We highly recommend that your insurance premium payments be made by ACH or credit card rather than mailing us your check. With delays in the mail service and thefts of mailboxes, your check may take weeks to reach us if it reaches us at all.  
 
Since the Postal Service implemented new service standards on October 1, 2021, we are experiencing more and longer mail delays than ever. Mail is now taking several days if not weeks to be delivered.  

​In addition, thieves are now stealing entire mailboxes including one recently near our office. This concerns us as checks could be in those mailboxes. 

​This is a new world we live in and we need to adapt to these ongoing challenges. For your safety, we recommend that you make ACH payments to us. There is no cost to you for these ACH payments as we will pick up the $3 per transaction cost. Your payments can be made securely here: 

​As always, we appreciate your business and are here to help if and when you need us.

Establish clear workplace policies - Develop an employee handbook and distribute it! Sample employee handbooks and HR forms libraries are easily accessible and most law-firms or insurers will happily provide content. For your protection, be sure your handbook includes an employment-at-will statement and an equal employment opportunity statement. Create written workplace policies on employment practices; post them and include in employee handbooks. Establish a policy for employees to report concerns and for management to respond.  Educate management and employees about ethical and workplace practices.  You may wish to include diversity and sensitivity training as part of this education program.

• Develop a code of ethics policy. This policy tells employees that they shouldn't do certain things, like giving kickbacks and engaging in other ethical violations.
• Include an anti-retaliation provision. In light of the new rise in claims of retaliation, include a statement saying that it's the policy of the business not to retaliate against employees over accusations of discrimination or harassment.
• Institute handbook auditing procedures. Having an audit procedure in place under which the handbook is periodically updated to keep up with changes in the law is important.
• Make workplace policies accessible. Post company policies in the workplace reinforcing your stance regarding unacceptable – and illegal – workplace behavior.

​Hire carefully—Screen employees thoroughly, avoiding any discriminatory practices.

Provide job descriptions - Create a detailed job description for each role. Each job description should clearly define the required skills and performance expectations.
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​Institute a zero-tolerance policy – This should be established for substance abuse, harassment and any form of discrimination. Additionally, have an "open door" policy in which employees can report infractions without fear of retribution.  It is advisable to have a couple of people that issues can be reported to instead of just one.
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​Keep thorough records - Document all employee complaints or investigations, as well as what your company did to resolve those issues.

​Perform regular employee reviews—Review employee performance and keep a written record of reviews.

These days we can’t be too careful to protect property that we’re responsible for. When handling property belonging to the corporation, extra care should be taken to make sure it’s secured. Especially in the event anyone has cash or checks that belong to the utility, it shouldn’t be left in a vehicle overnight. If you’re issued a company laptop, please don’t leave it in a vehicle when it is parked for the evening – it’s just too tempting to a thief. 
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Also, remember to lock your company vehicle when leaving at the end of the day, whether parked at the office or at an employee’s home.  ​

We are pleased to announce that Texas Mutual's board voted to pay $330 million in dividends to support our policyholders. Texas Mutual is working diligently to deliver dividends to our policyholder owners and are on target to mail checks on July 1st. Policyholders will also be able to log in to the Texas Mutual website to see their dividend information.
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This year marks the 23rd year that Texas Mutual is paying dividends to their more than 57,000 policyholders, bringing the total to over $3.4 billion back to Texas businesses since 1999. ​

As a policyholder-owned company, Texas Mutual clients contribute to their success when they make safety a priority and choose to do business with Texas Mutual. There are two components to earning a dividend. Safety, paid through the annual component, and loyalty, paid through the retention component. Our newer Texas Mutual policyholders can also earn dividends through the early qualifier program, which is paid in November. Since 1999, Texas Mutual has distributed over $3.4 billion back to Texas businesses.

Dividends are based on performance, are not guaranteed and must comply with Texas Department of Insurance regulations.

Many business owners and managers understand coinsurance from a health insurance perspective. The idea that the insured pays part of the cost of health services as a percentage of the total and the insurance carrier pays the rest. The consumer becomes the coinsurer. What a lot of people don’t know is there can be a similar “coinsurance clause” in commercial property policies. Many commercial property policies contain a coinsurance clause. This clause imposes a penalty when a policyholder suffers a loss and has failed to purchase an adequate amount of insurance.

In property insurance, coinsurance is based on the concept of insurance to replacement cost, meaning the ratio of your insurance limit to the value of your insured property. This means that you must purchase a policy limit that meets or exceeds the coinsurance percentage. If you have a 100% coinsurance clause and a building that would cost $1 million to replace, you must purchase at least $1 million in coverage. For example, let’s say the insured had only purchased $800,000 in insurance on the $1 million dollar building and had a covered loss with damage of $100,000. In this scenario, the building was only insured for 80% of its actual replacement cost value. Therefore, the carrier is only obligated to reimburse 80% of the cost of damages less the deductible. In other words, the insured would only receive $80,000 less the deductible of their $100,000 claim.
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The carriers we insure our water and waste water systems through have a 0% coinsurance clause. Meaning that in our above example, the insured would receive full claim reimbursement less the deductible. No surprises!

We all know about locating underground utilities before digging, but do you know the final step you should be taking before firing up the backhoe? 

It’s not uncommon for us to see claims for cut lines if the locates were inaccurate, even though the water system had underground utilities located prior to digging. For whatever reason, sometimes the utilities are marked incorrectly. And when the water system digs, they hit the mismarked underground utilities.  You can help your system’s insurance loss record if you’ll take some pictures of the locates before you start digging.  It’s especially helpful if your pictures have a landmark or two in them (a tree, fence, gate, road sign, etc.) so in the event the utilities are mismarked and you accidentally cut one, your insurance adjuster can use your photos to document that the problem is with the locate and that you did everything you could to avoid damaging the other utilities.  This may enable the adjuster to shift the claim to the responsible party and help improve your utility’s loss history, thereby allowing you to qualify for insurance discounts available to those with lower losses.
 
If you have any questions or comments about this, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with one of our water industry insurance agents.