As all of us know by paying our bills during the year, there are many types of insurance bills to pay. I would like to expound upon property insurance as well as other assurance. I know this is a funny way to wish you a happy Easter, but please bear with me.
A Property Insurance Broker (a person who assists a client in dealing with insurance companies to obtain the broadest coverage possible at the most economical price) deals with innumerable perils, deductibles, policy limits and layers of insurance.
For a number of years, I worked in this area. If clients don’t agree/listen to you, it can cost them money and make your life harder during the next policy renewal. One small loss of $20,000 resulted in a client buying materials in the beginning of the winter in northern New York because they were cheap then. The only problem was the materials were stored outside with minimal protection and if they got wet, they were useless. With my urging to not buy the materials (or at least, if purchased they would be protected properly) falling on deaf ears, the materials became a complete loss because of the deep snows.
Of course, most companies need insurance in many other areas than just property: automobile, general liability, workers’ compensation, business interruption, just to name a few. Being new to this business, after finding out through a large meeting that a standard operating procedure sounded illegal to me, I went to my supervisor to discuss the matter and received the answer, “That’s standard industry practice.”
I proceeded to go to that supervisor’s supervisor and received the exact same answer, at which time I thought maybe I was wrong and dropped the matter. In the future the company was fined in the area of $800 million dollars for this practice, and at the time I left, the company had still not fully recovered.
I can’t say I was with the company all that much longer because I ran into another problem. I was very serious about my work and considered a client’s loss my loss. One of my clients, with property values of between one and two billion dollars, had a substantial amount of values in a region that was prone to natural disasters. Even through my efforts to obtain sufficient coverage overseas for them, I could not obtain it, which left the client without coverage for the peril. It wore on me so badly that I got physically sick and decided to resign from the company.
So why the lesson on insurance at Easter time? It has occurred to me that I became angry when my client lost $20,000 for not listening to me in my recommendation about their purchase. I was proven correct in the illegal process that cost the company $800 million dollars. However, I should have stuck to my opinion and carried the problem further up the company ladder. Somehow I should have been successful in obtaining the natural disaster insurance. In all three cases, the clients and the company I worked for survived. That’s one meaning of good news!
However, the rest of this column revolves around the Good News of the Gospel. The central point of Easter is about Jesus Christ’s coming as a perfect human being to Earth to die for our sins upon the cross so that His shed blood would cover our sins. Jesus then arose and went to heaven, and if we accept God’s plan by believing i this plan of salvation, we would be deemed righteous and thus be able to go to heaven once we leave Earth.
“Okay,” you say, “but what does all this about the Gospel have to do with the above insurance matters?” I can tell you in my case it is simple. Why did I become so discouraged in the three examples above in my job (where all survived), but did not have the same commitment with those whom I have come in contact with to tell them about God’s saving grace by sending his Son, Jesus Christ to Earth to die for our sins? Am I not learned enough? Do I feel like a better communicator through the written word instead of verbally on the spare of the moment? Am I afraid of being ostracized? Made fun of? Probably all of the above. I need to become bolder in promoting not insurance, but assurance in God’s perfect plan for those to whom I relate.
I figure if by God’s grace one person starts searching for the true meaning of Easter, this column will be a tremendous success. That individual will not be termed as “not fully recovered” but as “FULLY RECOVERED” by the grace of God and His love for His children!
God Bless…Jeff Hall, of Honey Brook, contributes columns to Berks-Mont Newspapers. Questions/comments may be directed to jeffreyhall77@comcast.net.
