February 18
LICONYMarks 47th Year
The Life Insurance Council of New York, Inc. (LICONY), celebrated its 47th Anniversary on Thursday, February 5, 2015, with a reception at the Mutual of America headquarters building on Park Avenue, NYC. The Anniversary Celebration Reception was attended by over 150 guests from life insurance companies, legal, accounting, actuarial, and other professional services firms, as […]
Moneyball for Law – Analyzing the big firms
The Brad Pitt film, Moneyball, portrays Billy Beane, baseball team manager of the Oakland A’s, struggling against accepted dogma in player selection. Beane’s insight was to use already available player data to pick athletes. This flew in the face of accepted conventional wisdom in the game. Talent scouts prided themselves on their “eye” for talent, […]
Life Imitates Art
The Mercury Insurance Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which refers to itself as the CSI of the insurance industry, continues to uncover fraudulent claims, saving Mercury policy holders hundreds of millions of dollars and per- forming a service to all of the industry’s SIUs and sleuths. From sophisticated organized crime and sleazy lawyers and doctors to low intelligence criminals chasing quick bucks, […]
The Sausage Factory
There are a number of variations to an old saw comparing the messy legislative process with sausage making. A common current iteration observes that: “If you love the law or sausages you should never see either one made.” Given the vagaries of law-making mills, imagine the possibilities when relying on legislation to solve a simple […]
Traditions, Trends and Turns at PIANY’s MetroRAP
Readers of The Advocate surely are familiar with MetroRAP, the Professional Insurance Agents of New York State’s (PIANY) regional aware- ness program for New York City and the surrounding areas. The event has a history spanning three decades and it usually kicks off PIANY’s extensive events calendar each year. Since 2001, it has been held […]
PIANY’s MetroRAP Brooklyn
New York City’s producer community came back to Brooklyn for the Professional Insurance Agents of New York State Inc.’s 2015 Metropolitan Regional Awareness Program, held Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015, at the Brooklyn Marriott. MetroRAP, PIANY’s first net- working event of the year, has become the place to be seen. This year’s event was a smashing […]
Let’s Talk About Your “Why”
Have you seen the iconic 2009 TED Talk by Simon Sinek? The talk was about how great leaders must inspire trust, cooperation, and action. If you have NOT seen or heard that talk PLEASE drop everything you’re doing and watch it. Simon talks about a simple but paradigm-shifting model. This model has transformed the way […]
Rock Paper Scissors…What’s Next?!
So a few days ago, Devin and I were rummaging through some old papers and memorabilia of mine, some of which I had not seen in many, many years. Something that I came across was my original New York State insurance license, issued from the now-non-existent NYS Department of Insurance (remember them?) from about thirty-five […]
Mailing is All Needed to Perfect Nonrenewal
Agent Not Required to Inform Insured of Nonrenewal Some cases go on and on with trial decisions reversed, remanded, retried and appealed again. In Collins v. State Farm Ins. Co., — So.3d —, 2015 WL 468970 (La.App. 4 Cir.), 2014-0419 (La.App. 4 Cir. 2/4/15), after eight years of litigation over damages resulting from Hurricane Katrina […]
