Agency Management

RCM&D set out to implement tech solutions that would not only streamline the labor-intensive sales process but also promote teamwork and collaboration.

With independent agencies struggling to survive in this anemic economy, many are looking to join with a bigger operation to bolster their leverage with carriers, gain access to new markets and achieve economies of scale.

Any firm targeting high-tech companies as a critical niche must not only talk the talk but walk the walk with prospects and clients, or risk losing accounts to more cutting-edge service providers.

Michael G. Cherkasky, former Marsh & McLennan Companies chief executive, was appointed yesterday to take over as chairman of the scandal-scarred New York State Commission on Public Integrity.

Fear was the most prevalent topic at the IIABA conference in Washington, with inflation, the deepening recession, federal regulation, health care reform and swine flu among the bogeymen raised.

Conditions are ripe for a hardening market, but economic realities may not allow that to happen right now, a senior executive with CNA predicts, calling for independent agents to focus on delivering better service and added value as risk managers.

Out of all the economic problems facing insurers and their agents these days, the prospect of runaway inflation spurred by massive government spending is the biggest long-term threat, top CEOs warned.

Eliot Spitzer's political rehabilitation is in full throttle, with the latest evidence being the sympathetic cover story in the April 27 edition of Newsweek, headlined: "How Could I?"