The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Claims-Made Insurance: The Policy That Changed the Industry: A Deep Dive, Review, and History Frederick Fisher

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Claims-Made Insurance: The Policy That Changed the Industry: A Deep Dive, Review, and History Frederick Fisher Amazon.com Frederick J. Fisher's "Claims-Made Insurance: The Policy That Changed the Industry" is an indispensable guide for insurance professionals navigating claims-made policies. This comprehensive book explores the evolution and critical aspects of these policies that have transformed the insurance landscape. This book serves as a manual for industry professionals, brokers, underwriters, and claims adjusters, teaching them how to navigate and explain claims-made policies. It also empowers policyholders by clarifying their rights and responsibilities, helping them avoid coverage gaps and denial scenarios. Fisher's engaging writing style and authoritative knowledge make this book informative and accessible. It provides practical advice and best practices, fostering transparency and trust between insurers and insureds. As the industry faces challenges from private equity and market dynamics, this primer is a vital resource for anyone involved in professional liability insurance. Whether you are a veteran or newcomer, "Claims-Made Insurance: The Policy That Changed the Industry" is your essential guide to mastering claims-made policies and ensuring robust coverage in a changing landscape.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster with your brain.

Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi folks, it's Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. There you go ladies and gentlemen, our latest thing that makes a picture. Welcome to over 16 years, 2,300 episodes of The Chris Voss Show. My gosh, my back is tired. I just flew in. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily

reflect the opinions of the host or The Chris Voss Show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing young man where we talked to today about his insights on insurance and how you can maybe, you know, do better with your life and money and insurance and you know, all that sort of stuff. Everybody needs insurance kind of, cause I need insurance from stupidity cause there's a lot on X right now.

Anyway, go to goodreads.com for it says Chris Foss, linkedin.com for it says Chris Foss, Chris Foss one on the Tik Tok and all those crazy places on the internet. We have on the show, Frederick J. Fisher. He is the author of the latest book that came out June 18th, 2024. It is called claims made insurance, the policy that changed the industry, a deep dive review and history. the industry a deep dive review and history. Frederick Fisher is a seasoned expert in professional liability with a career spanning over 50 years.

Renowned for his dedication to client financial security, he advocates for clients with strong financial safeguards, letting competitors focus on selling some insurance. He serves on the editorial board of Agents of America and is an original faculty member of the claims college school of professional lines and has been the senior technical advisor, a research manual titled professional liability insurance published by the international risk management. Welcome to the show. How are you, Frederick? I'm very well, Chris. Thank you. And thank you for having me today. Thank you for coming Give us your comm so people can find you on the interwebs. It's Fisher F I S H E R C is in Charlie G's and George calm Fisher CG calm. Thank you. So give us what is a 30,000 overview of your new book?

it's It's exactly like it sounds claims made. And that's a special kind of policy that's usually issued to professionals who provide a service to others for a fee. And that could mean all sorts of types of professionals, including accountants, architects and engineers, lawyers, of course, insurance agents and brokers, real estate agents and brokers,

doctors and anybody in the medical field, consultants of all kinds, people that are involved in media and talk shows, you know, same thing. And the reason for it is, number one, it's usually the damages that a professional messes up. They're not really, with the exception of medical and some other types of professions, for the most part, they're economic loss. You don't get a broken bone, you don't get a bloody nose when your lawyer fails to file a lawsuit on time for you, or your accountant screws up your tax return. They're talking about an economic loss. And that's number

one. Number two, unlike your homeowner and your auto policy Those are written on what's called in the current spaces meaning the accident must take place during the policy term And that's often because you know when you run a red light and hit another car somebody's immediately damaged They may not know the extent, but you know how serious it might be but that they're immediately damaged But when an attorney fails to put together your estate plan properly and so there's going to be a major tax consequence, nobody's going to find out about that until you're dead. Now that could be the day, unfortunately, or it could be 20 years from now, hopefully, but still nobody's going to know they were damaged by a mistake until much longer,

much later. Or maybe your insurance broker fails to change the address on your policy or doesn't renew it on time or something. You're not gonna know until you have some kind of claim that you submit and then you find out, oh, surprise, you don't have any coverage. Oh, wow. So that's one of the reasons why claims made policies came about.

