The goal of RWL is to offer you the best possible fact-based advice on benefit plan design, financing, administration, communication, and compliance issues. In order to achieve this goal, we listen and learn from you about:
You will gain a broad understanding of property-casualty insurance in addition to choosing either a commercial or personal risk management and insurance concentration. The program also includes in-depth coverage of personal financial planning and financial services institutions, which reflects the convergence of the property-casualty and financial services industries.
Commercial Concentration
Commercial Property Risk Management and Insurance
Commercial Liability Risk Management and Insurance
Survey of Personal Risk Management, Insurance, and Financial Planning
Foundations of Risk Management,
Insurance, and Professionalism
Insurance Operations, Regulation, and Statutory Accounting
The Legal Environment of Insurance
Finance for Risk Management and Insurance Professionals
Financial Services Institutions
Personal Concentration (with
commercial survey)
Personal Risk Management and Property-Liability Insurance
Personal Financial Planning
Survey of Commercial Risk Management and Insurance
Code of Ethics, Risk, Understanding Risk Management, Risk Assessment, Risk Control, Risk Financing, Financial Services and Insurance Markets, Insurance Mechanism, Insurable Risks, Legal Environment of Insurance, Insurance Policy, Insurance Policy Analysis, and Amounts Payable.
Insurance Operations, Regulation of Insurance, Insurance Marketing, Underwriting Property Insurance, Underwriting Liability Insurance, Ratemaking, Property Claim Adjusting, Liability Claim Adjusting, Reinsurance, Insurer Financial Statements, Insurer Financial Management, and Insurer Business Strategy and Global Operations
U.S. Law and Regulation; Contract Law: Contract Formation, Agreement, Legal Capacity, Consideration, Legal Purpose, Genuine Assent, Form, Interpretation, and Obligations; Insurance Contract Law; Commercial Law; Property Law; Tort Law: Negligence, Intentional Torts, Products Liability, Environmental Torts, Special Liability, and Litigation Concepts; Agency Law; Insurance Applications of Agency Law; Employment Law; Business Entities; and the International Legal Environment of Insurance
Basics of Corporate Finance, Financial Statements, Sources of Additional Financial and Nonfinancial Information, Financial Statement Analysis, Working Capital Management, Time Value of Money, Discounted Cash Flow Valuation, Bonds and Stocks, Operating Environment and Corporate Finance, Insurer Investment Strategies, Insurer Income and Dividend Policy, Insurer Capital: Needs and Sources, Capital Structure of Insurers, Making Capital Investment Decisions, and Mergers and Acquisitions
Financial Markets, Federal Reserve, Money Markets, Bond Markets, Stock Markets, Derivative Securities, Banks, Finance Companies, Insurance Companies, Securities Firms and Investment Banks, Regulation of Depository Institutions, Mutual Funds, Pension Funds, and Risks Incurred by Financial Institutions
Commercial Insurance Concentration
Property Loss Exposures; Building and Personal Property Coverage; Causes of
Loss Forms; Flood, Earthquake, and Specialty Forms; Business Income; Inland
Marine and Ocean Cargo; Crime; Equipment Breakdown; Businessowners and Farmowners;
and Surety Bonds
Liability Loss Exposures, Liability Risk Control, General Liability Insurance, Business Auto Insurance, Garage and Motor Carrier Insurance, Workers’ Compensation and Employers’ Liability Loss Exposures, Workers’ Compensation and Employers’ Liability Insurance, Management Liability Loss Exposures and Insurance, Professional Liability Loss Exposures and Insurance, Environmental Loss Exposures and Insurance, Aviation Loss Exposures and Insurance, Excess and Umbrella Liability Insurance, and Advanced Risk Financing Techniques
Personal Insurance Concentration
Personal Risk Management, Homeowners Insurance, Homeowners Endorsements and
Variations, Personal Auto, Recreational Vehicles, Developing Personal Insurance
Products, Underwriting Profitability, Pricing, Reunderwriting Personal Insurance
Portfolios, and Gaining Efficiencies in Personal Insurance Operations
Life Insurance and Social Security; Health, Disability, and Long-Term Care; Basic Investment Principles; Equity and Fixed-Income Investments; Mutual Funds; Asset Allocation; Income Tax Planning; Planning for Retirement; and Estate Planning
Commercial Property, Business Income, Commercial Crime and Equipment Breakdown Insurance, Inland and Ocean Marine, Commercial General Liability, Commercial Auto, Businessowners and Farm, Workers’ Compensation and Employers’ Liability, and Risk Financing
Either CPCU 510 or 520 is a good starting place. However, students can take courses in any sequence according to their background, needs, and interests.
