How Do I Sign New Jersey Banking Presentation

Industry sign banking new jersey form easy

hi everyone and welcome back to pi's the break my name is claire irving i'm the government affairs council for pia and joining us today we have brad latchett the director of government affairs to give a very brief introduction to new jersey certificates of insurance law we've been getting a lot of questions about certificates of insurance and this is just intended to be a very quick introduction and overview of both what they are and the penalties for falsifying information on them so that'll turn over to brad great thank you very much claire i appreciate you uh correctly stating my title as i incorrectly stated yours during the last video um you'll be able to figure out which video that is by looking at our outfits which ones match which ones don't it's a little homework assignment for all of you or a scavenger hunt sound more fun anyways to the point of this is the new jersey certificate of insurance law we've got a lot of calls from members recently uh involving certificates that tend to pop up every couple of years so i figured it's a good time to go through the primer first things first what is a certificate of insurance it's a good question let me answer it for you certificate of insurance serves as proof of an insurance it's basically like uh your checking account information tells you how much you have in there right it's not your actual checking account but it does tell you how much is in there the certificate of insurance isn't an actual policy but it does tell you the information that is in the policy policy limits certain coverages uh key coverages things like that traditionally it's used to satisfy the requirements of a contract one party requires the other party to have a certain amount of insurance coverage instead of that party with a requirement producing their 100-page document or policy they give them a one-page certificate that says i have insurance much easier much quicker way to do business the point is though the strategy is not the policy it's just a representation of what is in the policy that leads to the next issue and that is what are the requirements of a certificate of insurance in new jersey because it is evidence of of insurance right and not the actual policy there are certain things you can and cannot do with a certificate namely uh on the certificate of insurance can't misre misrepresent what's in the policy so now a certificate under the law is any document that is going to be issued by an insurance producer or a carrier that serves as evidence of property that's whether you put it on a court form or a cocktail napkin if you're writing the carrier name the policy number or limits it's probably going to be a certificate of insurance so you better make sure the information in there is correct because if it's not it's going to violate the law again if you're writing on cocktail napkins you might have a bigger issue but if you are still make sure it's accurate that's that's the important thing um importantly also in new jersey unlike some other states namely new york if producers do business there forms do not need to be approved by adobe so you don't need to send your cocktail napkin adobe to get them approved that form any form issued by a producer or a carrier would be considered a certificate does not need to have prior prior approval excuse me from the department of banking and insurance now here comes the meat of the issue here falsifying a certificate new jersey law prohibits the preparation or issuance of a certificate containing false information that says animation change that should be information my bad also falls in from animation too don't copyright it's a different separate issue with different separate penalties we'll cover that in another break or probably not but don't do that either but for certificates if you prepare that means if you create it and it's got false information it's illegal if you issue it it's illegal both things right it's also importantly uh illegal to request or require that a certificate of insurance contain information that's not um in the insurance policy that is considered insurance fraud so if i as a regular person off the street ask my insurance producer to give me a certificate of insurance it says i have two million dollars worth of coverage even though i have one million dollars worth of coverage i have now broken the law and i am guilty of insurance fraud so don't ask for what you don't already have basically so if you if you need more coverage get more coverage don't just fabricate it on a certificate it's important to note too that changes made to a certificate have no impact on the actual coverage so even if a producer was to change a certificate to increase coverages or create new coverages the policy is still the same the coverages still remain the same whatever the certificate is says doesn't really matter for the underlying policy and you so basically you've got no extra coverage and have broken the law in the process not a great result and it is also illegal to require a producer to state that a particular policy satisfies the requirements of a contract so if a contract says you need to have x amount of coverage with a b and c different limits you cannot ask your producer say hey does this policy i have comply with this contract can't do it it's illegal producer can't say yes or no that gets into a legal area you should ask an attorney not an insurance producer and finally the penalties so if you do break the law after all of this what happens uh basically it's pretty stiff penalty you violate the law one time it's five thousand dollars the second time ten thousand and the third time fifteen thousand we're not going to go above that because i don't wanna look at the dollar figures so don't do it it's very easy to break this law so it's very easy to rack up a violation very very quickly so very very important to know what the law is and hopefully now you know and avoid breaking it please with that um i will mention if you have any questions on anything that i talked about here please feel free to contact pia myself claire the resource center there are some additional links to the video below i'm not sure if that actually worked or not um be really cool if it did uh that it has a wealth of information more than i provided here in this um these couple minutes uh hopefully this was informative and i'll turn back over to claire for any sort of questions that might come up yes thanks brad so one may one big question that we've been getting a lot um particularly in recent months is someone uh some client gets us being uh insurance producer gets a request to put in information about a policy through a third through a third-party provider who is being hired by the general contractor to manage insurance policies when the insurance producer gets this what and is asked to put in information about the policy what do they uh this a certificate issue uh how should they approach that good question claire and um so the issue is it was different depending on where you are so talk about new jersey law because uh anything can be a certificate including the aforementioned cocktail napkin a form that maybe a third party is asking you to complete that is insurance information could be an insurance certificate being completed by an insurance producer it is being used to serve as evidence of insurance so under the law it would be a certificate so very important to make sure that you're accurately representing the information now if you're talking about delivering a certificate in a different state namely new york and again many of our new jersey members do practice in new york or right insurance new york that would probably be an illegal certificate because that form needs to be approved by uh the department of financial services new york's insurance department and if it's not approved by them then it's not a certificate and it's illegal so depending on where you are there's going to be different rules this same rule that applies across the board though is don't misrepresent what's in the policy pretty straightforward rule um it's amazing we have to talk about it this much for how straightforward it is but that is why lawyers have jobs that's right um i will note that we also have a the same same style video but for new york certificates if you write a lot of new york certificates um so i'd recommend checking that checking that out um with that thanks brett thanks brad and let us know if you have further further or more specific questions great thank you everybody