Because the damage is not immediate. And who wants to keep all of their corporate records, all of their file records forever, because it might take 20, it may take years before a mistake becomes an injury that results in a claim against the professional. It gets much more complicated from there. It's very dangerous coverage. Wow. So do you see that a lot where, you know, these things happen years from later and like, I get like basically as a consultant, they give someone advice like, oh yeah, just invest in

Bitcoin and it'll be fine. Black architects and engineers, the statute of limitations on construction is often 10 years. So when you design something, you may not know there's a design flaw for quite a while. The bridge doesn't collapse right away. The house doesn't fall apart right away. So again, when the architect or an engineer makes a major mistake, it may take some time before anybody realizes what the result of that mistake is gonna be. Now, there's a lot of coaches we have on the show too, so would coaches fall into that category

of people who should need this type of insurance? They're usually covered under a policy provided by whoever has hired them, whether it's a professional team or an affiliate team or schools and universities. And those types of policies are usually written out on the current spaces, not usually a claim is made. an affiliate team or schools and universities. Those types of policies are usually written down in the current spaces, not usually claims made.

Not always. It could be claims made, but there are some real dangers to claims made policies and hence the book because it's not just so easy to figure out. What's a claim? There are 25 different definitions in an insurance policy as to what is considered a claim. There is no standardization. And that's part of the problem with the whole insurance industry anyways, is that you have to read the policy and you're expected to understand it too.

Wow. I mean, and you basically have to be a lawyer to read the legal. That is not always, you know, feasible. I mean, there was actually an article written by an attorney and he was absolutely right. The best time to hire a lawyer to look over your insurance policies before you sign on the dotted line. But for businesses, they're no longer buying just five types of policies like they were when I first got into the industry 50 years ago. Back then, you only needed a commercial liability policy, a commercial property policy, an umbrella policy, some health and life insurance

coverage for your staff if you're so inclined as they were back then, and then of course workers comp. That was about it. But now as this law firm you know put in their article, they listed out 18 different policies that businesses often have to purchase today. Wow. Who can afford to hire a lawyer to look over 18 policies and do it within a couple of weeks because when you get your renewal quote, you'd probably only have two weeks or less to review it and accept it.

On top of it, now you've got to worry about a 50-state review as well. Wow. I mean, the cost on that would be astronomical, but he wasn't wrong. But on the same token, there's no standardization in the law. Just because one cyber liability policy might cover you for social media fraud, for wiring money to the wrong, because the president sent an email saying wire money right away, and it turns out to be a scam. It's called, I don't know why they call it social media, but that's the phrase I got. But in essence, you could have coverage on the same policy

with a particular insurance company in one state and in another state, the state says, the court said, no, this doesn't cover that. So how are you supposed to know that? How the law firm is supposed to know the law of all 50 states? That's the whole craziness about that article. But that's how complicated it's got.

Now, when we mentioned coaches earlier, I was referring to coaches, consultants, people who give advice. Were you interpreting what I said? No, I was thinking sports coaches mostly. Yeah, yeah. But in that context, people that are consultants that do coaching, whether it's life skills or management consulting, those policies are also written on what's called a claims made basis or claim or more importantly now claims made and you got to report the claim to the insurance company during the policy term.

So there's at least two conditions to trigger the policy and that's important to know. But more importantly, there's probably two or three hundred different types of what they call miscellaneous professionals, as you've described. Everything from life coaches and the motivational people to marketing and the play with practice coaches and consultants. And those policies are very, very, very dangerous because they are fraught with all kinds of generalized exclusions. Then they may issue an endorsement that may be something unique to your profession versus another type of profession.

