Insurance Agent & Broker Portland Oregon

All Oregon auto policies contain "PIP" insurance coverage, or Personal Injury Protection coverage. Your Oregon PIP insurance coverage includes the following benefits:

1. Medical & hospital expenses
2. Income continuation benefits
3. Loss of services expenses
4. Funeral expenses
5. Child care expenses

When clients have been involved in an accident the first question I ask is, "How are you feeling" & "Do you need to seek medical treatment?" Most drivers are unaware but your Oregon PIP insurance coverage is the first coverage applied to get your medical expenses paid after you have been involved in an accident. The Oregon state minimum PIP limit is $15,000 for payment of your medical and hospital expenses, the coverage will provide treatment for up to 52 weeks after a reported accident.

In addition to the payment of medical and hospital expenses under PIP insurance coverage you have income continuation protection. This coverage is typically 70% of your loss of income from work during a period of disability, provided that:
a. You were employed at the time of the accident
b. Your disability continues for at least 14 days

Your PIP insurance coverage also includes Loss of services expenses. This benefit will pay for expenses reasonably incurred during a period of disability for essential services performed by a person not realted to you, the insured, or residing in your, the insureds, household. For example, after the accident you are unable to clean your house or do your laundry, this benefit will pay for these services.

PIP insurance coverage will provide reasonable and necessary expenses for funeral services incurred within one year after the date of the accident.

Child care expenses include those expenses incurred for child care beginning 24 hours after the hospitalization of you, the insured, and continuing until you, the insured, is able to either:
a. Return to work; or
b. Perform essential services

Most insurance policies will have the Oregon state minimum limit of $15,000 although you can increase your PIP insurance coverage limit up to  either $25,000 or $50,000 at a nominal cost.  As reported in an earlier blog post Under ORS 742.524(1)(b), a PIP eligible claimant who is usually engaged in a remunerative occupation (i.e., a job that pays), but is unable to perform that occupation for at least 14 days because of a motor vehicle accident, is allowed to receive 70% of his or her lost income or $1,250 per month, whichever is less. In April 2009, the Oregon Legislature and Governor Kulongoski, via HB 2326, changed the maximum monthly recoverable amount from $1,250 per month to $3,000 per month. Thus, the yearly maximum will increase from $15,000 to $36,000.

Home insurance policies do not cover damage from landslides and earth movement. Even though landslide insurance might be costly, having landslide insurance might be your only chance of recovery against the uncertainty of damage or destruction as a result of a landslide.

In February of 1996, a major storm caused hundreds of landslides in the West Hills and last year a landslide destroyed several homes in SW Portland. Many factors contribute to landslides, including slope steepness, soil strength, and moisture content of the soil. A landslide will occur when several of these factors converge.

Learn about landslide insurance by visiting these previous blog postings.

A recent change to Oregon law significantly increases the maximum amount of lost income a PIP eligible claimant may recover. The new law also increases the minimum amount of property damage coverage that all automobile policies must carry.

Under ORS 742.524(1)(b), a PIP eligible claimant who is usually engaged in a remunerative occupation (i.e., a job that pays), but is unable to perform that occupation for at least 14 days because of a motor vehicle accident, is allowed to receive 70% of his or her lost income or $1,250 per month, whichever is less. In April 2009, the Oregon Legislature and Governor Kulongoski, via HB 2326, changed the maximum monthly recoverable amount from $1,250 per month to $3,000 per month.  Thus, the yearly maximum will increase from $15,000 to $36,000.

This new law also impacts ORS 806.070(2)(c), Oregon's Financial Responsibility Law. The current law requires all automobile insurance policies carry at least $10,000 in liability coverage for “injury to or destruction of the property of others in any one accident.”  HB 2326 increases the required minimum amount of acceptable coverage from $10,000 to $20,000.

Both of these changes will affect all motor vehicle insurance policies issued or renewed on or after January 1, 2010.

Coverage differences with cyber liability insurance policies must be made by understanding the differences of each policy and the significance of each difference in regards to how each policy responds to information and privacy issues.

