Our office will be closed Thursday (11/22) and Friday (11/23) in observance of the Thanksgiving holidays. We will reopen on Monday (11/26) at normal business hours of 9am - 5pm.

Medicare Annual Enrollment is coming to a close. Only 2 weeks left! (ends 12/7). If you're aging into Medicare or in the market for a new Medicare plan, please give one of our licensed agents a call at: 337-439-7730

Meanwhile, as the days get shorter and colder, please refresh yourself on Fire Safety, Holiday Safety and tips on Travelling Smart.

We hope you enjoy our blog and find the posts beneficial and informative and we wish you a Blessed and Happy Thanksgiving!

Tommy Curtis and Staff

Here we are again approaching Medicare’s AEP (Annual Election Period Oct. 15th – Dec. 7th) where beneficiaries are allowed, encouraged even, to compare their current Medicare plan with the other options out there. Since we’ve covered the History of Medicare, offer Medicare information and FAQ’s on our site, and have given you a brief Understanding of Medicare, I thought this would be a good time to address the acronyms used by CMS and different Medicare plans as well as changes for the upcoming year (2019).

Over the last year or so we’ve done posts on insuring your home, mobile home and even a vacant home. We’ve discussed binding restrictions and scheduled personal property as well as policy deductibles, endorsements and possible discounts.

One thing we haven’t discussed is a Builder’s Risk and/or Builder’s Risk Renovations policy.

If you’ve been talking to a bank or mortgage company about financing the construction of your home, you may have been told you’ll need a Builder’s Risk policy and wondered what in the world that is.

We’re here to help!
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Purchasing a new home can be fun and exciting, it can also be fraught with fears, insecurities and too many things on your ‘to do’ list. Many people get all caught up in the excitement and forget one of the most important aspects of buying a new home–Insuring it!–then, in a panic, accept the first quote they receive, not understanding the basics of a home insurance policy.
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Don’t be one of them.
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On the heels of Memorial Day in May and Flag Day in June, July is the month of patriotism since the 4th is the day we celebrate the birth of our country as a nation, independent from English rule.

Even though our break from the British Empire came in 1776, Insurance was sold in the Colonies as early as 1735 in South Carolina. In 1772 Benjamin Franklin along with more than 70 business owners formed a mutual company called “The Philadelphia Contributorship for the Insuring of Houses from Loss by Fire.”

We know from a previous post that Medicare was enacted in 1965, but did you know Life Insurance was established in the 1760’s? The Presbyterian Synods (an assembly of the clergy and sometimes also the laity in a diocese or other division of a particular church) created the “Corporation for Relief of Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers” in 1759 in New York and Philadelphia which was duplicated by Episcopalian priests in 1769. Auto insurance came about in 1897, health insurance in the 1920’s and home policies in the 1950’s.
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So, how does Insurance and Patriotism go together?

Hurricane Season is upon us and many people are brushing up on their home/mobile home insurance policies and getting their evacuation plan in order. They’ve pulled out the declarations page and in reviewing, find there are 2 or maybe 3 different deductibles listed: AOP, Named Storm and/or Wind/Hail.

We’ll attempt to clarify these for you here….
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If you call for a home, mobile home, or flood policy or to add comprehensive and/or collision insurance to your auto policy and are told no because the company is under binding restrictions, it may confuse or even irritate you.

What in the world are binding restrictions and why do insurance companies implement them?
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In our previous post we explained what Riders and Endorsements are and gave some examples of these on a P&C policy. Today we’ll talk about riders on Life Insurance products.

Remember, a ‘rider’ is a temporary addition to an insurance policy that can be added or removed that does not change the original benefits stated in a policy and an ‘endorsement’ is a permanent change to increase benefits to an existing policy and both result in additional premiums.