I don’t think anyone is ever ready to handle what Mother Nature will do if she gets angry and decides to let loose. It also doesn’t make it easier when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announces that they are laying odds from 60% to 70% that there will be 12 to 16 named storms, with a 90% chance of a “near normal or above normal hurricane” season this year for the Atlantic Basin.

Hurricane season, officially from June 1st to November 30th, happens to coincide perfectly with the growing season.

The American Nursery and Landscape Association, which represents growers, greenhouses and landscapers nationally, is collectively growing more anxious about significant weather events. Many of their members have suffered dramatically from recent freeze, wind and hail losses. Now hurricanes loom on the horizon.

With almost certain landfall potential for these predicted storms, there will be significant losses for hundreds of thousands of residents in coastal areas. For families that earn their living from the land; such as farms, nurseries, greenhouse, golf courses, vineyards, orchards, etc, these whirlwinds of disaster can do more than damage homes. Even a weaker hurricane has the potential to economically destroy the very foundation from which they have built their lives.

Live Asset Insurance can’t stop the wind, but it can help you rebuild after a loss happens. Enthusiastically endorsed by the ANLA, our policy provides important coverage for wind, flood, freeze, fire, hail, and other named perils associated with these nasty weather events. Our policy could be just the “hedge” you and your family need to beat the odds.

Our “natural disaster” insurance policy, called Live Asset Insurance, will respond when Hurricanes and Mother Nature destroys “live asset” inventory; field grown, containerized or greenhouse grown plant material.

If you are a golf course with signature trees, this policy is the only one of its kind in the nation that will respond with replacing your trees with the same like, kind and quality. We also include debris removal.

The beauty of the policy is that it can be used as a stand alone policy; covering all trees, shrubs, vines, and flowers, or, as a supplemental policy; used to fill the coverage gaps or vacancies in the government crop insurance policy. This makes us uniquely positioned to help protect the Green Industry in ways never commercially available before from a private insurance source.

If someone has purchased a “Catastrophic” Crop Insurance Policy, it only covers approximately 25% of the total exposure.

Live Asset Insurance can provide 75% coverage to eliminate that portion that is self insured. The same scenario applies for those who have bought the governments increased or “buy up” limits. The government’s crop insurance policy is a subsidized, taxpayer supported program and 100% coverage is unavailable. The most anyone can purchase is approximately 75% coverage. We can provide coverage for the remaining 25% for near complete coverage.

This 1/4 coverage gap may not seem like a big deal, but when you are talking about 10 million or more at risk from a storm, and a quarter of that will have to come directly out of the owner’s pocket before the other policy even responds, then that gap becomes a 2.5 million dollar deal breaker. Even for a much smaller investment, a great portion of people cannot fork over the first 75% of any loss and then wait to get the other 25% back. Not when they have no way of earning income while they dig out of storm rubble and floods, it’s just too much.

No one can stop a hurricane or the damage they bring, but together we can minimize the long term effects of their losses and try to make it right again.

Almost 100 years ago, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, one of the countries’s first true risk management firms offered information and expertise about risk and how to avoid it, minimize it or transfer it. It is that same firm that is again leading the way with the exciting and revolutionary Live Asset Insurance program for the Green Revolution of today. This progressive and forward thinking behavior is why The JLS Group, Inc. is the proud parent company of Live Asset aiming to provide solutions for another 100 years.

We do best when we work with what nature intended us to be. Farmers and growers stick to their roots, and wait for things to grow organically, relying on nature and the elements as they have for centuries. Hurricanes have no choice, but to do what they were created to do and they are natural disasters, made to destroy. The hurricanes will come this season and the two will clash, but JLS and Live Assets are also doing what comes naturally to us as well: We have created the perfect risk management solution again.

So let the winds and rains of the hurricanes come; Live Asset Insurance will allow you to rest easier.

As families moved from the cities to the suburbs and planted “beautiful” trees in the same spots that farmers removed “nuisance” trees a hundred years before, the “Live Asset” movement started to take shape. New trees were viewed as welcome additions to the family. They became a part of our lives and connected us in ways we probably never thought about until now. They were always around, but we never saw their true value or never really appreciated them as a true asset. Now that we have grown and the trees have too, we have a deep affection for them, but it has been historically difficult to establish the commercial value of trees.

