June 26, 2008 Hurricane Season Approaches

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.