Information & privacy issues arise under various aspects of business from the failure to keep personal information private to collecting information for marketing purposes to commerce transactions. A breach of privacy would adversely affect your business especially when it depends upon customer and client trust.

Sensitive information can easily be compromised through errors such as the loss or theft of a laptop computer or other portable device.

The attached checklist will help you manage your cyber liability risks surrounding your exposure to intellectual property rights that include trademark, service mark, copyright & patent infringement.

Download the content exposure checklist here.

UPCOMING

Coverage differences with cyber liability insurance policies must be made by understanding the differences of each policy and the significance of each difference in regards to how each policy provides coverage for content.

With regards to intellectual property rights there are three major areas that you will need to be concerned with with your cyber liability policy:

1. trademark or service mark infringement
2. copyright violations, and
3. patent infringement

A trademark is a distinctive word, name or symbol (or a combination of these) used to indicate the maker of goods and to distinguish that maker's goods from those of their competitors.

Each new advance in web technologies has brought new risk exposures to businesses and these exposures require knowledge and application of proper risk management procedures to reduce your cyber liability exposure.

If you maintain, re-design or upgrade client websites, handle domain name registrations and search engine placement for clients, assist with the design and implementation of online marketing campaigns and strategies (including mass emails), coordinate hyperlinks with other websites, and provide around the clock support there are exposures and risks that you not just need to be aware of but need to protect yourself against. You also face risks such as issues relating to copyright and trademarks, invasion of privacy, private information issues, and loss of or damage to data. In addition to these listed exposures you also face a cyber liabiliy exposure if your business provides website hosting or is an application service provider.

Having cyber liability insurance in place will help protect your business mitigate its potential liability from a loss due to a host of legal liabilities that range from non performance of delivering your services to infringement of intellectual property. 

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been extended until October 31, 2009. This short-term statutory authorization will allow insurance companies to continue issuing flood insurance policies with no impact to current policy holders.

In lieu of the extension of the National Flood Insurance Program today's New York Times has an interesting article titled Criticism Is Mounting Over Flood Premiums that provides an insight in the history of flood insurance and exposes that the government program has failed to charge prices that reflect the value of insurance, and in turn the NFIP has been accumulating debt which eventually will go back to taxpayers.

The 8.0 magnitude earthquake in the Somoa Islands caused officials to issue a tsunami advisory that included the Oregon coast. The tsunami is not expected to cause any significant damage but raises an important insurance question for residents of the Oregon Coast. Would your home insurance policy cover property damage from a tsunami?

Whether or not you have insurance coverage for damage due to tsunami, the asian word for tidal wave, will vary from each insurance company, most likely your home insurance policy is going to exclude property loss due damage from a tsunami. The reason for this is that most all home insurance policies exclude property loss due to damage from flood, earthquake, & landslide. The only way to make certain you have property coverage for a loss due to a tsunami would be to have a flood insurance policy in place. You can get information on flood insurance by clicking here.

To plan for a tsunami striking the Oregon coast do the following:

1. Learn about tsunami risk by visiting the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries website.
2. Plan an evacuation route from your home, school, workplace, or any other place you'll be where tsunamis present a risk with the Oregon Coast Tsunami Hazards Program Tsunami Map Viewer.
3. Practice your evacuation route. Familiarity may save your life.
4. Use a NOAA Weather Radio with a tone-alert feature to keep you informed of local watches and warnings. The tone alert feature will warn you of potential danger even if you are not currently listening to local radio or television stations.
5. You home insurance policy will  not cover flooding from a tsunami. Contact me to get flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program.

September is National Preparedness Month, and the Department of Homeland Security's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) want to make sure you're prepared in the event of an emergency such as a major earthquake that could strike in Oregon.

Hopefully we will never be faced with the expected earthquake that the scientists say could occur within the next 50 years, but if we are, having an emergency kit will help ensure that you and your loved ones will have the bare necessities such as food, water, and items to keep you warm.

 To help you get started preparing your emergency kit, FEMA has developed a user friendly website that allows you to download and print all of the items that you will need to gather for an Emergency Kit. Simply visit the special Emergency Kit webpage for a quick list of the basic emergency items you need to have on hand, as well as additional items you should consider adding to your kit.