The Big I Washington Spring 2018

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President’s Letter Big I There is a lot happening at IIABW this year. Here is just a short list OF things the Big I is doing for your agency and the industry. Rob Tripple IIABW President Lobbying IIABW recently collaborated with other small businesses to successfully defeat a proposed 7 percent state capital gains tax, which would have had a significant impact on the sales of our businesses. IIABW members joined together to lobby against this tax at the All Industry Day at the Capitol in February. I am joining eight other members in Washington, D.C., in April to lobby our Congressional delegation on flood and crop insurance, tax reform, health care, cyber security and regulatory reform. Thank you to the 65 individuals who contributed over $10,000 to our federal political action committee, InsurPac, and the 120 agencies who have contributed over $28,000 to our state Big I Pac. Your time and money are the key to the Big I’s success in Olympia and Washington, D.C. New Producer Development IIABW has devoted a significant amount of time over the last couple years to help agencies recruit, hire, train and mentor new CSRs and producers. We are working with community colleges on an online insurance certification program and apprenticeship program to create an avenue for agencies to develop new employees. Watch for more information on this exciting opportunity. Young Agents Once we get new people into the industry, IIABW has been successful providing support to help them make insurance their career. Over 300 people have participated in the Young Agents’ five events, which not only provided industry professionals an opportunity to learn but also to give back to the community. In two volunteer events the Young Agents sorted 4,500 pounds of food, collected 3,000 pounds of donated food and contributed over $1,000 to food banks. Be sure to encourage your new producer, CSR, sales rep, underwriter, etc. in your office to participate in the Young Agents events. Education Mark your calendar for this year’s IIABW/PIA Annual Conference which will be held on Sept. 19-21 at the new Hyatt on Lake Washington. It is a great opportunity to learn, network, socialize, golf and have fun. If you choose to learn in the comforts of your office, check out IIABW’s webinar series, which have been very popular because of the quality topics and instructors. A dozen three-hour live webinars are offered each month covering timely and practical topics. Markets IIABW provides members a number of personal and commercial lines markets to sell to your customers and products to use in your own agency. Check out our company appointments, niche markets, agents’ E & O program, employee benefits, etc. Branding/Leads IIABW members are encouraged to take advantage of the Trusted Choice branding materials, which focus on our strengths: choice, customization and advocacy. You can get marketing dollars reimbursed to you by using the Trusted Choice logo. Trustedchoice.com is our consumer portal, which saw over four million visitors last year leading to over 100,000 referrals to Big I members all over the country. All IIABW members get a free listing on the site and you can get listed first in searches by becoming an Advantage Plan subscriber. Be sure to take advantage of all that the Big I has to offer. Go to our website (www.wainsurance.org), our Facebook page, and watch for our enewsletter, the IIABW Bulletin. Best Regards, Rob Tripple, President 6 SPRING 2018 Big Washington
Office of the Insurance Commissioner Only 11% Of Homeowners Are Covered For Earthquakes - Mike Kreidler Washington State Insurance Commissioner Over the years, I’ve been asked with some regularity about how many people in Washington state have earthquake insurance. The best I could do was to guestimate somewhere between 10 percent and 14 percent. I don’t have to guess any longer. For the first time in our state’s history, we know that 11.3 percent of homeowners in Washington state have some type of earthquake coverage. Just over 18 percent of insured homeowners in Thurston County have earthquake coverage, followed by Clark County at 16.4 percent and Kitsap County at 16 percent. In King County, the state’s most populous, 15.7 percent of residential properties have earthquake coverage. Sparsely populated Columbia County has a coverage rate of just .02 percent. This is first time we’ve had conclusive data about Washington state’s earthquake market. Certainly, today’s technology makes collecting and analyzing data far easier than ever before. Also, as our state has become more involved in disaster mitigation and resilience work, it became clear that we needed baseline data in order to move forward. If we don’t know how many people have earthquake insurance, how will we know where to focus our outreach and preparedness work? Here’s what we found out when we surveyed 240 P&C insurers last fall: • Insured homeowners in Western Washington have a higher percentage of coverage, 13.8 percent, than those in Eastern Washington, 1.7 percent. • The counties of King, Pierce, Snohomish, Thurston and Clark account for 76 percent of all residential policies with earthquake coverage in the state. • Deductibles for residential earthquake coverage match the industry standard of 10 percent to 15 percent. • Insurers reported the average insured residential property was covered for $512,000. • Just over 43 percent of commercial properties in Washington have earthquake coverage. • The average commercial property was insured for about $3.1 million. • The counties of King, Snohomish, Pierce, Kitsap and Clark have 61 percent of all commercial earthquake policies in the state. What’s next? That depends on the Legislature, but things look promising. I sponsored legislation to bring together public and private organizations to recommend actions to mitigate risk and losses from all types of natural disasters. If approved, the working group would report its recommendations to the Legislature in December 2018 and my office would lead the work. So far, we’ve received a great deal of support for the bill from legislators, but we won’t know for certain until they make final decisions. Big Washington SPRING 2018 7
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