Which workers are "employees" and which are "independent contractors"? Making this distinction has been a difficult problem for employers in California and many other states. Answering this question correctly has important economic consequences. Employers can avoid potential out-of-pocket payment of workers’ compensation benefits and penalties for failure to insure workers who are, in fact, considered to be employees. Premiums, which might be otherwise paid to insure independent contractors, can be reduced. And, if the status of individual employees is in doubt, employers can take steps to avoid later disputes. Though not within the scope of this article, properly identifying independent contractors can also reduce health insurance, pension benefit, tax and administrative expenses.
Seeking to control these expenses, many employers have been reducing their work forces and bringing back some of their ex-employees as "independent contractors" to perform their old jobs. Where historically the independent contractor question was most important to employers in a limited number of industries (e.g. trucking, farming, construction, and real estate), recent economic and social trends are making this issue extremely important to an increasing number of employers.
For workers’ compensation purposes, the distinction between "employee" and "Independent contractor" can be a difficult one. Because the determination depends on the facts of each individual case, there is no simple test to establish a worker’s status.
Professional Liability insurance provides protection in the event your client holds you responsible for programming errors, software performance, or the failure of your work to perform as promised in your contract. Also called Technology Errors and Omissions insurance, this essential coverage includes legal defense costs - no matter how baseless the allegations. Technology Errors and Omissions insurance will pay for any resulting judgments against you, including court costs, up to the coverage limits on your policy.
The risk of legal assessments
caused by programming or service mistakes makes Technology Errors and Omissions
insurance an absolute necessity in the IT sector. Even with IT work that seems
less risky, there’s no outsmarting the consequences of a lawsuit. Practically
any firm or individual that improperly performs services can cause a client
to suffer economic loss.
For years, credit analysts and Wall Street barracudas have been using ratios to mine cash flow statements for practical revelations. The major credit-rating agencies use cash flow ratios prominently in their rating decisions. Bondholders--especially junk bond investors--and leveraged buyout specialists use free cash flow ratios to clarify the risk associated with their investments.
Many auditors spend less time with the cash flow statement than with the income statement and balance sheet. They shouldn't.
To fully understand a company's viability as an ongoing concern, an auditor would do well to calculate a few simple ratios from data on the client's cash flow statement (the statement of sources and uses of cash). Without that data, he or she could end up in the worst possible position for an auditor--having given a clean opinion on a client's financials just before it goes belly up.
When it comes to liquidity analysis, cash flow information is more reliable than balance sheet or income statement information. Balance sheet data are static--measuring a single point in time--while the income statement contains many arbitrary noncash allocations--for example, pension contributions and depreciation and amortization. In contrast, the cash flow statement records the changes in the other statements and nets out the bookkeeping artifice, focusing on what shareholders really care about: cash available for operations and investments.
That's because, over time, free cash flow ratios help people gauge a company's ability to withstand cyclical downturns or price wars. Is a major capital expenditure feasible in a tough year? If the last time total cash got a hair below where it is now the company's capital structure had to be revamped, the auditor should treat the deficient value like a loud buzzer.
Many auditors and, to a lesser extent, corporate financial managers have been slow to learn how to use cash flow ratios. In our experience, auditors traditionally use either a balance sheet or a transaction cycles approach. Neither approach emphasizes cash or the statement of cash flows. While auditors do use the cash flow statement to verify balance sheet and income statement accounts and to trace common items to the cash flow statement, their use of ratios for cash-related analysis has been limited to the current ratio (current assets/current liabilities) or the quick ratio (current assets less inventory/current liabilities). According to an informal survey of Big 5 and other national accounting firms, even now their audit procedures have not changed in ways that take advantage of the information presented in the cash flow statement, even though that statement has been required for over a decade.