:08:50]:
I left. I lasted eight months. My second command, who had created his Orange county office literally from nothing and turned it into a $10 million a year facility. You know, he left after eight weeks.

James Kademan [01:09:05]:
Wow, man, the ink’s still drying.

Fred Fisher [01:09:07]:
And then I left after a total of eight months. I finally had had enough. The story on the street was that I threw my keys on the desk and said, screw you, Brian. I’m done. And, you know, number one, obviously, and shall we say, slightly harsher language. And that’s. But that’s pretty close to the truth.

James Kademan [01:09:27]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [01:09:28]:
And I walked out. I said, I’m done. I’m not gonna do. I can’t do this anymore.

James Kademan [01:09:31]:
Well, good for you for having the stones to do that.

Fred Fisher [01:09:35]:
Eventually the company folded. I Mean, they sold it. They sold it the fourth time and they decided that the, the brand which was so respected and so well known was, had become so toxic, they didn’t even want to keep the brand. So they didn’t. And then the whole thing folded. So the, the third buyer lost money. The fourth buyer lost a lot of money. Doesn’t break my heart, you know, not my problem.

Fred Fisher [01:09:58]:
They didn’t want to listen, you know, and what the other thing they just couldn’t fathom was, you know, California, there’s no such thing as non compete agreements unless you sold the goodwill of the business. Well, I’d already sold 2008, so in 2010, you know, I was free and clear to compete if I wanted to. But I like those people. And with the third guys, I could have competed with them. There was nothing they could do to stop it. But I was decided, you know, I don’t want to do this anymore. And I’d already been doing some extra expert witness work anyways. I figured, well, you know, you know, about time my age to slow down a little bit.

Fred Fisher [01:10:33]:
I’ll just do more. I’ll just do more expert witness work. I didn’t need to work. I don’t need to work. Need to work now, but I do need a reason to get up in the morning.

James Kademan [01:10:42]:
You got a purpose. That’s a big deal.

Fred Fisher [01:10:45]:
Yeah, but when I’m finally tired of doing expert witness work, I may, you know, hang out at animal shelters and walk dogs and stuff. Well, I got hooked on that. I got hooked on animal rescues during COVID You know, hope for paws like that. Good for you. The dodo. Oh, some of these stories just break your heart. And then, of course, I still, you know, writing and trying to do my best to do education. I’m doing a big webinar with a Chantel Roberts in May.

Fred Fisher [01:11:14]:
That’s going to be hot. I’m going to turn the industry upside down.

James Kademan [01:11:17]:
Nice. You got to share that link with me. And I can push it out to our listeners.

Fred Fisher [01:11:21]:
Yeah, I can, but it’s a little more technical. It’s really for people in the claims industry. Insurance.

James Kademan [01:11:25]:
Gotcha.

Fred Fisher [01:11:25]:
Okay. Because what it really does is we’re taking on the powers that be because the claim department’s the profit center and always has been. And unfortunately, it’s treated like a cost center. And that’s wrong. And I did some claim auditing. We did a lot of qualitative claim auditing in the 1980s and 90s. And we proved the fact that if you invest in your claim Department, the claims are going to be settled faster and cheaper than otherwise. And your claim expenses and attorney fees are going to drop through the form.

Fred Fisher [01:11:53]:
We proved it. And, and there were other documentation that was out at the time. But unfortunately, when you got bean counters coming in and, and you know, people that, you know, have accounting degrees, all they see is this massive cash flow. And so they look at the claim department as being a cost center. That’s where the money’s going out the door. So they start cutting back on staff. They start cutting back on this. They’re strangling their defense lawyers.

Fred Fisher [01:12:21]:
Can you imagine a lot of defense firms now can’t build more than $280 an hour? Are you kidding me? That’s a 1990 rate. Yeah, and they’re just strangling. And then they don’t understand why they’re getting hit with nuclear verdicts. Well, dummy, the case could have been settled a long time ago had you really known what the claim was about. And the other thing they stopped doing is boots on the ground investigations. My firm, my original claim firm, we would have a claim as factually developed as we could in 90 days or less. Statements, documents, whatever. I’ve got letters from law firms applauding quality of the workup we did when, if we had to refer it out to defense counsel, they got a fully investigated case.

