Shield Insurance Agency Blog

Welcome to the Shield Insurance Agency Blog. 

Here you will find a ton of articles on each of these topics: Auto Insurance, Boat/Watercraft Insurance, Business Insurance, Flood Insurance, Health Insurance, Home Insurance, Insurance, Life Insurance, Michigan Auto Insurance Reform, Recreational Insurance, Renters Insurance, RV Insurance, Things To Do At Home, Umbrella Insurance, and even a list of the Shield Agency Weekly Gift Card Winners,

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House Hunting - Be Prepared to Win a Bidding War - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

House Hunting? Be Prepared to Win a Bidding War

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HowStuffWorks.com | By: Carrie Whitney, Ph.D.  |  May 28, 2021

Bidding War. A home is listed for sale in Palm Beach, Florida, where single-family houses priced at $10 million or more surged 306 percent in March 2021, from just a year earlier. 

If the real estate market can be counted on for anything, it’s fluctuation. There are times when buyers have their pick of homes, and sellers must settle for sales prices that are less than what they’d hoped for.

Then there are those times when it’s a seller’s market, and it’s the buyers who have to pay top dollar — or even over asking price — to get into houses. In a really hot seller’s market, buyers can end up in a bidding war — essentially a homebuying competition where the highest offer wins.

Why Does a Bidding War Happen?

That’s exactly where the U.S. housing market is currently. Inventory is low; demand from buyers is high; and sales prices continue to surge. In fact, the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) latest monthly sales report released May 21, 2021, says existing-home sales were down 2.7 percent in April — the third straight month of decline. But January to April sales are still up 20 percent, and median existing-home sales prices rose 19.1 percent year-over-year. Those are both record highs.

Total housing inventory (the number of houses for sale) in the U.S. at the end of April was up 10.5 percent from March, but still down 20.5 percent from just a year ago. These are near-record lows since the NAR began tracking the home supply in 1982.

Michael Schiff, a buyer’s specialist with Schiff Real Estate Team, with Ansley Real Estate in Atlanta, knows all too well these numbers. During a balanced market there should be about six months of inventory on the housing market. But Michael says in Atlanta, however, there is about a one-month supply.

These are the numbers that lead to bidding wars — a listing that receives multiple offers, and one where the listing agent puts a deadline on receiving the highest and best offers. But how do you win one? “There is strategy behind every single detail,” says listing specialist Leigh Schiff. She and Michael are the husband and wife team at Schiff Real Estate Team, with Ansley Real Estate.

Money Talks in a Bidding War

Just as not all listings are the same, not all bidding wars are the same either. Sometimes it might just be a threat of another offer. But other times a listing might get three, five or even 20 offers, Leigh says. Lower price point listings tend to have more offers, but she recently sold home at $1.3 million that had seven offers and went 10 percent over asking price.

Before you make an offer, or even start house hunting, get your money together. Prequalifying for a mortgage is not enough, especially in a seller’s market. Prequalification simply means that you have spoken to a lender and provided information about your income.

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Reducing safety risks for a returning and deconditioned workforce - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

Reducing safety risks for a returning and deconditioned workforce

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The pandemic-era trend toward layoffs and early retirement means today’s workforce has less training and experience than in March 2020. On top of that, a year at home has physically changed our bodies, resulting in what experts call a “deconditioned workforce.” Unfortunately, this less trained and deconditioned workforce poses new safety risks for companies, particularly in more risk-prone industries like manufacturing, trucking, and construction. It is important for businesses to consider the safety risks associated with this trend and what they can do to help reduce workplace injury as employees return to work. 

With an accelerated vaccine rollout and the President’s expectation of getting “closer to normal” by July 4, 2021, many companies are thinking about moving back to regular operations before the end of the year. Despite this progress, it’s clear that the pandemic has made a lasting impact on our workforce—and the safety implications of returning to work need to be carefully considered.

Early retirement makes an impact

As a result of the pandemic, many older Americans working in heavily impacted industries retired sooner than planned. According to a study by The Schwartz Center, more than 1 million workers left the workforce between August 2020 and January 2021. In the last year, the unemployment rate for older workers has been significantly higher than mid-career workers—a rare occurrence in the job market.