So on one hand, they're defining the scope of coverage that may seem pretty broad. And then you look at some exclusions and all of a sudden, holy moly, I'm not covered for anything. And unfortunately, that's a major problem. My focus has been financial protection, financial security for my customer or my client. And I can tell you that, and it's intentional, that more and more, these policies are being crafted by clever attorneys figuring out ways in which they can word a policy so that claims that would Normally have been paid historically. We're not talking about gray areas here

We're talking about stuff that normally would be covered and all of a sudden they're drafting language. So it won't be Wow So it's unbelievable. I'm on a war Possible done it I'm on a warpath. Plausible deniability built in. Lawyers invented that concept. Yeah. You know? But it is dangerous coverage. And this is one of the reasons why the book was not written for people in the insurance

industry. The book was written for consumers. Yeah. And those people would need to get that as well. Now, so yeah, insurance is hard to do. Is it the same for entrepreneurs? I know that entrepreneurs, you know, we don't have companies hiring stuff on us. A lot of coaches, consultants, speakers are entrepreneurs.

Well, there is coverage as well. Yeah, of course. Entrepreneurs, you know, depends on what we're talking about here. Are we looking for somebody who wants to start a new franchise for some kind of interesting food thing? Or are we talking about somebody who's looking to raise capital for a new tech company? And so it really has to be looked at and analyzed industry by industry as to what need the need. Or maybe you want to start a hedge fund or a private equity fund.

Boy, good luck with that. That is some of the most complicated coverage around because in a situation like that, you've got a private equity company that's gonna syndicate their investments by raising millions of dollars from investors. And they've gotta sit on that cash before they hit the desired amount of money

they're trying to raise. And then, now the question is, what's the purpose? I mean, what kind of industry or business are we going into or to create? And the private equity company that sponsors that has a problem because they're gonna form an LLC or some other corporate formation, but probably an LLC, and they're gonna call it the Investment

Fund One LLC. And now they've raised $150 million. But the sponsoring entity, the company that's doing this, the private equity company doing it, they don't own that company. The investors do. So it's not a subsidiary. They may have some money in the deal themselves, they may own 3% or 5% of a company, but when they raise $150 million from investors, the

investors own that company. And so there's a special type of policy for that, that covers not only the sponsoring entity private equity company, but also the portfolio companies that they form. That's what they're called a portfolio company. It's part of a portfolio of entities that they've created with the help of investors that have provided them money. Talk about complicated coverage. That's probably one of the more complicated coverages I've ever been involved in, both as a broker and as a claim person and consultant. Very complicated and you better take your time.

The overall concern I have, whether you're buying auto or homeowners or a private equity company forming a portfolio, insurance is not like toothpaste, but that's how it's being sold. And the brokers and the insurance companies are advertising like crazy that, you know, buy on price, buy on price, buy on price. But the problem is, never buy on price, never. No two policies are alike, not even at homeowners or auto insurance.

So when you save $400 buying your insurance from this company versus that company, what have you given up? They're not telling you that And we we are so programmed for that and more importantly, there's the placebo effect Aren't you glad Chris you say $400 by moving your auto insurance to me. Here's your policy. Don't you feel good? You're covered until you find out you're not Until you find out you're not yeah, and that's when you submit a claim. And that's not when you want a surprise.

Yeah, most definitely it's not when you want a surprise. As you go through the book, tell us about your journey. How did you grow up? What got you into the fields you got into and eventually wanting to write the book? When you graduate from college with a social science field major, you don't have a lot of options. And so I decided I wanted to go to law school. So I intentionally went to a night law school

because back then everybody wanted to be a lawyer and it was hard to get into top schools. And even if you did, unless you're in the graduated, the top 10% of your class, you didn't have a job waiting for you. Meanwhile, if you went to a night law school and get a job in the legal industry during the day as I did ultimately You know, I had 11 job offers waiting for me when I graduated. Oh, wow

