Welcome to The Betterley Report Blog on Specialty Insurance Products.  In this blog, I hope to shed some light on the different specialty insurance products available to commercial insureds, and how individual products differ from one another.  With luck, we’ll be providing information that helps readers choose the right types of products for themselves and their clients.

If you are familiar with The Betterley Report, you know that I write about specialty insurance products designed for commercial insureds of all sizes.  I have been authoring these Reports since the mid-’90s (!), and am fortunate to have many of the leading insurance companies, agents and brokers, reinsurers, attorneys, and service providers, as well as Risk Managers and CFOs, as subscribers.

As I talk with my readers, they often ask me about new developments in the products I cover.  With each Report limited to an annual freshening, we have not had a way to provide interim updates.  I figure that this blog might solve that problem nicely, since I can report on new products and changes in existing products as they are hitting the market.  Since I don’t want to just be an outlet for press releases, I’ll be sure to offer some observations about those products as well.

These Reports are available only to subscribers, and each Report is updated annually.  Some of the products I research are Cyber Risk, Directors & Officers Liability, Technology Errors & Omissions, Employment Practices Liability, and Intellectual Property insurance.  There are 6 Reports each year.

I write The Betterley Report for insurance professionals that want to find out who has the most appropriate insurance product for their clients, and for insurance companies  looking for competitor intelligence.  To be candid, I also write because I believe that comparative information helps drive improvement in the product .  As an independent risk management consultant (which means I advise clients on the types of insurance they need and which insurers they should buy them from, as well as alternatives such as self insurance), improving the breed is a passion for me.

So, welcome – this is a work in progress, and I hope you will join me in moving the specialty insurance products business forward.

Note: just got my first comment on our October issue (covering Side A D&O products), so I’d better get blogging.

Employer's liability coverage is planned to protect company owners from financial losses received by workers after an on-the-job accidents, sicknesses due to the workplace situations, or death after a work accident.

For example, say someone spills lubricants in a workshop and forgets to remove the spill immediately. A fellow worker comes along, slips on the spilled lubricants and falls heavily on a tile floor, breaking a rib or two.

The company is by law liable for an employee's wounds and any financial losses incurred, like medical expenditures or lost wages. That is the main reason for the employer's liability insurance policy.

Employer's liability insurance coverage lies in an insurance policy form called as "risk financing." For instance, the now renowned agency Lloyd's of London was established by an organization of shipping businessmen who established a common-fund to pay back their losses when ships were sunk.

Nowadays you can find a lot of insurance firms like Lloyd's that focus on liability insurance policy. Big and sometimes a few medium-sized businesses have a worker, or the whole department dedicated to dealing with occupational risks. The task of a risk manager is to deal with the potential financial obligations and to dish out liability protections.
Specific business organizations, like transportation businesses, manufacturing plants, building contractor, many kinds of experts and manufacturing plants frequently are needed to get employer's liability insurance. That is due to the fact that there is a potential chance in their kind of company that might cause in disabilites, as the state or local government wants to cover workers from the beginning.