Legal

To our knowledge, SWZ Insurance is the only retail insurance firm in the country to have a legal division that serves its clientele. The legal division’s attorneys serve our clients in 3 primary ways:

Representation

Representation outside of assigned council provided by the insurance carrier is more important than what most clients may realize. Unfortunately, many clients realize they need this assistance when it’s too late to address a given situation. This is extremely important on complex claims, or on severe claims with the potential to pay out large amounts to the claimant or plaintiff. Our attorney will provide oversight to make sure that our client’s best interests are being served, and will also negotiate directly with plaintiff’s council in an effort to mitigate damages to our client. Please contact us for examples on how this service and oversight has saved our clients literally millions of dollars over the past few years.

 

Policy Form & Endorsement Creation

Most clients do not realize that almost all insurance companies use the same policy forms and endorsements, which have been pre-prepared and which are designed to be used on all risks. Helping to draft, or what we call “manuscript”, custom policy forms and endorsements that are designed solely for a client’s particular needs is of massive benefit to our clients. This is especially important for larger clients in the oil & gas, and wholesale and distribution industries, when liability exposures are diverse, and/or when a client may have particular times of a year when they assume more liability than other times of the year.

Libary stacks with statues

Risk Management Services

This is most commonly seen when we work with newer clients which may not have ever had the benefit of a true risk management analysis, which is designed to identify every area where a client could be exposed for potential liability, and then identify gaps in the client’s current insurance coverage. This is something promised by virtually every agency, but which is rarely performed. Many clients confuse this service with what is really nothing more than a “loss control survey” that has been performed by an insurance carrier’s loss control representative, to ensure that the insurance carrier is insuring the risk which they think they are insuring.

Additionally, we assist clients in creation of new entities for liability, tax, and other reasons. We can assist in incorporating the new entity, obtaining a new Federal Employee Identification Number, a making sure that the new entity is complying with state and federal guidelines or regulations which may govern the particular industry.