For companies that laid off a large percentage of their workforce during the pandemic, this means that new hires will have significantly less training and experience than their predecessors. Compounding this problem is the fact that many workers are joining new industries due to COVID-19; according to a study by McKinsey, more than 100 million workers globally, or 1 in 16 people, will need to change occupations because of the pandemic.

All of these factors equate to increased risk for companies—especially those in certain sectors. According to David Perez, chief underwriting officer of Global Risk Solutions at Liberty Mutual Insurance: “In any job with a high safety risk, like construction, trucking, or manufacturing, untrained workers present tremendous exposure for accidents to occur.” In high-risk industries where training and experience prevent workplace injury, there is now a much more significant burden on employers to help keep untrained employees safe. 

A deconditioned workforce

Even for experienced employees returning to work, there is a greater risk of workplace injury when they come back to their jobs, post-pandemic. This is the result of worker deconditioning, or the degeneration of physical fitness and flexibility from lack of use. Bottom line? After more than a year of sitting at home, many of us simply aren’t as prepared to do physical labor as we were before the pandemic.

How bad is the problem? According to HumanTech, every day that we don’t use our muscles, we lose 1-3% of our strength. Months of sedentary behavior changes our bodies—and we can’t rebuild that strength overnight. Other factors, like reduced cardiovascular fitness and reduced flexibility, also contribute to workplace injury, particularly in the construction and manufacturing industries. It will take weeks or even months for workers to regain the strength they had before the pandemic. In the meantime, companies need to be aware of the increased risk and adjust their insurance policies to reflect that change.

Reduce risk, invest in training

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Older Workers Get Ready for the Hybrid Office - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

Older Workers Get Ready for the Hybrid Office

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by Gwen Moran, AARP, June 3, 2021

Whether you’re in the hybrid office or working from home, finding balance is key

As vaccination rates increase and infection rates decline, companies are exploring what a return to the office will look like. Both companies and employees agree: The future of the office is likely to be a hybrid office model that could require many employees to split time between working from home and working in the office.

A recent joint study by WeWork and Workplace Intelligence defined the hybrid model as a combination of working at home, the company headquarters, satellite offices, co-working spaces and public “third spaces,” like a library or café. In some cases, employees may even split workdays between different locations.

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Cinemark Week - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

Cinema Week at Cinemark!

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With a mission to re-engage moviegoers, the first-ever Cinema Week, a six-day nation-wide event showcasing exclusive in-theatre content, activations, giveaways and special guests, … and you are invited! 
 
The inaugural Cinema Week takes place June 22-27, with Michigan’s Celebration Cinema theatres participating in a big way. “We love movies, but we’ve all learned that movies from one’s couch are NOT the same as a big, immersive, theatrical experience shared with community and friends,” says Emily Loeks, Director of Community Affairs. “This is a week we are excited to welcome folks back into the magic of moviegoing, with both publicized deals and also some fun surprises.”

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Maggie’s Be Café serves up purpose, inclusivity in Hudsonville, MI - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

Maggie’s Be Café serves up purpose, inclusivity in Hudsonville, MI

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Shield Insurance came across this story and wanted to share.
We hope you enjoy and visit this wonderful café!
Maggie’s Be Café 
Opened June 14, located at 6490 28th Ave Hudsonville, MI 49426

by: Brittany Flowers Posted: Jun 14, 2021 / 10:00 AM EDT / Updated: Jun 14, 2021 / 10:00 AM EDT

GEORGETOWN TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — There’s a new cafe in the Hudsonville area that’s serving “coffee with a purpose.”

Maggie’s Be Café  is much more than your typical coffee shop. For employees like Maggie Fischer, it’s a sense of purpose and a place of inclusivity.

“The main goal is for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to find meaningful work and have a job and love to come to work and love what they’re doing,” said Virginia Fischer, Maggie’s mom and one of the founding members of Maggie’s Be Café . 

