General, Ethics, and Law Courses

This course discusses the concept of “cost of risk” (COR) and how captive insurance can be used to reduce these costs. After completing this course, you will understand what a captive is, how it can be used to reduce the cost of risk, and the different types of captives that are in use today. You’ll also understand the various functions that must be performed by a captive to be effective. Lastly, you will be introduced to the tax and accounting issues that impact the effectiveness of a captive in managing the financial impact of risk. This course is partly based on the best-selling book Captives and the Management of Risk by Kathryn A. Westover.

This course will look at ethics and how ethics play a part in the daily operations of agents and their agencies. We will examine the ethical responsibilities of agents, the laws governing ethical expectations, and what traits exemplify an ethical agent. We will focus also on the application of ethics in various settings and circumstances and help agents make sounder ethical decisions when dealing with client, corporate, or public situations.

With a premise that ethics is good business, this CE course avoids academic and philosophical discussions to focus on some of the practical considerations for insurance agents, brokers, and adjusters. It discusses the concepts of ethical behavior, conflicts of interest, and some of the real world ethics failures that hit the headlines in recent years. The ways people can gain the trust and confidence of others—and succeed in business—by demonstrating ethical behavior are examined. It looks at the objectives of ethics codes, provides examples of ethics codes, and gives guidance on how to draft an ethics code for a business. Lastly, it challenges the reader to think about ethical decision-making with real world case studies of various ethical dilemmas encountered in insurance sales, claims, agency management, and underwriting.

This course is intended for insurance professionals at all levels of experience and counts toward the mandatory ethics CE course requirement that many states impose. Although the examples and case studies are specifically designed for the property-casualty insurance industry, the concepts explored are also applicable to life and health insurance agents and brokers.

The aim of this course is not to train readers to give the “right” answers to exam questions so they can “punch their tickets” with an appropriate number of continuing education credits—although most readers will also accomplish that objective. Rather, it is to provide tools that enable them to respond appropriately when faced with an ethical dilemma. On completion of this course, readers should be better equipped to recognize ethical dilemmas when they occur and to determine their own answers to the difficult questions that adjusters face every day.

What is meant by "ethics"? What does the term mean when in reference to the insurance industry? Where do our ethical standards come from? How can they best be applied in the everyday practice of insurance? These are among the questions this course—Ethics in the P&C (Property and Casualty) Insurance Workplace—strives to answer.

Following an intentionally brief discussion of ethics in general, this course avoids academic and philosophical discussions to focus on some of the practical considerations for insurance agents, brokers, adjusters, and other practitioners. It discusses the examples of both ethical and unethical behavior, conflicts of interest, and some of the real-world ethics failures that have made headlines in recent years. It examines the objectives of ethics codes, provides several examples of codes of ethics, and gives guidance on how to draft an ethics code specific to any business or organization. Lastly, it challenges the reader to think about ethical decision-making with real-world case studies on various ethical dilemmas of the types encountered in insurance sales, claims, agency management, and underwriting.

This course is intended for insurance professionals of all levels of experience. Although the examples and case studies are specifically designed for the property-casualty insurance industry, the concepts explored are also applicable to life and health insurance agents and brokers.

Insurance is designed to protect policyholders by paying claims for losses that insurance policies cover. This is what the policyholders expect, and this is what insurers generally deliver. However, claims are not always paid or paid promptly. Some are denied because they are not covered. Others are delayed because it takes time to complete a claim investigation. And some are not paid because they were mishandled by an insurance adjuster who may have been negligent, incompetent, or intentionally malicious. Sometimes, claims are improperly handled because an adjuster was following a flawed company policy. Sometimes, the adjuster simply made a mistake.

A claim that is allegedly mishandled for any reason may lead to a bad faith suit by the insured against the insurance company and the adjuster who handled the claim. An insurance company that loses a bad faith suit is often obligated not only to pay the underlying claim but also to pay additional damages to the insured who was wronged. Bad faith claims often involve exemplary or punitive damages in amounts much greater than the original claim, sometimes involving millions of dollars more.

It obviously behooves claims adjusters to recognize the nature of bad faith suits and avoid actions that might lead to bad faith claims. This course is designed to help adjusters meet that objective.

This insurance CE course provides an overview of insurance laws relating to the property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry. Legal issues affect nearly every aspect of the insurance transaction and a solid grounding in these concepts assists the insurance professional in numerous ways, whether that person is an agent, broker, adjuster, or underwriter. The intended audience of this course is insurance professionals with a variety of experience who want to learn more about the legal aspects of property and casualty insurance.

This CE course provides an overview of legal principles as they apply to the property and casualty (P&C) insurance contract. Legal issues affect nearly every aspect of the insurance transaction and a solid grounding in these concepts assists the insurance professional in numerous ways, whether that person is an agent, broker, adjuster, or underwriter. The intended audience of this course is insurance professionals with a variety of experience who want to learn more about the legal aspects of property and casualty insurance transactions.

Any company that does business in a developing country is exposed to political risks that can result in significant losses. This is true whether the firm opens a sales office, owns a warehouse, runs a factory, conducts exploration work, operates a mine, or performs some other activity. Investors also face risks associated with emerging market debt, equity instruments, and lending. Reducing the exposure to political risks is an important aspect of any such operation. Political risk insurance provides protection against losses that result from currency restrictions, expropriation, and political violence. The purpose of this course is to introduce insurance producers to political risk insurance so they, in turn, can discuss this subject with their clients.

This course provides a broad overview of property and liability principles and coverages. Insurance is one of several tools for dealing with risks. The course begins by examining the nature of risk and risk management and then looks more closely at property and liability loss exposures and the risks that property and liability insurance covers. The principles segment of this course deals with fundamental insurance concepts, the insurance business, insurance regulation, and the structure and interpretation of insurance contracts, which lays the groundwork for a more detailed discussion of both personal lines and commercial lines insurance coverages. The course concludes with the important subject of ethics in the insurance business.

Crop insurance is vital to farmers, helping them overcome the effects of events that reduce or destroy their crops. Crop insurance protects agricultural producers against either the loss of the crops themselves arising from natural disasters such as drought and hail, or the loss of revenue on the sale of their crops due to declines in the price of agricultural commodities. This course offers a comprehensive understanding of crop insurance, including private crop-hail insurance, federal crop insurance, and Whole-Farm Revenue Protection crop insurance.  The course also examines factors that should be considered when buying or selling crop insurance.