The church insurance business is a game, a contest between the church and the insurer. You'd like to think you're working together, but let's be serious. The insurer wants to collect as much premium as possible from you while paying the least amount in claims, and the church is trying to pay the least amount in premium while getting the big problems paid by the insurer. It's a competition.
In any fair game both sides know and understand all of the rules, but that's not true of the church insurance game. The insurers know the rules, but the churches only know what the insurer or their experience has told them about the rules. It's sort of like playing poker and only one guy knows that two pair beats two aces, so when you show your pairs of 2's and 3's, he tells you his pair of aces wins and if you don't know better, you give him all your chips.
This website is designed to help even the playing field a bit by giving churches more knowledge of the rules of the game so they can compete evenly with, or perhaps even gain an advantage over, the insurance companies. I won't be discussing specific coverage at this site - that's a discussion you should have with your agent.
The most important post on this site is "What Your Churches Insurance Agent Doesn't Want You to Know". I've detailed many of the rules of the game in that post and it's a must-read for any church preparing to negotiate their insurance deal. There is also an audio version of this information which you can listen to my clicking on the player in the right-hand sidebar. Your church insurance agent won't like it, but nobody likes to lose an advantageous negotiating position.
I'm also going to use this site for two other purposes. I'm going to tell you some stories from my church insurance days, some funny, some irritating, but all true. Some of the things happened to me, and some I heard from others. I won't give you the names of the companies I worked for, the name of the agency or the people I worked with, nor will I mention the names of the church clients and prospects I worked with. There's no sense in poking the bear more than I have to.
I'm also going to talk about people management, or more correctly, how not to manage people. During my years in the church insurance business I was witness to and victim of some of the poorest people management skills I've ever seen in a person who was not the homicidal dictator of some banana republic. Think Hugo Chavez with a Lexus. That's why I describe myself as a "recovering church insurance agent". Whether you work in insurance or any other field involving people, these stories will be instructive.
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Related Tags: Church Insurance, Church Mutual Insurance, GuideOne Insurance, Brotherhood Insurance, Philadelphia Insurance, Church Mutual, GuideOne, Insurance For Religious Organizations, Insurance For Churches, Church Insurance Programs, Church Insurance Agent
