Consumer Guide Online

Archive for January, 2008

The new anti-money laundering program is reviewed and amended by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), Department of Treasury

The revised anti-money laundering program requires the insurance companies to report any suspicious transaction of $5,000 or more. However the monitoring is applicable only to the ‘covered policies’. It has excluded the insurance companies from mandatory reporting on less risky policies.

‘Covered policy’ includes- 1) permanent life insurance other than group life insurance 2) annuity contract other than group annuity plan. 3) Policies having ‘cash value’ or investment features.

The program is in effect since May 2006.

H5N1 strain of the influential Bird flu is posing a serious threat to human lives of late. Under the present circumstances, business houses are made aware of taking precautions in order to cope with any adverse conditions. Henceforth, the need arises to perfectly figure out a business continuity management plan and also ensure a research on the key risk indicators.

Questions might arise, keeping in mind the capabilities of some of the insurers in terms of an immobile reinsurance market. Owing to a static life insurance coverage situation and pertaining to the HHS prophecy, the worth of death claims from the flu for group life insurance would amount to $11 billion and $20 billion in terms of individual life insurance, resulting in a sum total of $31 billion.

The insurance industry is adorned by some companies who have a strong financial potential, but at the same time it also has some dark patches in terms of some relatively weaker ones. A ‘severe pandemic’ might just sound too harsh on a small fry to survive.

Under such consequences an absorption of the smaller players by their home state’s insurance department would seem inevitable. This influenza pandemic would certainly invite quite a handful of the industry dilemmas beyond the claims. The count of the aftermath would be gradually unfolded within a span of six to nine months. This in turn might see the investment markets slowly gaining back control within a period of time. An abrupt increase in the workload and a sudden reduction in the workforce would certainly raise a wall in front of the employing insurers.

Some people are of the mind set that what money they can’t take with them they are not going to give their children. This is the type of mindset that says I earned my money and when I go if my kids want to have the same amount of money then they need to work for it.

Personally I would give the majority of my money to my family and maybe 5 to 10% to a charity. But then I am the type of person who has a college fund setup so I can help my nieces and nephews out, and any grandchildren when they come.

A friend of the family has when she dies a stipulation that 20% of her estate goes to I believe it was a cancer related charity. Which for her net worth would come out to 200-400k and the rest is divided between her family.

I have lost a car. It has been stolen from the parking zone. Can you suggest me ways as to how I can revive the car. Or what could be the measures i should take to avoid such happenings?

answer:
It is generally the police that will locate your vehicle. Normally this does not mean they go looking for it but they may release an advisory to look for it with their patrol.

as for preventing it in the future you can get a car alarm, the club for you steering wheel and the club for your break/gas pedal. But all of these are just a deterrent. There is no guaranteed way to prevent vehicle theft. Every method of preventing it has an accompying way to get around it. Oh there is also the gas shutoff switch and ignition kill switches both of which can be bypassed.

So what I guess I am saying is you can add deterrents to your vehicle but no real sure fire prevention mechanism.

Just make sure you file a police report and file a claim with your insurance including the police report.

I am going to have a blood and urine test for insurance purposes. I smoke marijuana often. Will the tests results show that information?

answer:
I believe the results will disclose that information. Even when one of my friends got his latent tuberculosis test results, it was disclosed after all that he was too much into smoking!
This is just a routine test before the underwriters approve your application. But yes, these medical tests if proved positive may increase your initial premiums by a few bucks.
Many life or health insurance company will flat decline your application if any medical testing shows the use of illegal drugs.

Women often have the perception that acquiring Small Business Funding is a painful, complicated and lengthy process. However, the truth is quite the contrary. A businesswoman will have to spend more or less the same time and efforts as a businessman to get a loan.

Loans are available for women entrepreneurs in a variety of fields such as catering, consulting, beauty care, bed & breakfasts, photo studios,pet supplies, greeting cards, etc.

Read the rest of this entry »

I run a website where members pay a subscription to get an elevated membership. The payment for the membership subscription is taken on another full blown ecommerce shop as it has a merchant account already setup etc.
My problem is that quite a few customers get confused as to why they cant login to the shop with the same username and password they setup on the first website.
I had thought of this before and considered copying the user accounts from that website to the shop one, but had (without researching) gave up on that idea as I thought there might be data protection constraints.
Both sites are on different dedicated servers that I lease and both sites are run and owned by myself.
Are there any reasons legally why this could not be done ?

Answer:
You would need to consider the legal status of the two sites, if they are two separate legal entities it would be different to if they are the same but one simply a trading name of the other.
The other element you will need to check of cause if the privacy statement/ T&Cs you have in connection with sharing details.
These things often come out as something you can only do going forward after changing the T&Cs etc and cannot back date without express permission from the individuals involved (rather than implied permission through failure to respond) but if you/ your solicitor had thought of these types of things before and wrote very broad policies then it may not be an issue.

If I have insured my car in a small town, yet have lived in a much larger town for about a year, and fail to report this change to my insurance company, can I face any penalizations?

Also, what if the car is not insured under the person who the car is registered to and driven by, but his stepmother? The small town insurance companies’ representative is aware of this, as he has overseen the payments, but I am not aware of it being officially recognized in any way. Are there any potential consequences?

Answer:
It’s more likely that if there is a difference in premium cost in the 2 locations, you will be back-charged for the difference from the date you moved. It’s not likely they would be able to deny a claim based on an unreported address change UNLESS it was to a different state where your company does not do business.
It’s just not worth it. No insurance company wants to insure someone who easily and knowingly commits fraud.