Friday, December 11, 2009

Lies that could kill your life insurance

Insurance applicants often fudge on issues ranging from DUIs to drug use. But it's hard to hide baldfaced lies -- even though some folks go so far as shaving their heads.
[Related content: insurance, life insurance, policies, insurance rates, fraud]
By Insure.com

The price of your life insurance policy often depends on your answers to a range of application questions, plus the results of your life insurance medical exam.
Best life insurance companies

Best life insurance companies
Some applicants succumb to the temptation to lie on their applications, hoping their misrepresentations will sneak through the approval process and garner them lower rates. Here are some of the most frequent lies discovered by life insurance companies in screening applications.

"I don't use tobacco": The desire to get affordable life insurance drives many applicants to not only check the "nontobacco" boxes on their applications but also to abstain for several weeks before their medical exams so that nicotine -- or, more precisely, cotinine -- does not show up in their lab results.

"We probably see more of this than anything else," says Brian Ashe, a past chairman of the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education. And some applicants may lie unintentionally. Applicants who use nicotine in other forms, such as a nicotine patch or chewing tobacco, may not realize they are in the "tobacco" category.

"In their own minds they are not tobacco users, but in life insurers' eyes they are, in terms of disclosure," Ashe says.

If a life insurance company finds out a person lied about tobacco use after he dies of a related cause, there are two common outcomes: The company could alter the death benefit to be equal to the amount the person would have gotten had they paid tobacco rates, or the company could rescind the entire policy. An insurance company's range of remedies depends on state law. Ashe says a rescission is generally limited to within the first years of a policy, known as the contestability period.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

WINNING MOVES WEBINAR

Last week, Google’s US Managing Director Bonita Stewart hosted the 2nd webinar in the Think2010 series, entitled “Think2010: Four Winning Moves for 2010.” She discussed tools and strategies that you can use to differentiate your offerings, increase competitive advantage, and ultimately seize opportunities as the economy recovers. Below are the four key takeaways from the webinar:

1) Use precision - Flexibility yields stealing share: Utilizing precision through search can serve as the world’s largest focus group and allow you to understand how consumers want to engage with brands. Tools like Google Analytics and Insights for Search can help you increase this precision.

2) Develop deeper connections - Consumers want to connect: Understand your audience and how they are communicating, then develop marketing campaigns to target your ideal consumers. Utilizing new communication technologies within ad creatives can make your advertising more interactive. Advertising on community centric mediums like YouTube can help to increase brand engagement and ultimately help you develop deeper connections with consumers.

3) Innovate - Marry the art and the science: News and optimism about the economic recovery have increased over the past few months. Business leaders across the globe are thinking forward and seizing the opportunity to throw out old marketing rules and embrace innovation as they gear up for 2010. Large brands like GM and JetBlue, for example, are coming up with new digital strategies to act nimbly and ensure they're prepared for the opportunities the recovery will offer.

4) Be relevant - Consumers don’t stop searching: It’s important for you to stay engaged and in touch with consumer demands. Keeping a pulse on search trends is a live, real-time way for you to stay up to date on consumer interest and sentiment.

If you missed this webinar and would like to learn more, please visit the Google Business Channel on YouTube to see the recorded version. Also, be sure to stay engaged with the Think2010 series at www.google.com/think2010 where you can view videos, blog posts and future webinars.

Posted by Katrina Kurnit, Inside AdWords crew
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 3:13 PM

Friday, October 16, 2009

Mixed Stocks

wall Street boosted less to Asian Markets but European Markets get higher. Thailand
made a rebound. Stocks in India rose for

# Asian stocks mixed, get little boost from Wall Street; Europe ope.. Asian stocks mixed, Europe opens higher SEOUL, South Korea ? Asian stocks were mixed Friday, largely failing to follow through after the Dow Jones industrials closed above 10,000 points for a second day as a monthslong rally lost steam. European mark..0.8%