Fred Fisher [01:13:08]:
Now they’re just sending everything to law firms to do it through legal discovery. Well, the whole. Number one, you can’t get a discovery order in 90 days, let alone start finding out what’s going on. Number two, the purpose of discovery isn’t to really what have you got? Type of thing. It’s how much can we withhold legally and delay? So you don’t really know what the claim is about. You don’t have all the facts. You don’t have all the documents. You’re going to spend a hell of a lot of money over a period of two to three years to get it where we got it in 90 days or less.

James Kademan [01:13:41]:
Dang.

Fred Fisher [01:13:41]:
Which had a big impact on actuarial review and actuarial justification, too. The actuaries would have to be able to project what the book of business could look like in two to three years because they’ve gotten the facts and the reserves have been more accurately set early. But if you have to wait three to four years before your reserves are more accurate, you’re not going to know. And that’s being done intentionally as well. And that’s what this webinar is all about. But I’ll be happy to send you a link anyways. But it’s being. Here’s the thing.

Fred Fisher [01:14:11]:
The Academy of Insurance thinks that this thing is so important that they’re offering it out there for free. And they started advertising it six weeks ahead of time. And normally they only do two.

James Kademan [01:14:23]:
Wow.

Fred Fisher [01:14:23]:
Most. Most people go to webinars to book them for the last minute is what they tell me. That’s what their statistics show. But they think this one’s so important that they’re already advertising it. And It’s March. It’s May 5th. May 7th. And they started.

Fred Fisher [01:14:39]:
They started advertising it two weeks ago.

James Kademan [01:14:42]:
So when you give this webinar and you lay out how it works and how it’s more profitable. Yes, the client better. Do you think that’ll move the needle on the industry at all?

Fred Fisher [01:14:53]:
I don’t know, but it’s going to create a lot of noise.

James Kademan [01:14:55]:
Okay.

Fred Fisher [01:14:56]:
That’s the whole idea. The claim department is not and never has been a cost center. And again, I’ll quote Chantel. This is where the product is produced is the claim department department. That’s the product. Is that a piece of paper? It’s not. Saving $400 on your auto insurance. Here’s your policy.

Fred Fisher [01:15:16]:
Don’t you feel good? There’s your placebo effect. Right? Ah. Save $400 and you don’t know whether you got anything good until you have a claim or not. Like I said, that’s not when you want a surprise.

James Kademan [01:15:29]:
No, but that’s usually when it happens. I don’t know how to do it any other way.

Fred Fisher [01:15:32]:
Exactly. That’s exactly. And that’s what they’re gambling on. You’re not going to know you don’t have the right coverage until it’s too late.

James Kademan [01:15:42]:
Huh. Well, that’s just freaky. I was hoping for some good news, but I don’t know.

Fred Fisher [01:15:47]:
Well, there is. There are some good insurance companies out there that are domestic. And of course, if you qualify, I would go to Lloyd’s. Lloyds still has 1990 policy forms. They still use boots on the ground investigators. They still have integrity. At Lloyd’s, you can go. Not all the syndicates, but Lloyd’s.

Fred Fisher [01:16:04]:
But a lot of them do.

James Kademan [01:16:05]:
You can go directly to Lloyd’s.

Fred Fisher [01:16:07]:
Well, I had. I was. I do. I used to do business with Lloyds. I’m licensed to do it. Still am.

James Kademan [01:16:12]:
Okay. But me as a little business owner, I can go.

Fred Fisher [01:16:15]:
You could go to Lloyd’s. Yes. You can instruct your broker. I want you to go to Lloyd’s because then he’ll Go to a wholesaler that can. And they even write home orders in flood.

