In May and June, the law firm of Keidel, Weldon & Cunningham, LLP will once again present IIABNY’s Annual Errors & Omissions Loss Control Seminars. If you are interested in attending the seminars, you should contact IIABNY soon and register as space is limited and filling up fast. The seminars this year will be different in some ways and similar in many other ways to those presented in the past. In this issue of The E&O Report, we discuss what will be covered at this year’s annual seminars as well as the similarities and differences to past seminars.

As has been the case for many years now, my partner, Chris Weldon, and I will present the seminars, in two separate formats. First, we’ll lead a live, four-hour seminar at five locations across New York state during mid-May and early June. The locations and dates for the live seminars are as follows:

The live E&O seminar will qualify attendees for four continuing education credits for all licenses. In addition to the live seminars, a four-hour telecast seminar will be presented live on June 10 from a studio near Albany and transmitted to 15 locations across New York state. In the past, the telecast seminar was conducted over three hours and provided three hours of CE credit. In contrast, the live seminars were conducted over four hours and provided four hours of CE credit. Last year, we tried out the same four-hour format for the telecast seminar. The feedback on the change was overwhelmingly positive. Accordingly, this year’s telecast seminar will again be presented as a four-hour seminar, the same as the live ones presented at the five locations scheduled across the state. Depending on the size and the number of attendees at the live or telecast seminars, an agency or brokerage can qualify for a 10 percent premium credit on an E&O insurance policy issued through IAAC and insured with Westport Insurance Corp. or a 7.5 percent premium credit if insured with Fireman’s Fund Insurance Co.

In addition to receiving CE credits and premium discounts, seminar attendees will, as usual, be presented essential and practical E&O loss control training that can help reduce the likelihood of an E&O claim or lawsuit. At the seminars, we will also discuss “real-life” E&O issues based upon actual claims and lawsuits handled by our firm so that attendees can gain a better grasp of loss control practices that help avoid or minimize the likelihood of an E&O claim or lawsuit.

You may recall that in the November 2014 issue of The E&O Report we asked IIABNY members to provide us with issues and topics they would like us to address at the 2015 seminars. Based upon the feedback we received from both IIABNY members and the IIABNY staff, we prepared the outline for the 2015 E&O seminars. Some of the topics we will cover are the following:

• A review of the law affecting property and casualty and life and health insurance agents and brokers
• A review of the duties that agents and brokers owe to customers
• A review of the statistics related to trends in New York E&O claims
• The customer lifecycle: This topic will cover such areas as marketing, new business processing, policy servicing, handling customer claims, and renewals and remarketing
• Documentation: This topic will cover areas such as the essentials of documentation, use of the agency management system, use of email, faxing, use of voice mail, electronic signatures and imaging and scanning
• Some of the most common defenses used in connection with E&O claims and lawsuits

For more than 10 years, we showed several short videos during our seminars to help illustrate the points we discussed. Based upon feedback we received from attendees at last year’s annual seminars, we decided to try skipping the videos this year. Instead, during this year’s seminars, we will use more case examples of matters we handled and review more court decisions, New York laws and regulations in order to help illustrate the points we will discuss.

Last year, approximately 1,200 insurance agents and brokers attended both the live and telecast E&O seminars we presented for IIABNY. We encourage all New York insurance agents and brokers to register as soon as possible for one of the live seminars or the telecast seminar. You can register for the 2015 annual IIABNY E&O seminar by visiting the Education section of the IIABNY website or calling the IIABNY Education Department at (800) 851-8853, ext. 228.

We look forward to presenting the 2015 annual E&O seminars and hope all of you will be able to attend one.

Submitted by:
James C. Keidel, Esq.
Keidel, Weldon & Cunningham, LLP