But my first gig, you know, it was working for a life insurance company and I thought I not a chance guys I was not happy with that job And ultimately I had various jobs in sales and marketing and what have you, and I could live just fine with those. Because I really wanted to be an entertainment lawyer. I had a lot of friends who were artists and musicians in the 60s, and I was living in the Bay Area, San Francisco, and so there was a lot of opportunity

to do artist representation. And then I stumbled onto a job as a claim adjuster. I think everybody knows what a claim adjuster is. They investigate insurance claims. But we weren't handling auto claims. We weren't handling slip and falls in department stores. This was a unique firm that was handling professional liability claims against lawyers and architects and accountants and insurance agents and

brokeries and real estate agents and brokers and medical malpractice which I didn't want to do have anything to do with that was just way too real and we were also dealing with a policy form called a claims made policy form was written in 1972 and this was in 1975 and I just got hooked. I mean, every single claim was different. I am learning so much about a whole bunch of different stuff. It was unreal. And it turned out I was pretty good at it. The clients liked me.

I was settling cases. I was negotiating cases and I just fell into it. And ultimately when I graduated law school, I had 11 job offers from law firms and I turned them all down. Pete Slauson Oh, wow. Pete Rejt Because the company had just opened up a branch office in Los Angeles and they offered me the position to be its manager. And I figured, you know what? I have a choice here. I can take a job at a law firm and take orders or I can take this position in Southern California and give them. And so I decided that was a better opportunity. And ultimately I ended up buying them out

and took over the company and expanded the operations and services. But what was unique about it too, was that when you handle enough claims against real estate agents, and when you handle enough claims against insurance brokers, you suddenly start seeing these patterns. And you start saying to yourself,

this claim was preventable. There's no reason we have to be here doing this. And that's when I started writing articles and publishing articles in the trade journals on how to prevent a claim. We called it best practice. We called it, you know, claim prevention and loss control. And I wasn't the first. There were two people that predate me on this,

but I was pretty close in time because I think one was in the early 1970s and my first presentation was in 1978 and my first article was in 1979. Ultimately lawyers caught onto it and in the 1990s and they called it best practices, right? So I'm actually one of four people that invented it, invented what later became known as best practices, right? So I'm actually one of four people that invented it, invented what later became known as best practices.

But I'm all about that. And I'm also all about quality of coverage. But during those first 20 years of my career, I've read so many insurance policies, I don't know, thousands, not all of them were claims made either. I mean, if you're handling a case against an insurance broker, then you gotta read the policy he was supposed to provide.

So you had that problem. And I just, I don't know why. I couldn't review a insurance policy in 15 minutes and tell you whether it's good or bad, and then tell you why. But I've done it so long, that's all I know. But the model changed. And so in 1994, I decided to get my insurance broker license and I transitioned out of claims, informed what's called, we followed what's called a wholesale model.

We didn't represent the policyholder directly, we represented the policyholders insurance broker. You'd be surprised how often that happens, where retail broker, you're the buyer, you have your insurance broker, we call that a retail broker, and then they'd come to me to access the markets. And one of the reasons they would do that is because we had expertise.

They knew we had their back, especially when you're selling professional liability insurance, which is as dangerous a coverage as can be, and the policies are complicated. And we were about not selling insurance like toothpaste, we were about selling financial protection and financial security. So that's your thumbnail on how my career came about. What an incredible journey through this stuff and being an attorney and insurance and everything

else. Now the book is billed as being a book for, I guess, both consumers and industry professionals, brokers, underwriters, and claims adjusters to teach them how to understand these things for their clients, I guess. Absolutely. I mean, there isn't anybody in, if you look at the reviews on Amazon, I've got 15 five-star reviews and they all say the same thing. This is for everyone.

