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  • Love Your Valentine's Day Gift?  Insure It!
    Valentine’s Day is upon us, and thoughts of people everywhere turn to… jewelry.
    Those who don’t buy shiny things for Valentine’s Day may prefer other types of valuables, such as electronics, artwork, antiques, wine and furs. All totaled Valentine’s Day spending will tally approximately $17.6 billion of retail sales, with $4.1 billion of that being spent on jewelry, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2012 Valentine’s Day Consumer Trends report.
  • Home Inventory:  Know Your Stuff
    Most people know that a homeowners or renter’s insurance policy is crucial when it comes to protecting your home from a fire or other disaster. However, if you want to safeguard your valuables from the unexpected, there’s another important document you may be overlooking: a home inventory.
  • Hosting a Super Bowl Party? There Could Be More than Team Pride on the Line
    Hosting a Super Bowl party is a great way to cheer on your team if you can’t make it to the stadium in Indianapolis this Sunday, but make sure you know and manage the risks of hosting the big game day party. In many states, individuals hosting parties can be held liable in cases where a guest or third party is injured in an accident related to alcohol consumption at your event. Hosts have been held responsible for medical bills, vehicle repair costs, lost time from work, and even wrongful death.
  • One Roof
    Eliminating the chaos that comes along with managing so many different policies is a major advantage of using a Trusted Choice® insurance agent. Placing your business insurance through a Trusted Choice® agent brings someone onto your team who can bring calm to your multi-policy chaos. Consider the following advantages to keeping all of your business insurance needs under one roof.

  • Does Volunteering Your Time Mean Volunteering Your Insurance?
    Millions of Americans donate time—their most valuable asset—to serve as a volunteer board member on non-profits, booster clubs, churches, PTAs and civic organizations, just to name a few. The decisions these folks make can have a dramatic impact on their respective organization—and not always for the better. If a volunteer endeavor goes bad, would a volunteer board member have coverage against a lawsuit under his or her homeowner’s policy?
  • Insuring Your Happily Ever After
    Getting married and embarking on a new life together is one of the most exciting experiences in two people’s lives. It’s a time of hope, promise, romance and … reality. Finding the person who will be by your side forever may have seemed like the hard part, but getting married also requires a lot of time, money, and careful consideration. Whether a couple is planning their wedding or deciding where to live, there are a lot of decisions to make before saying “I do,” especially when it comes to insurance.
  • Insuring Your Growing Family
    Having a baby can be a very exciting, emotional, and exhausting experience for a family, and while most parents remember a lot of the preparation details -- such assembling the crib and installing child-safety locks -- updating their insurance may not be the first thing that comes to mind.
  • Lights Out:  Frozen Pipes & Spoiled Food
    You’re hosting the party for the big game. The invitations are out, responses are in and it’s going to be a big one. Your shopping is done and the refrigerator and freezer are stocked with the finest party fare money can buy.
  • Protection from Luggage Looters and Baggage Bullies
    The holidays are a popular time of year to travel – whether it’s to visit family and friends, relax on the beach, or hit the slopes – but taking a vacation during this time of year often
    means hauling a lot of extra luggage, such as skis, golf clubs, and holiday gifts. The chance of your luggage getting lost or stolen isn’t high – less than one percent of travelers reported mishandled luggage, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s 2009 Air Travel Consumer Report. Yet baggage-handling accidents and thefts do happen, which is why it’s important to have the proper insurance in place before your depart for your destination.
  • Downside of Online:  Cyber Crime & Stolen Data
    What does a cyber crime cost? According to the Ponemon Institute’s First Annual Cost of Cyber Crime Study, published in July 2010, a business can expect to pay an average of $204 per customer record that is lost or stolen.
  • Is a GPS Covered by an Auto Policy?
    Some may view them as science fiction gone wild. Others see them as indispensable, possibly life-saving tools. Regardless of your feelings about Global Positioning Systems (GPS), they continue to occupy the dashboards of millions of U.S. vehicles each year. The pervasiveness and expense of the technology has drivers asking if their GPS systems are covered by auto insurance.
  • Home Fire Escape Plans Save Lives
    Fall is officially here, and with it comes the National Fire Protection Agency’s National Fire Prevention Week, Oct. 9 -15. This year’s theme is “Protect Your Family from Fire,” which makes now a good time to come up with a fire evacuation plan or review the one your family already has in place.
  • Halloween Safety Tips
    Halloween is just around the corner and many consumers may not realize how scary this ghoulish night might really be for their personal safety, their property…or their pocketbooks. Trusted Choice® insurance professionals can help families better prepare for Halloween hazards that may come in disguise or under the cloak of dark.
  • Is Your Home Ready for Winter?
    Is your home ready for winter weather? Many consumers don’t realize that lack of preparation could mean unwelcome home damage and unexpected repair expenses. To help families and businesses protect themselves against winter risks and enjoy the season, Trusted Choice® offers tips that can help families prepare for risks and hazards that may come during the winter months.
  • Sounds too Good to be True: Downloading Illegal Music
    Remember the days of curling up to the radio on a Saturday night, torturing yourself through commercials and lame tunes just to be able to crank it when Mr. DJ played your favorite song?
One Roof