If you have ever suddenly lost a tree to a storm, and experienced the deep sense of loss, and the “what do we do now?” thoughts and feelings, then you understand the impetus behind our product from an emotional perspective. If you have ever lost a significant tree and only felt anger at the prospect of having to remove the debris, or were thankful that “nature’s natural pruning” didn’t hit your house or damage your car, then you will appreciate our debris removal coverage. If you have ever bought a new mature tree, paid more for a property with landscaping, or witnessed the improvements of a barren plot of land with the planting of various flowers and shrubs, then you can appreciate that live assets are assets, not liabilities.

Anyone who has purchased significant landscaping understands that as well.A 2007 Wall Street Journal Article reports that “homes with colorful flowers and tall palms typically sell for 10% to 15% more than those without these features and that overall; a lot with trees adds about 7% to a home’s price……. Nearly 20% of buyers say they consider landscaping to be a “very important” factor in their decision to buy a house, according to a new study by the National Association of Realtors.” The article then goes on to discuss the lack of professional and uniform method of valuing, insuring and protecting living things such a large live oak tree.

The cost of extensive landscape can be more money than a car or even a house, but these live assets are almost always uninsured. How many people would plunk down $40,000 dollars on a new car or truck and not insure it? How many would build a new addition on a house for $200,000 and not insure it? Yet, all across the country people will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on live plantings and then pray that a strong wind or freeze does not wipe out their investment.

Over the past 50 years the insurance industry has been unable or unwilling to insure “Live Assets” because they were “living”. The industry felt that it was incapable of determining the “existing health condition” of the live asset in question, and therefore the industry chose not to deal with the issue. This is where we believe the paradigm is shifting from ignoring trees to acknowledging them as live assets; to be protected and insured, not ignored and left unprotected.

After speaking with hundreds of professionals in the Timber, Landscape, Nursery, Vineyard and Greenhouse industries we discovered a dire need to protect “Live Assets” in a way that did not previously exist. The problem is: natural disasters happen everywhere around the globe. Living organisms like trees, shrubs, vines and flowers are extremely vulnerable to the elements. Picture yourself standing alone outside 365 days a year in one spot with no clothing depending on the right amount of sun, water and general avoidance from bugs and other nasty forces trying to attack you. Now you understand the problem, and also why insurance has been hard to find.

While Live Asset Insurance was establishing our “ecocredentials” in the industry in 2007, we discovered that our new and exciting natural disaster insurance policy (covering trees, plants, shrubs, flowers and vines destroyed by Mother Nature’s wrath) was going to invoke a significant paradigm shift; one which we believe will encourage conservation, natural resource renewal, and reduce the tax burden of farm subsidies, all while protecting living organisms in ways that were never done before. We believe our product will stimulate awareness of the value of live assets in general, and will help spawn “live asset businesses” that will be formed specifically to grow replacement inventories; now that there is insurance to pay for the lost live asset.

The “paradigm shift” from trees as “non entities” to true “live assets” will happen as these live assets get replaced with an exact duplicate tree, because there was insurance money to pay for the debris removal, the purchase of a like, kind and quality replacement, and the cost to reinstall the replacement tree in the same spot as if nothing had ever happened.

Everyday across the country thousands of businesses and individuals are self insuring their “live Assets”. Once they learn about our insurance product they will transfer that risk for pennies on the dollar. Please spread the word about Live Asset Insurance.  Hug a tree, better yet insure it.

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Subject: Earth

“Earth, Wind, Fire and Water are Mother Natures best attributes; sometimes.

When the earth “quakes”, and the wind “screams like a freight train”, and fire and water are raging out of control, it conjures up memories of the margarine commercial where mother nature says, just before she unleashes her fury, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”. When Mother Nature is angry there is no telling what she do, and it is best to get out of her way until she calms down. [d1]   Sometimes that is not possible, and that is where Live Asset Insurance has found its place in the green revolution.