James Kademan [01:16:25]:
Lloyd’s does.

Fred Fisher [01:16:26]:
Yeah. The value of the property. To qualify for a Lloyd’s homeowner policy, the total cost of reconstruction has to be at least a minimum of 1.5 million. Okay. And then you qualify for a Lloyds program. And then they have a good earthquake policy and a good. They have a lot of good. And flooding.

Fred Fisher [01:16:44]:
They have good flood policies too. And they use boots on the. Boots on the ground investigators.

James Kademan [01:16:50]:
Interesting. I guess I was under the impression that Lloyd’s was the insurance company that insured the insurance companies that Lloyd’s does do.

Fred Fisher [01:16:56]:
Reinsurance. That is correct. But they also write primary coverages too.

James Kademan [01:17:00]:
Huh.

Fred Fisher [01:17:03]:
Usually it’s called hard to place kind of coverage, but that’s not always true.

James Kademan [01:17:07]:
Okay. I guess I heard of where just like, hey, I got this huge diamond that was $5 billion and Maryland rose

Fred Fisher [01:17:14]:
legs and all that stuff.

James Kademan [01:17:15]:
Yeah. I’m ensuring the Mona Lisa.

Fred Fisher [01:17:17]:
They write everything. And they’re very good at it. And they’re very. And they. And most of the syndicates still have a. They’re all corporate now. Now. But they’re.

Fred Fisher [01:17:27]:
They’re. You know, Lloyd’s has always had this one thing that I always found intriguing. They’re more interested in proper behavior than they are in confidence.

James Kademan [01:17:35]:
How interesting.

Fred Fisher [01:17:36]:
That’s weird. But they’re seven. They really prefer that you behave properly. And hopefully I’ll put in two. But, you know, I would hope that

James Kademan [01:17:45]:
insurance company would behave as well. So then we can.

Fred Fisher [01:17:47]:
That’s why I’m wearing a jacket. Because it’s after five in London. Ah.

James Kademan [01:17:54]:
Tell me a story really quick because you gave us a lot of information. Fred, and I want to value your time here. If business owners, they need insurance. But it sounds like in 35 out of 50 states you’re going to have a hard time finding an insurance agent that’s actually helpful. What do you look for to find an insurance agent that is as helpful as they can possibly be or willing to be?

Fred Fisher [01:18:20]:
Number one, you have to tell them what you really want. I want to know what I need to know. And I expect you to sit down with me and go over the quotes when we get them. And you have to be willing to spend the time they say, well, we don’t do that. I said, fine. Goodbye.

James Kademan [01:18:34]:
Got it.

Fred Fisher [01:18:35]:
There’s nothing wrong with going to a direct writer because sometimes they have very good products. You know, one time State Farm had really good products. But. But they’re iffy these days. Farmers. I Like still, they’re still pretty legit. There may be other smaller direct writers also, but remember, that’s the only quote they’re going to get you. So if you want a quote from a company like that, still go to a full service independent agency and make it clear what you expect.

Fred Fisher [01:19:03]:
I’m going to read the policy. I’m not going to understand everything. I expect you to help me, especially when it comes to the sub coverages, the sublimit stuff, you know, especially on homeowner or condo coverages and a lot of that. And then of course, for your business, and you may find that your local good independent broker is fine for the light stuff, but when it comes to your DNO or your E and O, what have you, then you got to go to a specialist. And if your retail agent says, well, I don’t have that expertise, but my wholesaler does because I know that RPS is excellent. They have, they advertise their experts. That’s rps. And, and there are excellent people that I’ve known forever that work for rt.

Fred Fisher [01:19:50]:
Ryan Turner, that’s another wholesale. And they also have underwriting and binding authorities as well. So you can tell your agent, you gotta make sure I want you to be able to go to Ryan Turner is a home, my wholesaler or one of their underwriting facilities. Because again, more often than not, it’s going to be quality coverage or rps. And you can even tell your agent, you know, I’m going to another retail agent and I want you to go to these carriers and I’m going to give the other insurance opportunities to this other. And pick it too, see who’s going to be more competitive. All right, Because I used to tell my staff, never take a renewal for granted. Treat every renewal as new business because our competitor will.

