Change is one of the constants in life. Children grow up, people retire, we transfer from one job to another, communities grow, and new inventions are made that are better, faster, or smarter than the older prototypes. The same goes for FC&S. Over the past year, we have worked diligently to move FC&S to a new platform, complete with a new name. From now on, FC&S will be called FC&S Expert Coverage Interpretation. The name change directly reflects more of what we do; analyze insurance policies and issues, instead of referring to an archaic form of insurance interpretation.
The new platform launched March 1, 2019. During the 2019 year, all subscribers will be moved to the new platform upon renewal of their subscription. Now, on to the details. The new platform is, like many new things, better, faster, and smarter than the old platform. We talked to some of our regular, super users when we began the project. We asked what they'd like to see, what functionality would be most helpful, and what sections of the site they visited on a regular basis.
Outlined below are some of the major ways we revamped the FC&S site to make it more user friendly.
Front and center on the home page is the Question of the Week, our weekly feature where the FC&S experts answer one of our subscriber's questions about insurance coverage. The Q&A is one of our most popular weekly articles, and we wanted to make it easily accessible for our users. Immediately to the right, there is a place to submit your own questions to our experts for answer and analysis. Below the Q&A of the week you will find the "What's New" column, featuring our weekly content. First is our New this Week, which are updates of existing articles, analyses of new policy forms, new articles on emerging risks or other topics of interest. We will have at least one new or updated article per week. As you scroll down you will find other weekly features, like the Litigation Watch, and the Fraud of the Week, as well as articles from PropertyCasualty360.
On the top right hand side of every page is the clickable link that leads you to the Ask the Experts feature, where you can submit your own questions to the editors. This feature works the same as it always has. After your question has been submitted, the editors will get back to you within five business days. The beauty of this permanent right-hand column is that it stays in the same location from page to page, so if you go into the commercial lines section and you scroll through CGL articles and can't find the answer you're looking for, you can go to the right hand corner of the page and ask a question. This feature is a response to direct requests from our users.
Another direct request from our users was an alert feature, which we have implemented with the new FC&S site. After an alert is set up, you will receive an email when content that pertains to that term is published. In order to set up an alert, first you should do a search for the topic that you are interested in receiving an alert for, in the search box in the top right hand corner of the site. For example, let's say I wanted an alert for Fraud; first I do a search for Fraud and then in the top right-hand corner of the search screen is a button that says with +Follow. If you click on that button, a smaller screen will pop up containing fields that you should populate before you can create an alert, including the alert name, frequency and time. You should choose "This Publication" for the Create Content From field, so you will receive content only from FC&S. If you choose All Publications, you will receive alerts on that content from all of the publications across Law.com. Then you click Create Alert and you will receive emails at the specified time intervals concerning the topic you chose. To view the alerts you have implemented, you can click on the My Account button in the top right hand corner of the page. When you're in My Account, click on the "My Alerts" tab, and you will be able to view your alerts, and change the alert time, and frequency or you can delete that alert.
Navigation is much easier in the new site. At the top of every page you will see several tabs. Clicking Home will always take you back to the homepage. Hovering over the Channels tab will open up a drop down of the major lines of business, Personal, Commercial, the Core Article Library, Fraud, and D&O and Umbrella which are accessible for Premier subscribers. Say you clicked on Personal Lines in the major lines dropdown; you will be taken to the Personal Lines page, where at the top of the page you will find clickable links to the subsections under that line of business. Under those subheadings, you have a place to search and to filter your search results. This is a new feature, and allows you to filter by type of article and sort your results by name, date, and relevance.
With the new site, we've introduced separate labels that will be assigned with each type of article. A contract analysis is an analysis of an actual policy form. If you are looking for an explanation of the new ISO Personal Auto form, you filter by contract analysis and you will pull up only articles that walk through and explain the coverage form. A discussion is a broader article that tackles topics for themselves; if you want to know the latest on marijuana, you probably want to look for a discussion about cannabis. For reference, discussions are generally kept in the Core Article Library. Charts are typically checklists for coverage placement, or state-by-state regulation analysis.
The Litigation Watch is our weekly feature where we discuss a recent court case involving insurance, and an editor provides a brief note indicating why the case is of interest or importance to the industry and the handling of claims or interpretation of policies.
Forms are copies of actual policy forms. We have licenses with ISO and MSO, and permission to reprint their forms, so we have a large number of their forms available to users. If we do not have a form showing simply Ask the Experts, who can get you access to a form.
The next section is CE and Training. National Underwriter has a large training platform with CE, fundamental classes, and three designations; CLCS or the Commercial Lines Coverage Specialist, PLCS or the Personal Lines Coverage Specialist and SBCS, or the Small Business Coverage Specialist. The FC&S Editors have written or updated the content for each of these designations. These designations base the course content from the National Underwriter Coverage guides, and require completion of various online classes, and passage of requisite exams in order to receive the desired professional designation. Like other professional designations, the designation initials can be used after your name if so desired.
Beyond this on the toolbar you have a link to PropertyCasualty360 articles. From here, you can look at their articles and access their site in order to keep up with breaking industry news on a wide variety of important topics.
We hope this introduction to the new FC&S will help you to navigate the new site and use all of the new features to make the site more helpful for you. If you have any questions, please use the "Ask the Experts" feature and we will get you an answer as soon as possible.