Retention versus new business acquisition: What works?

By Laura Mazzuca Toops, PropertyCasualty360.com

Laura M. Toops suggests 5 strategies to strike a balance of retention and new business acquisition.

Rethink sales approach

By Paul L. Elson

Keeping it simple makes all the difference in both retention and new business.

Medical loss ratio issues still up for grabs

By Dave Lenckus

Get ready for the spring thaw

By Laura Mazzuca Toops, PropertyCasualty360.com

Laura M. Toops provides insight on new growth.

NAIC, HHS can still do right by agents

By Ted Besesparis

Ted Besesparis discusses NAIC failure to support HHS that agent compensation be removed from healthcare medical loss ratio and how its not too late for NAIC to stand up for agents.

Don't change a policy: You can't serve two masters

By Barry Zalma

All insureds must agree on policy changes. Barry Zalma discusses a case where an agency changed a policy without persmission and led to a lawsuit and loss of client's business.

Don't get even, get ethical

By Chris Amrhein

Chris Amrhein questions agencies if their policies and procedures are focused on building trust with clients.

Integrity is the motivator for success

By Lisa H. Harrington CPCU, CAE

Lisa Harrington writes on how agencies can find success through integrity and leadership.

Cloud Computing Evolves

By Rick Gilman, APR, CMP

The term "cloud computing" was originally coined to help business people visualize the technical concept behind having a third party provide servers and software applications remotely to a business.

Sell to the 4 basic personality types

By Richard Dunnam

Richard Dunnam suggests salespeople need confidence, sincerity and knowledge to gain chemistry and rapport with potential clients.

nGI: Sara Sheppard Pacifici

By nGI

Vice President, Sheppard Insurance Group

Reader letters

Letters from AA&B readers about past issues.

IQ: Report: Iowa, Mass. provide best healthcare to children

By Staff Writer

Report finds upper Midwest regions in the U.S. provide better healthcare for children than in other states, particularly South and Southwest.

IQ: FEMA to tweet disasters

By Staff Writer

FEMA is now set up to use Twitter for all stages of an emergency.

IQ: Travel forecast: Heating up

By Staff Writer

U.S. companies will spend 5 percent more on travel in 2011 than in 2010.

IQ: USPS reports $329M first-quarter loss

By Staff Writer

USPS will default financial obligations unless Congress changes a 2006 law requiring it to pay $5.4 and $5.8 billion into its prepaid retiree health benefits each year.

IQ: Study details high cost of snowstorms

By Staff Writer

States can lose millions of dollars in economic opportunity for each day roads are impassable.

Loss control and selling insurance don't always mix

By Louie Castoria

Louie Castoria applies a lesson he learned from "donuts and liquor" - that two different services require different expertise and standards of care.

Revisit your marketing plan

By Jerry Thompson

Stagnation is deadly to a marketing campaign; marketing should always move forward. Jerry Thompson provides steps to keeping an agency's website and social website fresh and clean.

Insurance Office of America: Game name

By Nicole Zwartz

Profiling IOA, an independent agency branding identity through partnerships with professional sports teams.

Defund FIO study

By Ted Besesparis

Last year when Congress created the Federal Insurance Office (FIO), it ordered a broad study of insurance regulation in the United States—but it assigned the task of conducting that study to the FIO that it had just created. This creates an ideological conflict of interest.