And one person actually said his copy was so marked up and highlighted that I had a thought it had a case in jaundice. That's interesting. They're making language where they can easily decline something. This is crazy. It is intentional. And I'll give you a good example of it. I'm still trying to get my head around this appellate

decision. It was out of New Jersey last year. And if you're a major corporation, you're going to buy what are called towers of excess coverage. And the excess, you're going to get a,, first of all you have a self-insured retention of maybe five or 10 million. Then you get a policy that may provide

another 20 million over that. And then you get another policy that might provide 10 or 20 or 30 million over that and on and on. And you're gonna build coverage into the stratosphere. And in this particular instance, it was Pharmacy Accord, they're a major pharmaceutical company. So you can imagine that they have a tower of liability insurance that's well into

the hundreds of millions. And when you wanna enter into a settlement, you've gotta make sure you've got every insurance company's permission. You just can't go to your insurance company, say, okay, we're entering into a $207 million settlement, we need you to write your check. No, you have to clear it with your insurance companies

first, and they did that. So they enter into this $207 million settlement, and the sixth layer of excess came in at what would be, we would call the $160 million layer. They had two conditions in their policy, and it was not an endorsement, it was built into the language. And what it basically said was,

the first condition is all underlying insurers had to have tendered their limits, and that I don't have a problem with, because they're supposed to have the 160 million, it's supposed to be on the table from other insurance companies before you get mine, you know my money and so I have no problem with that. It was the second half of that sentence. Not only must all underlying insurers have tendered their limits or exhausted their limits

but they also had to admit liability. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow. You're not even in the industry and you know how, what do you mean admit liability? Nobody admits liability in a seller, let alone the insurance company. Any settlement you ever hear of this, they've made a settlement and no one- Yeah, we just want to move on.

Yeah, no one- We're paying $207 million, but we didn't do anything wrong. Exactly. We're just going to move this behind us and move on. But here's the problem with that. Not only did this insurance company at the sixth layer get out, but all the other insurers above them were gone too. Wow.

Because they had similar conditions. All underlying insurers had to tender the limits. This one didn't, so everybody's out. So Pharmacy, of course, had to cover $47 million of that settlement out of pocket. Holy crap. That's some serious money. And there was this one law firm, and I'm inclined to mention their name, but I think I won't. They published an article that was picked up on the internet and distributed widely, which was what they wanted. And they did a review of the case and it was 100% accurate.

It was the last sentence that got me. I couldn't believe what I was reading. And it basically said it would behoove insurance companies to hire knowledgeable coverage counsel to help them draft policy language so as to be able to avoid paying claims they normally would pay. Holy shit. In other words, it's intentional. And that's not the only one.

I know of four law firms that have published similar articles, editorials, one of them was an editorial with their monthly online magazine, extolling the use of what's called absolute exclusions. And so this is all intentional. And the problem is, is that, you know, why, you know, they want to do this to protect the supplier versus the consumer, maybe we can have that conversation, but it really doesn't matter,

because at the end of the day, suppliers are also consumers. Yeah. And so they're basically slit in their own throat. And the PR gets really bad too. I mean, you see the, a lot of fallout PR on the state farm for the California fires and you know, the consumers get upset, they're angry and it kind of becomes a meme after a while if you're not careful.

And so I will venture to say that probably more than half of those people that lost their everything were probably all underinsured. And one of the reasons being is, you know, number one, they're not paying attention. Number two, they're programmed into saving money. And you know, the placebo effectors your policy, you just save, you know, $500, aren't you happy? Until you submit a claim.

And then of course, there are all these coverages that people don't even think about that are involved in fire insurance on the dwelling. It's not just the fire limit. You've got, you know, debris removal, additional living expense to live somewhere else while you're waiting for your house to be rebuilt, you're going to have your personal property limits, right? You may have shrubbery and whatever to deal with. You may even have to worry about contamination problems. But at the end of the day, nobody tells you that. Your insurance broker doesn't have to advise you on this in 37 states. And California is one of them. There's no duty to advise. So unless you specifically ask questions and they're wrong or they misrepresent coverage,

or they held themselves out as experts, you're supposed to figure all this out on your own. But the big one, actually the two big ones, is not just the additional living expense. Boy, that could be really dangerous. Some of them have time limits. Oh, wow. You know, you're only given ALE, you know, for one year or maybe two year. And then there may even be a policy limit on it.

