Expand your skills. Chat with the experts. Join our community of kindred spirits on this exotic journey.

Our Speakers on the Insurance Journal Cruise are:
Mark Wells, Insurance Jouranl Publisher,
Laurie Infantino, Stephen Myers, and Sharon Cunningham

Continuing Education
Approved for Fire & Casualty
and Life & Disability

Small Mistakes, Big Consequences (4 hours CE)
Speaker: Laurie Infantino

Pick up an account file — any file — and within the file lurks a small mistake with big consequences. The mistake can be there from year to year but only has a consequence when the claim is denied and your file is produced in evidence. The transaction of insurance inherently is detailed, complex and prone to errors and omissions on every level.

This class will focus on "policy driven" oversights or "small" mistakes that have serious financial impacts. You'll learn:

• to approach policy and file documentation from the basic aspects of the who, where, what, when and how of the claim
• the pitfalls of proposals, applications, binders and certificates of insurance
• to take your detail management up a notch because it's the little things that matter like not date stamping a document when it is that very document that proves your case
• that no file can be full proof but you can always look at any file as THE file you have to bring to court, and handle it as such.

Ten Top Reasons to Review an Insured's Website
Speaker: Laurie Infantino (1 hour CE)

There is the right way and a wrong way to conduct insurance transactions. In the digital age, more responsibility than ever before is placed on the producer of business. Checking a insurance client's website is crucial to the initial sale and to the on-going maintenance of the client's portfolio. This class will:

• highlight what to look for in a client's web site and other websites to access key information on a client's account
• help you identity exposures and insurance responses to a client's website issues

Keynote Address:
The State of the Insurance Industry —
The Publisher’s Perspective

Speaker: Mark Wells

Mark is the Editor and Publisher of the Insurance Journal Magazine, InsuranceJournal.com, ClaimsGuides.com, MyNewMarkets.com and Chairman of the Board of Wells Publishing, Inc. He has held that position for the past 32 years. Insurance Journal and www.insurancejournal.com are the most widely read media in the property/casualty insurance industry.

Environmental Issues & Insurance
A business perspective on issues your clients may be facing.

Environmental Insurance 101 —
What All Insurance Brokers Should Know (90 minutes)
Speaker: Stephen Myers

This session will provide a basic understanding of the main types of environmental insurance inculding pollution legal liability insurance, and remedial cost cap insurance — when and how they are used.

• A basic understanding of specialized pollution coverage since pollution was excluded from general liability coverage
• Pollution Legal Liability Insurance (PLL) — protection from pre-existing unknown and new pollution conditions
• Remedial Cost Cap Insurance (RCC) — protection from financial uncertainties associated with the remediation of known pollution conditions

Real Estate Redevelopment and Construction —
Using Environmental Insurance for Developers and Contractors (90 minutes)
Speaker: Stephen Myers

This session will cover the use of environmental insurance as part of owner-controlled or contractor-controlled programs (OCIPs and CCIPs) in development projects including the redevelopment of environmentally-contaminated properties (Brownfields).

• Risk assessment activities associated with redevelopment of contaminated sites
• Use of environmental risk management and insurance to support property transactions
• OCIP and CCIP programs using Contractor's Pollution Liability insurance to support construction projects

Climate Change — An Emerging Global Risk Management Concern (90 minutes)
Speaker: Stephen Myers

This session would discuss the roots of this issue, the risks that are being driven by this issue, the controversy surrounding the science and how insurance brokers should position themselves for the impacts to their clients.

• How climate change has become a "driver" of risk to business
• What does the science say about climate change and how can this affect insurance clients
• Does it matter whether we "believe" or not?
• How the broader issue of energy risk is affecting business
• What should we do?

Climate Change and Energy Risks —
Risk Management Tools and Products (90 minutes)
Speaker: Stephen Myers

This session will follow from the first session and more tactically discuss things that can be done to reduce the impacts of energy and climate issues such as greenhouse reduction programs, carbon neutrality, loss control strategies, and new insurance products.

