2019 Azbee Awards of Excellence

Category

Print > Regular Column, Contributed > Pacific

Awarded to

Chis Burand, Contributing Columnist; Andrea Wells, Editor-in-Chief; Guy Boccia, VP of Design.

Entry details

The Competitive Advantage by Chris Burand

Issue date (if applicable): 
Publication name: Insurance Journal
Publishing company: Wells Media Group
Website home page: www.insurancejournal.com

Please describe the publication's mission and readership:

If it happened in property/casualty insurance, InsuranceJournal.com covered it.
InsuranceJournal.com strives to remain the property/casualty insurance industry's No. 1 website with accurate, unbiased, timely and relevant news and features to help its readers stay abreast of their business. The website and its daily newsletter are produced for property/casualty insurance agents, brokers, agency owners, carrier executives, vendors, policymakers and industry employees who want to be informed and challenged. It offers the latest and breaking domestic and global news on the industry, economy, regulation, courts, mergers, products, markets and competition, as well as features, analysis, research and viewpoints. The site and newsletter are produced by a small team of experienced journalists who are proud of their extensive reporting, which they supplement with edited contributions and newswires to provide the most complete coverage available on the industry. The editors cover national and international news as well as news from all states, which is important because insurance is regulated at the sate level. The team goes beyond routine press releases to provide its daily coverage. Out of an average of 700 articles a month, about 70 percent are original. The original work involves state and federal regulation and court rulings, industry mergers, research and trends, trade conferences and speeches, profiles and interviews along with exclusive research including a benchmark report on industry compensation, a survey with young agents, a compilation of the Top 100 private independent agencies, and lists of Best Agencies to Work For and Agents of the Year.

Please describe the enterprising work that went into this entry and its significance or impact on readers:

Chris Burand is one of the most respected consultants in the insurance agency field because he challenges his clients and speaks truth to management. He not only offers practical advice but also identifies important trends and relates them to agencies and their futures. He often plays the role of contrarian. His regular columns are among the best read features. He not only knows the insurance industry and agency management, but also how to write. He is like a savvy tabloid editor in framing his topics: “Best Practices - Just Kidding!;” “The Death of Underwriting and Underwriters;” "Let's Eradicate Incompetency” along with the two in this submission titled “The Declining Value of Insurance” and “Most of the Time, Nothing Goes Wrong” and ‘This Is a Big Problem.” He gets readers’ attention and then keeps it until the end because they can tell he knows what he is talking about and nobody has ever told them that before now.

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Entry URL(s), if applicable:

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