There may be a sublimit of coverage as to how much they're willing to pay. So you have that problem. The only one worth buying, as far as I'm concerned, is what's called actual loss sustained. There's no limit and there's no time limit. And some of these people right now, you're looking at a year or two before you can even, you know, you'd be lucky to get rebuilt in one or two years or three years. People in California,

unless they suspend some things, I mean, it's going to take years just to get the zoning and they've still got to get that debris out. That debris is highly hazardous and toxic. And they've still got to get that debris out. That debris is highly hazardous and toxic. It's moving it. The wind can blow the shit, so it's got to be moved. A lot of people haven't gone to their homes, even if their homes survived, because the air is toxic. And a lot of toxic air and dust, there's a-

Smoke damage. ... a thin layer of dust of everywhere that's toxic too. And it's gotten in the houses. Like, even if the house survived, I saw a video the other day and it was a house that survived, but everything in the house is covered with this thin layer of black dust, but the black dust is toxic. Like they literally have to wear a hazmat suit when they go into their house and the breathers.

So yeah, I mean, you just look at it and just, I think I heard on Sam Harris's podcast, he interviewed one of the XLA administrators who's worked for the government and he goes, yeah, the cleanup is going to take a long time. They're going to have to have trucks coming in and out of there. They're going to have to be sealed, covered, hazmat, just, you know, you can't drive them down the road because it'll spray the hazmat crap everywhere and a mixture of chemicals from all different sorts of elements there. It's going to be a long time. Another coverage you have to worry about is code and ordinance upgrades. What portion

of rebuilding your house is going to be allocated to building to the current codes? Building code and that's another limit that people don't realize Maybe limited to 10% of your fire fire limit and that may be clearly inadequate at the end of the day and a good example of that is what happened in the Woolsey fire after in Alibu and you know, I think they lost close to 800 homes there and Woolsey fire after in Alibu and you know, I think they lost close to 800 homes there and One of the new building codes they put into place was and then this added $15,000 to the cost right there But it was making you had to get an engineering firm to come out and do core sample testing to make sure that the ground Was dense enough to handle the weight of the new foundation Wow

That's just wild so I added $15,000 to the cost of rebuilding right there. And then when you consider all the other building codes, they wanted to affect it. Now it was pretty strict to begin with, like Beverly Hills. That's an enormous factor. And people don't even think about the fact that most policies will limit the code and ordinance coverage to 10% of the fire, fire law, fire insurance. Now, some insurance companies will give you a lot. Others will say, we'll only go as high as 25%. So if we start up 10, but if you want more, we'll go 25%, which may or may not be enough

depending on the kind of construction you have. But these are things your broker doesn't have to tell you. You're supposed to read the policy yourself and figure that out? Jesus. I should have just wanted to be an attorney just to be a human being. I went to school to be an attorney just to be a human being so I could read all this stuff. Let me ask you this.

One of the problems I've always had, I'll have an attorney say, oh, you need to get this blanket policy and, oh, you need to do this and that and the other. It's hard to find some of these brokers that have a clue what some of these things are, you know, like employment insurance. If you've got, you know, if you're an owner of a company and your business partner dies, you know, life insurance or financial coverage for that, for the fault of, you know, the burden that's left behind. And a lot of these brokers, you'll call them up and they just have no idea.

