SCHAUMBURG, Ill.-No matter what the economy does, credit unions looking to keep their insurance costs down and their benefits up just need to do the basics very well.
"What it takes is that people are relentless in the way the monitor and control their businesses and not simply putting empty words in their mission statements," said Christopher Taylor, president of Financial Enterprises at Zurich North America, noting that financial institutions that are healthy and well managed create mutually beneficial, long-term relationships with carriers.
While the broader economy struggles to recover and some insurers are predicting that financial institutions are not going to rebound from the downturn in 2010, Taylor believes it is quite difficult to forecast what's ahead. Instead, Taylor said the company, which has worked with credit unions since 1950, offers a holistic approach to its credit union clients. Instead of advertising its offering of a myriad of different products and services, it instead works with individual institutions to determine what would make the most sense for their respective asset sizes, their member bases and their approaches to risk. Those offerings include plastic card protection that is allied with a fraud prevention firm to provide CUs with tools to fight fraudsters and plug security gaps.