Following is just a sample of the types of insurance policies needed by owners of virtually every kind of business:

-Workers Compensation
-Commercial General Liability
-Commercial Property
-Professional Liability
-Commercial Auto
-Business Interruption.

This list is by no means complete. In fact, most researchers conclude that business owners typically need a minimum of nine insurance policies to properly insure their operations. While it may be possible to bundle or package some of these types of insurance together, this is not always an option. In many cases, owners must purchase these important policies individually. Keeping up with this many policies is not something most business owners prefer to spend time on.

Eliminating the chaos that comes along with managing so many different policies is a major advantage of using a Trusted Choice® insurance professional. Placing your business insurance through a Trusted Choice® insurance professional brings someone onto your team who can bring calm to your multi-policy chaos. Consider the following advantages to keeping all of your business insurance needs under one roof.

Understanding Your Operation
Properly insuring your business requires an almost intimate knowledge of your operations. Spreading your policies across multiple agents means spending more time educating more people about what you do and the exposures that come along with it. A single agent that truly understands the many aspects of your operations is in a better position to help identify exposures for you.

Policies That Work Together
Here’s an example: You expect that your commercial umbrella policy will provide additional coverage over that included in your commercial auto policy. However, many umbrella policies will only extend above an auto policy provided by an insurance company with a specified financial strength rating. If the rating falls below a certain grade, this may drastically affect your umbrella in that it will no longer apply to an auto loss.

It is not unlikely that two of your business insurance policies may have to work together. Thus, keeping them under separate roofs could create problems.  

Personal Info
Preparing business insurance will require owners to furnish highly sensitive financial information about the business as well as personal information about personnel. Spreading insurance across multiple agents will require you to divulge this personal information to multiple parties.

Consolidating Policy Periods
Most business insurance policies are annual policies, renewing each year. As owner, you may want your insurance policies to renew at specific periods of time when it is most convenient for you. For example, you may want your property insurance to renew just before your busiest time of year when inventory levels are at their highest; alternatively, you may wish to keep the books simpler by having all of your insurance renew on a specific date. It should be your choice. A Trusted Choice® insurance professional who manages your insurance program can work with you to determine the most convenient way for your policies to renew and work with your insurance companies to make it happen.

One Call
Perhaps the most convenient advantage to having a single agent managing your business insurance is having all your needs handled in one place. If you need a certificate of insurance, are hiring a new employee, adding a location, forming a new business or any other change, there’s one number to call.

Price and Availability
By keeping multiple policies under one roof, you might have access to multi-policy discounts that can save your business hundreds or thousands annually. Further, keeping your policies under one roof may give your agent more opportunities to obtain better pricing and coverage options for your business.

Packaging
While it may not be an option for every business, some businesses may be able to bundle or package two or more policies together. This often translates into better coverage and pricing as well a simplified handling. For example, some businesses may be eligible for a business owners policy, which combines property, liability and business interruption insurance. Other businesses may be eligible for a management liability policy, which combines a variety of professional liability insurance, such as errors and omissions and employment practices liability.

Keeping your policies under one roof will help your Trusted Choice® insurance professional obtain packaging options for which your business may be eligible.

Conclusion
These are a few reasons why keeping your insurance needs with a single Trusted Choice® insurance professional are advantageous to your business operations. For more information on advantages only an independent agent can offer, call today. 

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127 South Peyton Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
Phone: 800.221.7917
Fax: 703.683.7556
Email: Trusted.Choice@iiaba.net