They know how to sell you cookie cutter homeowners insurance, cookie cutter car insurance. How do you find the better brokers that can know some of these blanket policies and things like that? Number one, and don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good farmers agents, for instance, but they're semi-captive. They have to give farmers first right of refusal. And then, if they're properly licensed,

they can go anywhere they want. But they have to give farmers first right of refusal. And then you've got captive agents who can only place coverage with that one company. Wow. And I would avoid that like the plug Yeah, you want to go to an independent agent, you know I remember the big I for haps or the PIA where they've got 10 or 15 different companies they can place with hmm and You're probably gonna get better service. But again, especially in California, which follows the order-taker standard

You got to make it clear what your expectations are in doing the writing. Wow. I'm serious. I need your guidance, I want your advice, I want your knowledge, I want you to go through the coverages with me so I understand why I should buy something, so to speak. But like I said, we're all programmed on prices,

and people don't wanna,, you know, a lot of people just don't want to spend the money. I've seen major lawyers do the same thing where they know they've got this multi-million dollar property they built in Colorado, for instance, but they don't want to spend more than X amount of money a year. And so how do you do that? Either reduce the square footage, you know, from something footage from what it really is, or you keep the square footage the way it's supposed to be, and you lower the cost of replacement from $600 a

square foot to $300. Oh, you're going to save money then, until the house burns down and you find you're underinsured. Mad Fientist 2 Crazy-ness, crazy-ness. Mad Fientist 1 But that has happened. Mad Fientist 2 Yeah. So give us a pitch out to people as we go out to pick up your book. Is there a way they can learn more about you, get consulting from you, coaching, etc.? For one thing, my website has all my contract information.

And again, the website is Fischer, F-I-S-H-E-R, C is in Charmany, G is in George, which stands for Fischer Consulting Group. And so it's fisherconsultinggroup.com. I probably have 15 or 20 different articles that I've published over the, that I've written that were published by trade journals that you can review and download that goes over a lot of the things that we've discussed. Links to my, to get my book on Amazon are there as well. And then of course you can always call me.

I'm semi-retired, so give me a call. I've got time. I mean, I do expert witness work and so sometimes I am kind of jammed with deadlines and what have you. But you know, it's not like I'm working eight hours a day either. And I love what I do and I love helping people. And I can read an insurance policy and tell you the ups and downs in usually 15 minutes with the exception of cyber liability insurance. Those policies are a nightmare. They cover so many different things that these policies are 100 pages long. And they've got so many what I call gotchas in them.

You wouldn't believe it. But which is what I call it. Actually, my next book is going to be called The Gotchas That'll Getcha. The Gotchas That'll Getcha. I love it. Yeah. That's a gotcha. It's going to get you. Again, this is where clever attorneys are helping insurance companies draft policies so they don't have to pay claims. What's driving all of this, again, is just pure greed. Profit, profit, profit, profit, profit. You mean capitalism is greedy?

No way. Yeah, really. Well, tell me, I'll tell you a sad thing. I think it's the current issue of Consumer Reports. They did their annual automobile review, and only one American car got best in class. Just one. Of any classes, because they have several classes of cars, of course. And only one American car made it in best of class,

and that was the Corvette. Wow. No other American car was on it. Now, in all fairness, they were also, you didn't see a lot of American cars on the worst list either. There were a few, but not like some others. But it's pretty sad to say that we don't want to make, you know, good products anymore because

that just eats into profit. Yeah. Did you, I mean, did you think you'd ever be worried about flying on a Boeing? I mean, I've actually been looking forward to flying upside down and landing that way. Having the top go off, you know, and I mean, it circulates the air and keeps you from getting COVID. So there's some benefits to it. I don't think people see the big picture when they read the headlines of plane landing upside down in Canada like it did this year.

You know, I mean, why be normal? You know, I think that's what a lot of the kids say nowadays. I actually pride myself on the fact that I'm not, because if I was normal, I probably wouldn't be on this today I Pride myself, you know I pride myself of having a reputation with the insurance company underwriters we dealt with as being a coverage terrorist Coverage terrorist. Oh, yeah

No-fly list maybe I don't like this language and I want it fixed. I usually got my way. You're an attorney, so if they don't go your way, you sue the hell out of them. Well, it wasn't so much that I had a legal background. It was because we placed a lot of business. My company was well over $30 million a year in premium when I sold it. We placed a lot of business with a lot of insurance companies, and if I wanted the policy endorsed properly to provide proper coverage,

I usually got it. And if I didn't, we did something unusual. We would disclose that to our customers. We had in our quote templates, we had a special disclosure section, and this is where we disclosed policy language that we didn't like and we couldn't fix. But at least they were making knowledgeable decisions.

