As nonprofit organizations struggle to balance their missions against their budgets, they often feel as though they have a twin-size sheet for a king-size bed.

Grants and private contributions are fewer and smaller, and public funds are short. Meanwhile, the needs that these organizations respond to are as great as ever, and often increasing.

Nonprofits have learned to economize: cutting overhead where possible, using more volunteers to extend their human resources, and even merging with organizations that have a similar mission.

Nonprofits also can look to their insurance and risk management expenses to economize by preventing future expense increases.

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Those holidaying or travelling over Christmas, and indeed at any point during this winter season, have been strongly advised by a leading holiday comparison website to double-check that their travel insurance provides cover against some of the more unwelcome surprises of the season, such as large volumes of snow, or even the ‘wrong type’ of snow.

With last year’s disaster stories of grounded planes and non-existent train services still painfully fresh in many peoples’ memories, the website, Cheapflights.co.uk, has advised that this year people can, and should, seek out cover for these possible eventualities.

Possible to Get Cover for Most Things

Cheapflights.co.uk’s resident travel expert, Nadine Hallak, summarised:

“While it may not be possible to plan for absolutely everything, it’s quite possible to get cover for most things.”

Hallak cautions that whilst most general travel insurance policies cover the basic essentials such as medical treatment, lost luggage, and routine cancellations, it is often necessary to widen the search in order to find cover which guards against more extraordinary events. Recalling last

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In IT architecture—just as in building architecture—there are patterns that establish the nature of a problem and how it can be solved in software. When these patterns are not followed, or do not exist, programs are created that do the same thing but in vastly different ways, which leads to difficulty when replacing or integrating systems. In the excess and surplus lines world, there are many agents, general agents and carriers who transact business electronically in very different ways because we’ve relied on programs. Sometimes these changes cause problems and we need patterns, not (more) programs, to fix them.

To illustrate what I mean by pattern, there’s a pattern called “façade” that generally describes how to wrap a complex system into a simple interface. A real-world

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When it comes to customer satisfaction, UIA insurance is currently ranking higher than the likes of RIAS, Direct Line and MORE TH>N according to Which?

Over the period between October 2010 and April 2011 Which? asked 9,783 of its members about their home insurance focussing on issues relating to customer satisfaction.

The results put UIA Insurance in seventh position with a customer score of 69%.

Mutuals Performed Well

The survey looked at, ease of obtaining a quote, purchasing a policy and contacting the provider, as well as how well customers feel they are treated by staff. UIA received four out of five stars in each category. The survey was carried out by Which?

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