American Agent & Broker March 2011
Cover Story
Healthcare reform: Moving target
In the year since the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as uncertainty has mounted over how the health insurance reform law will work and whether it eventually will even be the law of the land, producers are concluding they can only keep up, team up...
Features
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Retention versus new business acquisition: What works?
Laura M. Toops suggests 5 strategies to strike a balance of retention and new business acquisition.
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Rethink sales approach
Keeping it simple makes all the difference in both retention and new business.
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Medical loss ratio issues still up for grabs
Columns
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Get ready for the spring thaw
Laura M. Toops provides insight on new growth.
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NAIC, HHS can still do right by agents
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.
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Don't change a policy: You can't serve two masters
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.
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Don't get even, get ethical
Chris Amrhein questions agencies if their policies and procedures are focused on building trust with clients.
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Integrity is the motivator for success
Lisa Harrington writes on how agencies can find success through integrity and leadership.
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Cloud Computing Evolves
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.
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Sell to the 4 basic personality types
Richard Dunnam suggests salespeople need confidence, sincerity and knowledge to gain chemistry and rapport with potential clients.
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nGI: Sara Sheppard Pacifici
Producer/Marketing Coordinator, Brock Insurance Agency
Departments
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Reader letters
Letters from AA&B readers about past issues.
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IQ: Report: Iowa, Mass. provide best healthcare to children
Report finds upper Midwest regions in the U.S. provide better healthcare for children than in other states, particularly South and Southwest.
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IQ: FEMA to tweet disasters
FEMA is now set up to use Twitter for all stages of an emergency.
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IQ: Travel forecast: Heating up
U.S. companies will spend 5 percent more on travel in 2011 than in 2010.
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IQ: USPS reports $329M first-quarter loss
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.
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IQ: Study details high cost of snowstorms
States can lose millions of dollars in economic opportunity for each day roads are impassable.
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Loss control and selling insurance don't always mix
Louie Castoria applies a lesson he learned from "donuts and liquor" - that two different services require different expertise and standards of care.
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Revisit your marketing plan
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.
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Insurance Office of America: Game name
Profiling IOA, an independent agency branding identity through partnerships with professional sports teams.
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Defund FIO study
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.
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