When we designed FC&S, we tried to make it as easy and user friendly as possible. This overview will walk you through each feature so you can readily find what you need. If you have trouble finding something you can Ask the Experts, or contact me directly at [email protected]. I’m always happy to help.
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. We ask that you give us 5 business days to get an answer to you, but generally it takes just a day or two.
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. Administrative Notices, which are insurance department bulletins and advisories that address the industry are published as we receive notice that a department has issued a bulletin.
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. 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.
At the top of every page you will see the Navigation tabs as follows: Home, Channels, Resources, Q&A, Charts, Forms, Litigation Watch, CE& Training, Insurance News, and About Us. 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 allows you to filter by type of article and sort your results by name, date, and relevance.
We have separate labels assigned to 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 Resources tab allows you to search by type of content such as Contract Analysis or Discussion. It also holds the Administrative Notices, Circular Tracker summaries, which summarizes the ISO Circular notices, and access to PropertyCasualty360 Podcasts and FC&S Webinars.
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 Insurance News which provides 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 overview of FC&S will help you to navigate the site and use all the 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.
Christine G. Barlow, CPCU
Christine G. Barlow, CPCU, is Executive Editor of FC&S Expert Coverage Interpretation, a division of National Underwriter Company and ALM. Christine has over thirty years’ experience in the insurance industry, beginning as a claims adjuster then working as an underwriter and underwriting supervisor handling personal lines. Christine regularly presents and moderates webinars on a variety of topics and is an experienced presenter.