• Specific technical steps that can be taken to understand and reduce our carbon footprint
• What does it mean to be "carbon neutral"
• What services can be provided to businesses to reduce energy-related risks
• What new insurance products are emerging to address this issue
  
  

Sales & Growth

Increasing Organic Growth in Your Agency (90 minutes)
Speaker: Sharon Cunningham

In this session, you will learn how the agencies have changed their approach to sales and are achieving strong organic growth in a soft market. Sharon Cunningham will present a national picture of industry sales practices with practical examples for all size agencies.

• Statistics of Top Performing Agencies and Producers
• Why Some Agencies Achieve Growth in any Market
• Sales Practices of High Growth Agencies

How Growth-Oriented Agencies Compensate their Employees
Speaker: Sharon Cunningham (90 minutes)

Growth oriented agencies understand that all employees should be rewarded for agency results. In this session, you will learn how agency employees are motivated and rewarded for their contribution to the agency's success. Sharon will also review the results of BMG's national compensation surveys.

• Trends in Producer Compensation, Perks, and Incentives
• How Agency Sales Managers are Paid and Rewarded
• Compensating Managers and Service Staff for Growth

What High Performing Sales Managers Do (90 minutes)
Speaker: Sharon Cunningham

Whether you are the agency's sales manager or are managing yourself, using and monitoring a sales system can make you more effective. Learn what high growth agencies use planning and what they do to maximize their producers' time and help them to close more sales.

• Developing Useful Sales Systems
• Effective Sales Planning and Key Sales Ratios
• Managing and Monitoring Results

Sales Techniques for Top Producers (90 minutes)
Speaker: Sharon Cunningham

Top producers have developed the sales skills and the approach which helps them differentiate themselves. In both prospecting and making a sale, they are seen as trusted advisors. In this session, producers will learn what skills and techniques are critical to generating referrals, targeting the right prospects, and qualifying potential buyers.

• Sales Approach and Key Sales Skills of Top Producers
• Prospecting Techniques
• Promoting and Marketing Yourself

Principle of the Fine Edge: Ideas, Secrets, and The Obvious
Speaker: Casey Roberts (half day)

Adjust to changing conditions of the customer, your business, your industry, and the marketplace in general.

• Self Awareness — Just setting goals is not enough. Your priorities, strategic value of goals, and timing, and other factors affect achievement of your goals. Casey shows you how to harness self awareness to fine tune the How, Why, and When of goal setting.
• Self Motivation — Tap your inner resources to motivate you onward and upward. Casey will teach you how to fuel your Intensity and persistence from within.
• Self Control — You'll learn the vital importance of accepting and letting go of what you cannot do in order to focus on that which you can accomplish. Casey clues you in on subconscious habits that can stand between you and accomplishing goals and growth, and the disciplined thoughts and actions that take you where you want to go!
• Self Actualization — how can you reach your full potential? Realism, self acceptance, simplicity, introspection, focusing on others, freshmess of thought all contribute to self actualization. Casey brings these components together and shows you how they affect your significant, important work of sales.

Improve your Planning, Communication, and Technical Skills
Speaker: Casey Roberts (half day)

Transform your sales routine into a more effective, intuitive, and holistic process by maximizing the effectiveness of your sales effort, product knowledge, and communication skills.

• Planning — Casey will cover how to size up your market according to customer needs, geography, Carrier's appetites, and your interests and strategic objectives.
• Communication skills — how every part of how you communicate defines who you are Learn to listen Ask the right questions from initial qualification through evaluation, selection, and closing, clear, professional communication is key to the success of the sales process and customer relationships.
• Technical skills — Product knowledge is the power behind the sale. Casey will discuss how solid product knowledge helps create a positive frame of mind for you and contributes to a confident transaction for you and your client.