In a monologue at the end of his 1975 movie “Love and Death,” Woody Allen reminds the audience, “After all, you know, there are worse things in life than death. I mean, if you”™ve ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know exactly what I mean.”
Most certainly, that wasn”™t the first time the insurance business was the butt of a joke. Neither was Nov. 30, 1939, when comedienne Fanny Brice of “Funny Girl” fame, portraying her iconic Baby Snooks character on NBC radio, asked her daddy (actor Hanley Stafford),“What”™s insurance?” Daddy replied, “Insurance is a form of saving. As long as I live, I pay money to the company and, if anything happens to me, the company gives the money to my beneficiary.” Snooks asked again, “What”™s insurance?” The reply: “I told you it”™s protection against trouble. I have a wife and children so I must be protected against trouble.” Snooks asked, “When did you get in trouble, Daddy?” “When I got a wife and children,” was the response, eliciting gales of laughter from the studio audience.
While some people enjoy skits, monologues and one-liners about the subject, others such as Benjamin Palancia realize that insurance is no laughing matter. What it can do to protect people and companies is a matter of the utmost seriousness. Palancia knows insurance: He”™s the principal at the Albert Palancia Agency in Mamaroneck, whose roots can be traced back to when his grandfather, Albert, began in the business.
“Albert Palancia Agency was started officially in 1978 by my grandfather and my uncle,” Palancia says. “But my grandfather had been in the insurance business since 1954, and in 1978 they established this corporation in Mamaroneck. We”™ve actually been in the same building here since 1978. We have a mixture of small, medium-size and big businesses as clients. We have companies we insure internationally and all over the country in almost every state.”
Palancia estimated the agency has 10,000 clients in all, requiring a variety of insurance lines such as construction, workers”™ compensation, general and professional, liability, builder”™s risk, restaurant, real estate, commercial auto and errors and omissions.
“I wasn”™t planning to be in the insurance business at all actually, but my family was in it and I gave it a shot and then we just took it to another level and started doing very well very quickly and never looked back,” says Palancia, who lives in Somers with his wife and their three children and is active in Westchester County. (He is a past president of the Rotary Club of Mount Kisco, president of the board of directors of the Country Childrens Center in Bedford Hills and a member of the executive board of the Boys & Girls Club of Northern Westchester”™s board of directors. He coaches two American Youth Soccer Organization soccer teams and a Somers Youth Sports Organization football team.)
But back to insurance. “Auto and home are like vanilla and chocolate,” he says. “Commercial is like all the flavors of the rainbow”¦. Each business is so different we tailor coverage to each individual need. There are some base coverages that every business should have. The hot button issues nowadays are cyber liability and employment practices liability that everyone should have regardless of the type of business that they”™re in.”
Palancia adds that companies should be protected if their information about their clients is hacked and, perhaps, publicly released. He can also cover ransomware attacks, in which cybercriminals lock up a company”™s computer system and force payment of a ransom in order to restore service.
“Insurance (companies) will pay to restore systems,” he adds. “They”™ll help in negotiations with whoever is holding a system hostage. Some people have data breach coverage. Some have basic cyber liability coverage that”™s just attached to their business owner”™s policy if they have one. If your policy hasn”™t been rewritten in a number of years, it probably doesn”™t have it. The ransomware coverage is a relatively new thing and you want to be sure you”™re with a cyber liability company that”™s able to support that and give you that coverage. If you have a breach, you want to be able to access your server. You want to be able to access your financial data. You want to be able to access everything in your system and, if it”™s held hostage, then you want to work. You”™ve got to be able to get that back.”
One issue he hears a lot about, given his office”™s location in a Sound Shore community is flooding and flood insurance. The local Mamaroneck and Sheldrake rivers have been notorious for flooding during severe storms to the extent that numerous businesses in the community have been decimated.
“We”™ve had clients with claims here in Mamaroneck and elsewhere,” Palancia says. “It”™s a very difficult coverage to get and a very difficult overage to get paid on, but we do it.”
Palancia says that not all insurance companies are created equal when it comes to writing coverage and their approach to paying claims.
“You definitely don”™t want to have an insurance company not pay out on a claim when you have an issue. You have to fight for your clients,” Palancia says. “When a claim happens, you want to be sure that the person handling your insurance is there to protect you and can walk you through the process. I bring in my own experts if I can”™t handle it. You have a claim, you have a fire, you have a flood. You want to be back open for business again and as fast as possible.”
Like most businesses, his was affected by Covid.
“We have employees now who work remotely,” Palancia says. “The pandemic has forced me to be more flexible, allowing employees to take time off or work from wherever they might be. One of my employees moved to Florida permanently and she works well from there. A lot of my employees have to take days off to take care of children or take care of elderly family members, and we allow them to do that and work remotely when they can.”
Another change: Insurance premiums are climbing amid the aftermath of the pandemic and the effects of inflation.
“Renewal figures are going up at an alarming percentage, and if businesses aren”™t looking at their policies every year they should be,” Palancia says. “I”™m an independent agent, which pretty much means I write with almost every insurance carrier out there. Every year we remarket all of our clients”™ buildings, their properties, their businesses no matter what it is for commercial liability, workers”™ compensation, cyber liability. We remarket it every year to all of the carriers. Not every agent does that. Not every agent is independent and can write with every carrier.”
He says that he is able to place coverage for specialty areas that most other agents are unable to touch and, as a result, other agents work with him when they need specialty coverage for their clients. When new clients come in and he and his team do reviews of their existing coverage, they often find that the coverage a business has is inadequate.
“We try to educate our clients. Some come educated. Some have never had an agent explain things to them the way we do,” Palancia says. “There are different options. Some people forgo coverage as a matter of dealing with expenses and others don”™t want to have a potential issue in the future. They”™d rather insure against it. Everyone is different in their level of wanting to be insured.”
For more, visit palanciainsurance.com.