Fred Fisher [01:20:34]:
They’re going to dive deep, they’re going to find a hole. They’re going to find out that our insured’s doing something new that we didn’t know about, that we’re not covering. And they can so treat every renewal as new business because our competitor is going to do that because it is new business for them. So either we dig deep and compete or we lose the account.

James Kademan [01:20:57]:
That’s genius. Oh, I love it. Fred, where can people find you?

Fred Fisher [01:21:03]:
Well, Fisher F I S H E R Cs and Charlie G and George. It stands for Fisher Consulting Group. So that’s my website, www.fishercg.com and they can find me on LinkedIn under Frederick, you know, Fisher, Frederick J. Fisher. And Those are the two best places. My website’s fishercg.com and and on LinkedIn. Frederick, Frederick E R I C K J for John and Fisher. And my book is on Amazon.

Fred Fisher [01:21:37]:
If you’re. If you ever got a claims made policy you need to buy the book. It was written for the consumer. It was not written for the industry. It’s easy to read, easy to understand with a lot of humor in it. It the book is called Claims made Insurance the policy that changed the industry. And it’s on again just in the search thing on Amazon. Do Fisher, Frederick J.

Fred Fisher [01:21:58]:
Fisher. It’ll come up. There’s links on my website as well.

James Kademan [01:22:03]:
So the. You’ve written a ton of articles are those if people just do a web search for your name will they find. They could.

Fred Fisher [01:22:08]:
They could find. Those are. I probably have about 15 or so articles on my website as well. The can find. Okay. They’re all on the landing page by the way. So they’re at page one.

James Kademan [01:22:18]:
Oh nice.

Fred Fisher [01:22:19]:
And there’s a link to my book. And so again it’s Fisher season. Charlie, Jesus, Jes and George. Dot com.

James Kademan [01:22:26]:
Awesome. Fred, I appreciate you being on the show here.

Fred Fisher [01:22:29]:
My pleasure.

James Kademan [01:22:30]:
You shared an incredible amount of insurance about insurance, I should say. And I gotta say you kept it interesting, which is what I was hoping for, especially talking about insurance.

Fred Fisher [01:22:38]:
Oh yeah. You didn’t fall asleep?

James Kademan [01:22:40]:
No. Staying away.

Fred Fisher [01:22:43]:
Like I said, the fastest way to clear the room.

James Kademan [01:22:46]:
We’re here to talk about insurance.

Fred Fisher [01:22:47]:
Oh.

James Kademan [01:22:48]:
Oh, that’s funny. Well, I appreciate you being on the show, Fred.

Fred Fisher [01:22:51]:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

James Kademan [01:22:53]:
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Business Adventures is brought to you by Calls On Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country. On the web https://callsoncall.com and of course the Bold Business book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold as well as Live Switch. With Live Switch you can take live videos with your clients to save you time and money. Check them out https://liveswitch.com if you’re listening to this on the web. If you could do us a huge favor, give it a big old thumbs up. Subscribe and of course share it with your entrepreneurial friends, especially those friends that have to buy insurance, which is probably all of them. And those friends that may not necessarily understand their policy, which is probably all of them.

James Kademan [01:23:43]:
Fred is their man. We’d like to thank you our wonderful listeners as well as our guest, Fred Fisher of Fisher Consulting. Fred, can you tell us that website one more time?

Fred Fisher [01:23:51]:
It’s www.fisher f I s H E R C G. So it’s all https://fishercg.com perfect.

James Kademan [01:24:00]:
Appreciate that past episodes can be found morning, noon and night at the podcast link found at https://drawincustomers.com thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. I want you to stay awesome and if you do nothing else, enjoy your business.