Everybody in our industry has heard of the professional designations such as CPCU, CLU and CIC. But I'll bet that nobody has heard of the Insure and Ignore Club. The I and I club is not exclusive; it does not require any testing or special qualifications save one, and that is the belief that agency responsibility ends when the application is completed and the down payment is received. Members of the club leave all servicing responsibilities and relationship building to the insurance companies they represent. After all, avoiding these responsibilities leaves more time to sell more policies. Although this may sound funny to you, don't laugh; you may be surprised how many insurance agencies are members of the club.

In my completely biased opinion as an expert witness, the agents reading this article are by definition not just lucky, but great. The prima facie evidence for my opinion is the fact that you are reading this article to keep up with our rapidly changing industry. It's been almost 2 years since I began to write articles relating to E&O issues in this magazine. In that time, I've written on such topics as the duty to follow instructions, the duty to procure, reasonable care and diligence and the significance of special relationships. All of these issues deal with the external relationship between the agency and its clients, and the insurers the agency has agreed to represent.

I believe that no successful insurance agency that has managed to avoid the angst of litigation has done so without careful planning and foresight. My agency was one of those agencies that never had to deal with litigation over a 30-year time span, and I can assure you that it wasn't because we were lucky.