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https://www.woodtv.com/news/ottawa-county/hudsonville-area-cafe-serves-up-purpose-inclusivity/

#grandopening #coffeeshop #coffeewithapurpose #maggiesbecafe #comingsoon #westmichigan #grandrapids #bekind #acceptance #inclusivity #puremichigan #michigan #specialneeds #empowerment #youareloved #ripple #theripplemaker #brodysbecafe #adamichigan

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Pandemic’s Bolstered Claims Technology - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

Claims Technology Bolstered by the Pandemic

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Shield Insurance Blog | Claims Technology | Start a Quote today!

Workers Expect Savvy Claims Technology: Here’s How the Pandemic’s Bolstered Claims Technology During Uncertain Times

The COVID-19 pandemic sped up the adoption of claims technology, but many tools were already in place and poised for growth.

Even apart from the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a significant year. According to the NOAA, 22 separate weather events including severe storms, wildfires, and cyclones totaled $95 billion in damages.

While many types of insurance bear the brunt of these disasters, workers’ compensation carriers, tasked with critical care needs that affect workers and their families, need special strategies to deliver care when catastrophe strikes.

For many organizations, these strategies utilize technology, built-in redundancies, and, stepped-up conveniences like a direct deposit to ensure continuity of care, no matter the weather.

“We have to be ready for it all — hurricanes, floods, fires,” said Mark Bilger, CIO of One Call.

“In general, disaster recovery and business continuity are a staple of well-run IT management for any organization. Specifically, in claims and insurance, it’s heightened because of the critical care for injured workers.”

Especially in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, workers’ comp claims teams were challenged with the immediate expansion of remote work, resulting in necessary changes that are likely to endure even after the pandemic concludes.

“Before work from home, One Call had a few concentrated contact centers,” Bilger said.

“After working from home, we look a lot more like the internet. We’re dispersed and we had to make major upgrades to our virtual private network, essentially 10-fold. We went from 1 gigabit to 10 gigabit capacity. We strengthened our endpoint protections and it went from firewalls in our locations to everybody’s home becoming the One Call network.”

Claims Technology

This growth in gigabit capacity is not isolated to the workers’ comp industry; reports indicate that pandemic-related growth has resulted in an estimated global wireless gigabit market size of $19 million in 2021 and is projected to reach $70 million by 2026.

In tandem with the global wireless market, gigabit size is the growth of cloud computing. Gartner forecasted 18.4% growth in a 2020 report to a total of $304.9 billion, noting that “the proportion of IT spending that is shifting to the cloud will accelerate in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis, with cloud projected to make up 14.2% of the total global enterprise IT spending market in 2024, up from 9.1% in 2020.”

Workers Expect Claims Technology

Expectations have been set by regulation and digitization in the 21st Century that even in the wake of a natural disaster, services will continue.

“One of the technology solutions that we have had for a few years but that we pushed during COVID and any other type of catastrophic event is our claimant app, MyCare,” said Michael Jamason, SVP, of business operations at CorVel.

“It gives the injured worker the ability to manage their pharmacy information, phone numbers for points of contact regarding their claim, information about payments being made to their accounts, and they can even establish their direct deposit in the app.”

Pharmacy information is especially important during a disaster when medications are destroyed due to property damage or lost in an evacuation.

“We were able to utilize our partnership with our PBM to allow people to get early refills, and with mail order, we were able to even change the amounts of medication given,” said Melissa Burke, head of managed care and clinical, AmTrust.

“We expanded into other needs like telemedicine, ensuring that we have different types of providers available. We were able to expand that and ensure access in all of our states where allowed by regulatory governance, including digital doctor networks. Something important there too is transitioning injured employees. Typically a telehealth solution would be either on the front end or the back end of a claim. We wanted to make sure that we could go back and forth depending on the state of the catastrophe,” Burke added.

Indeed, telemedicine expansion is at the forefront of many workers’ comp claims organizations’ radar. According to Mitchell’s “The Future of Technology in Work Comp 2020” industry survey, “many respondents believe that telemedicine will have the biggest impact on the industry within the next five years (32%), followed closely by artificial intelligence (30%) and predictive analytics (20%).”

