Insurance Insights

Across the country, the news that Google was going to change the ways it ranked websites of all kinds when users searched for them on their mobile devices had many small business owners worried. The new algorithm, which went into effect a few weeks ago, is designed to prioritize sites that have mobile options over those that do not, and many entrepreneurs were worried that the change would negatively impact their searchability. However, it seems that this concern was misplaced.

In the past few years, there has been a lot of attention paid to both getting the federally mandated health insurance exchanges up and running, and getting everyone that needs coverage to sign up for them in a timely fashion. And while millions of individuals across the country have tapped these marketplaces as a means of finding more affordable – and often subsidized – health insurance coverage, it seems that small businesses – which the exchanges were also designed to help – are apparently not so eager to get involved.

Superfish is on the attack and you need to be prepared. If you bought a new laptop from Lenovo, it may come with unwanted, and dangerous, malware called Superfish, though it can affect any Windows computer.

While the drought that wracked much of California has grabbed headlines in the last few months – and the worst of it only recently came to an end – the truth is that, on a historical basis, it’s still going on. In fact, it’s been under way for four years and shows little sign of letting up. That, in turn, has had a major impact on small businesses operating in the state, and many continue to deal with its effects.

Toward the end of 2014, some rather dour reports on the state of the small business sector began to emerge, with numbers showing that these companies were dying off more quickly than they were being started. However, new data suggests that this trend might finally be reversing itself, as more people chose to start companies in the past 12 months.

Data breaches can be terrifying to the average small business owner. A lot is on the line, after all, but how you respond during the data breach can have a significant impact on how well you weather the storm.

One of the biggest issues that any small business owner may face in the day-to-day operations of running their companies is regulation of their industries at both the state and federal levels. But given how much emphasis has been placed on entrepreneurship – related back to how small business is typically the engine that drives the economy forward – since the end of the recession, it seems that more states are now trying to help businesses navigate a potentially heightened regulatory environment. California is one such state.

Across the country, the use of physical therapy as an alternative to more invasive – and potentially costly – medical procedures is increasing for a number of reasons. Perhaps chief among them is that almost all states now allow for direct access to PT care. But as utilization of these health care services grows significantly, so too does the need for those working in the field to have the right amount of insurance.

When it comes to protecting consumers, there has been a greater effort on the part of many state governments across the country to boost safety requirements for businesses of all sizes and just about all types. That recently became an issue in New Jersey, where some contracting companies now have to comply with new regulations about the amount of insurance and bonding they carry.

Extreme weather is, unfortunately, becoming the norm in many parts of the country. The severity of hurricanes continues to increase, flooding regularly happens in places where it used to be uncommon, and so on. Now there is significant debate in the insurance industry and even the public sector about what kind of liability problems this presents overall, and at least some of that focus could end up landing on the engineers that designed drainage systems and other things that could end up failing and causing significant damage. As such, it might be important for insurance agents to explain to them the importance of robust liability insurance as a vital part of their business.