In the medical industry, it would be called informed consent. But I don't mind selling garbage, and don't get me wrong, I have. But only because, number one one I told you it was garbage I told you why it was garbage and I offered you something better and then if you make an informed decision that you want the cheap Policy fine don't come crying to me when you end up having a claim that's not covered And that that's why that's why pride makes open saying I was a coverage terrorist, I mean that was my goal What that label maybe that should be the third book.

Don't come crying to me. I think that's what the gotcha is. That'll get you. That's where it comes from. We've actually filed a trademark application with the that we already did. And I've got the websites tied up too. Good for you as thank you for coming to the show.

We really appreciate it. It's been very insightful and I'm going to read it so I can take a look at what my insurance stuff coverage is because I'm always concerned and being an entrepreneur, there's always some sort of insurance I need. Running a podcast, I need insurance for being an idiot host. Do they make an idiot host policy for ... Well, do me a favor though, if you do read it and I would encourage you to do it, please leave an honest review on Amazon. I want an honest review. I'm not asking for any favors.

As we go out, give us the dot coms one more time or people can find you on the interwebs. Fischer, F-I-S-H-E-R, C-G, CharlieGeorge.com. FischerCG.com is my website. There's a lot of information there, includingCG.com is my website. There's a lot of information there, including how to contact me or email me. I do respond to these things because I'm all about helping people make sure they got the financial protection they should have. I just got it on the audiobook, so I like the audiobook because I can listen to the

jamming in the car. Oh my God. Me, I'd rather have them listen to the Grateful Dead channel. I mean, I'm a Metallica fan, so we'll probably be at odds there, but different type of music for a different mindset. That's all you need. Music's a new view. It doesn't matter what it is. If it moves you, that's all that matters. That's true. That's very true.

I've got a lot of great friends who were dead heads and they, they love the dead. And I don't know. There's that. So thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Oh, thanks for having me and hosting me, Chris. I hope everybody didn't disappear while we were talking. No, no. I think this is very interesting stuff because like I say, I've always had a problem where I'll hear about, hey, you should get a blanket policy that kind of covers everything

or health insurance emergency policy that covers really trauma, high-end events. And I've had partners, so there's partners insurance we've tried to look at where if we lose that partner, somehow the loss of the work that they- Buyout coverage, yeah. But that's a life insurance issue. I think buyout coverage is buyout coverage where if that partner dies and their wife inherits their stocks, is buyout coverage going to go out or something like that? Something has to be arranged when you first take on a partner is that you have the ability, in the event of death, you have the ability to buyout based on whatever value you want

to set, whether it's book value or EBITDA value. And then you usually end up with life insurance to secure that. And so the beneficiary of the life insurance is the company, not the spouse. Pete Yeah. Pete He's the author of the latest book that came out in 2024, I believe it was. Pete Yep. Pete Claims Made Insurance, the Policy policy that changed the industry, a deep dive review and history and people after seeing the kerfuffle in 2025 of the fires in Palisades in California and then other things that are going on, it's hard to get insured in Florida

as well and I believe Texas and other places are starting to have trouble that have the high risk stuff that comes through. I expect a lot of lawsuits against insurance brokers for being underinsured. And the insurance brokers have their insurance on a claims made basis. Oh wow. Everybody needs to review their policies. Read the fine print.

And as lawyers like to say caveat mtor make your insurance Make your insurance broker explain it to you. Is there Latin phrase for that? caveat mtor caveat mtor let the buyer beware Thanks for tuning in everyone go to good reads comm fortress chris Voss linkedin.com Fortress chris Voss chris Voss one on the tick tock itty and all those crazy places in the internet be good to each other Stay safe. We'll see you next time