The survey was conducted before the COVID-19 pandemic, which likely would have boosted telemedicine’s impact on the results due to significant expansions.

For many industry leaders though, the specific technological solution is not as significant as the strategy behind the solutions. “We have to ensure continuity of care and benefits,” said Michele Tucker, CorVel’s VP of EC operations.

“Any interruption — whether it’s a natural disaster or anything else — impacts many lives and families. We’ve been doing some regular testing with payments and system recovery so redundancy is set up, and if we have an office impacted, our system allows for immediate replication and the pickup of services by another office.”

Growth Brings Security Risks

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The Year of Mergers and Acquisitions - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

The year of Mergers and Acquisitions

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The year of Mergers and Acquisitions: Navigating risk in a volatile market

In 2020, companies faced unprecedented risk as they tried to maintain business continuity while keeping their employees safe. But many experts didn’t anticipate one new pandemic-era risk trend: the rise of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

Although mergers and acquisitions activity slowed down for the first half of 2020, it rapidly picked up steam in the second half of the year and is projected to grow even more in 2021. Follow along to learn more about how this flurry of M&A transactions is shifting the risk landscape—and what companies can do about it.

Mergers and Acquisitions: Slow down to speed up

After the pandemic hit in March 2020, companies anticipating another recession tightened their belts and focused on liquidity. As a result, M&A activity slowed down considerably—and experts predicted that the trend would last through the end of the year. But in the second half of 2020, historically low interest rates fed the mergers and acquisitions market. As Morgan Stanley reports, in the last quarter alone, there were 1,250 M&A deals globally, totaling over $1 trillion.

For the most part, these deals took place in industries that were the least impacted by Covid-19. Technology, healthcare, and financial services saw the most activity, whereas industrials and real estate fell well below historical transaction volumes. But many financial experts anticipate those harder hit sectors will rebound in 2021, now that there’s a clearer outlook on the market. With M&A volumes hitting their highest quarterly values in years despite the economic impact of the pandemic, it’s clear that these deals will continue to be a foundational part of business growth.:

Mergers and Acquisitions: SPACs take the lead

Mergers and Acquisitions: Contributing to this contentious economic landscape are special purpose acquisition companies or SPACs. Sometimes called “blank check companies,” these businesses are explicitly created to take other companies public, allowing businesses to avoid the traditional IPO process. SPACs don’t form with a specific merger in mind—instead, investors pool money and then have two years to find a privately held company to acquire.

According to David Perez, a chief underwriting officer of Global Risk Solutions at Liberty Mutual Insurance, the uncertainty of these transactions increases insurance risk.

“From an insurance perspective, you’re underwriting the company raising the capital, but you don’t always know what company they’ll acquire. That leaves a wide range of potential risks to contend with,” he says.

Because this area of the market is entirely speculative, it can lead to huge swings in stock values. Perez notes that some companies see “swings of 1,000 points from month to month.” That kind of volatility was formerly unheard of—and it is a major contributing factor to the hardening D&O insurance market.

Weathering the hard market

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More Cities Are Handling People Cash - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

More Cities Are Handing People Cash

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More Cities Are Handing People Cash With No Strings Attached. Here’s Why

The idea of handing people cash without conditions once seemed radical. But the pandemic has changed that.

The spotlight on income inequality has pushed the concept of a guaranteed income into the mainstream. In recent months, nearly two dozen American cities have signed on. Los Angeles may soon become the largest U.S. city to try it. It’s considering a plan to provide $1,000 a month to at least 1,000 households.

The pandemic hit America’s lowest-wage workers hard: people working in restaurants, hotels, and shops. A recent study shows poverty has risen sharply.

“Unfortunately, without COVID and without the pandemic and the economic downturn, I don’t know if we would be having the conversations with the intensity that we are regarding guaranteed income,” said Aisha Nyandoro, executive director of Springboard to Opportunities, home to a guaranteed income project in Jackson, Miss. “But we are. So we’ll take it.”

