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e-Education and the Old ‘Fuddy-Duddy’

Keeping up to date on the latest P&C trends and issues involves consulting a dizzying array of print and online materials.

By Ken Brownlee, CPCU | Updated on June 26, 2012
Once a month, I open an envelope from the National Underwriter Company and out drops a hundred or more pages of additions, updates, and replacements for my nine volumes of Fire Casualty & Surety Bulletins. It takes me about half an hour to sort the pages, figure out what to keep and what to discard, and re-stack the books in my insurance library.

National Underwriter keeps reminding me that I could get the FC&S Bulletinson a monthly disk, but in my line of work, writing and editing insurance courses and textbooks, that would be counterproductive. I would need a second computer to see what was new or different on the disk while I tried to write a reasonable explanation of it in the text. One computer is enough.

It also amazes me how many changes the FC&S Bulletins report each month. Anyone who handles a variety of claims must know this stuff. As should be evident from my occasional columns on court cases, every word in a policy is subject to court interpretation. Try settling claims on an outdated concept of insurance, and the adjuster will be in deep trouble. Each month the Insurance Services Office Inc., the American Association of Insurance Services, The Surety Association of America, and all the individual insurance companies constantly update or modify their coverages to comply with new circumstances or court rulings. In addition, some states, like Texas, mandate certain policy language. About the only policy-issuing agency that rarely changes its form is the National Council on Compensation Insurance. The last major change I recall was in the 1991 form, when NCCI changed Workman’s Compensation to Workers Compensation (absent the apostrophe). 

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