Insurance Insights: The Cleary Insurance Blog
The Cleary Insurance blog covers insurance, risk management, and financial planning for New England businesses and individuals. Our team of licensed advisors and specialists publishes regular articles on commercial and personal coverage, employee benefits, life and financial planning, and insurance compliance. Browse recent articles below, or use the category filters to find topics relevant to your business or personal situation.
Professional Liability Insurance
Does your business counsel or provide advice to other businesses? If so, you’ll likely want to purchase professional liability insurance commonly known as errors and omissions insurance.
Professional liability insurance is a type of liability coverage designed to protect professionals including but not limited to: accountants, attorneys, real estate brokers and consultants, against liability incurred as a result of errors and omissions in performing their professional services.
Some examples of what is covered under an E&O policy are:
- Documentation errors
- Verification mistakes
- Failing to protect clients’ property or data and/or misusing it
- Misrepresenting products or services
- Violating legal or state laws
- Breach of contracts, poor ethics, mistreating any aspect of the client or their business
- Exposing proprietary or confident company information
Professional liability insurance will pay the cost of legal defense against claims and payment of judgments against you, up to the limit of the policy. In general, coverage does not extend to non-financial losses or losses caused by intentional or dishonest acts. Other fees, such as licensing board penalties, may also be included. Policies will generally have a deductible ranging from $1,000 to $25,000. The amount of professional liability insurance you will need and how much it will cost depends upon the size of your business and the level of risk it poses.
You may be able to include professional liability coverage in a Commercial Package Policy (CPP) as an endorsement. Note, however, the professional liability coverage is not included in an in-home business policy or Business Owners Policy (BOP).
Cleary Community Outreach
Presented by Michael Regan
Cleary Insurance is a member of the National Association of Surety Bond Producers (NASBP), which is the national professional organization for agencies that have a specialty in surety bonding. We take pride in reaching out to contractors who may need assistance when obtaining surety bonding. Small, emerging, disadvantaged, minority, women owned, and service disabled are examples of contractors that may need assistance.
As part of the outreach, Mike Regan has been a presenter for surety bonding on numerous occasions including for the US Department of Transportation, The US Small Business Administration and at numerous trade organizations. Most recently, Mike was a presenter at Suffolk Constructions “access to capital” session of their Trades Partnership Program. This is a program they run for contractors who would qualify for one of the categories mentioned above and would like to do business with Suffolk Consruction.
The outreach is an annual eight week program and will include Mike’s return in 2017 as a presenter on surety bonding.
Click here to read the NASBP Pipeline article.
Effect of Interest Rates on Investing
Presented by Douglas W. Greene CFP® CLU®
As a result of the prolonged Federal Reserve’s involvement in stimulating the economy, interest rates are and have been at extreme lows. Over the course of the next five to ten years, the Fed is expected to pull back its control in a way which will allow rates to increase, having an inevitable effect on the markets as a whole.
As a result, portfolios heavy in bonds may experience poor performance in the market during periods of rising interest rates. When rates in the open market are offering higher credited rates to lenders, investors tend to sell their existing debt, resulting in falling prices. Longer term debt is particularly more sensitive to interest rate risk.
Likewise, rising rates can have a negative effect on the Consumer Cyclical sector, as the fact that the general public will tend to have less discretionary spending money due to more expensive borrowing and potential price hikes. However, investing in bank equities can be attractive in anticipation of these times, as they are able to finance out at more profitable margins.