Nyandoro’s program started in 2018, way before the pandemic. It targeted moms like Tia Cunningham, who got a call from Springboard to Opportunities’ Magnolia Mother’s Trust three years ago offering her “a late Christmas present.”

Cunningham says she was surprised and happy when she was selected to receive $1,000 each month for a year — cash payments with no strings attached. The mother of three says the money got her out of subsidized housing and helped her save for a down payment on a house, which she moved into in 2019. When the pandemic hit, she had some security.

“I put it to good use. I did a whole lot,” Cunningham said.

The Jackson, Miss., project started with just 20 moms. Others that have followed are larger but have similarly been funded by philanthropists. The project in Los Angeles stands out because it would use public money.

But advocates have even more ambitious plans. They want this fringe concept to go universal in the form of a guaranteed payment to every American family. Andrew Yang, a Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, made it the centerpiece of his last campaign — for president.

“I want to give every American $1,000 a month,” he said at a Democratic primary debate last February.

Many credit Yang with helping bring the idea into the mainstream.

“He did a really good job of getting the idea out there and getting people very interested in it,” said Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at The Brookings Institution.

In the mid-1990s, Sawhill served on President Bill Clinton’s welfare task force. She sees this current push for guaranteed income as a reaction to policies that largely ended welfare under Clinton. Those policies cut off cash payments to people who didn’t have jobs, no matter how poor they were, with the idea of incentivizing work.

As a task force member, Sawhill traveled the country to meet with recipients.

“One of the things that surprised me is that a lot of welfare moms don’t like welfare,” Sawhill said. “It’s not their first choice. They’d much rather be working.”

For years before the welfare reform of 1996, critics stigmatized the people who received it, according to Jesse Rothstein, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and economics faculty director at the California Policy Lab.

“Much of the motivation for welfare reform was a sense that there were a lot of people who could work but weren’t working because they preferred to stay on welfare,” Rothstein said.

One of the enduring examples has been the so-called “welfare queen” trope, popularized by conservatives.

“In Chicago, they found a woman who holds the record,” Ronald Reagan said in a radio address in 1976, four years before he ascended to the White House. “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 telephone numbers to collect food stamps, Social Security, veterans benefits for four, nonexistent, deceased veterans’ husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.”

More than four decades later, poverty has endured. Mayors from Richmond, Va., to Oakland, Calif., see guaranteed income projects as a way to address it. A recent project in Stockton, Calif., challenged the belief that free money discouraged work. After a year, it showed full-time employment rose 12 percentage points among recipients. A lot of it went toward paying for food and bills, a study by the project’s organizers found.

“I think these experiments are great because they’re giving money to people who are often quite poor and need the money,” said Rothstein. But he adds that pilot projects around the country have been relatively small in scope. Stockton’s pilot included 125 people and ran for two years.

“I think that they’re really limited in what we can learn from them,” Rothstein said.

Conservative critics agree.

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6 Morning Habits stressing You Out - Shield Insurance Agency Blog

6 Morning Habits Stressing You Out

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6 Morning Habits That Seem Healthy But Are Secretly Stressing You Out

By Seraphina Seow | 05/21/2021 05:45am EDT | Huffpost.com

While these morning habits can be beneficial for your energy and mood, they may cause anxiety if you’re not careful.

In the productivity guru and influencer world, how people “do” their mornings are often a focus. To start your day right, you should eat this way and not that way. To be more productive, do this, not that.

Commonly recommended morning practices ― like exercising or journaling ― can be helpful and healthy. “But if we get too rigid about certain rituals in our day, that’s when they can become more toxic,” said Han Ren, a licensed psychologist, speaker and educator based in Austin.

When you put contingencies around what your morning “should” look like, this can make you anxious about doing everything perfectly ― then anxious if things don’t go as planned. Even healthy habits can stress you out if you feel you “must” do them for your day to start well.

This stress can be more pronounced if you’re a perfectionist. If you don’t achieve these self-imposed expectations, you can end up feeling like a failure or feeling like you haven’t done enough, said Athina Danilo, a licensed marriage and family therapist based in Burbank, California.

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