To paraphrase the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, independent insurance agents don't get no respect.It's bad enough that a recent career survey ranked your profession below ...

Insurance companies rely on catastrophe models to provide reliable estimates of loss, whether for managing risk over the long term or for understanding their loss potential in real time as an actual event unfolds.

Although independent agents and their carriers command 80 percent of the commercial lines market, they only write 34 percent of personal lines. The newly launched Personal Lines Growth Alliance (PLGA) wants to change all that.

Whether a claim involves an auto or a general liability policy, a question can arise about the number of occurrences. Depending on the facts and the policy language, this can have a significant effect on exposure.