Diversified has been a sponsor of EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year program for nearly a decade. This program does a great job of highlighting some truly outstanding companies and the great entrepreneurs that were instrumental in founding them or taking them to the next level. Past award recipients include such luminaries as Jonathan Coons of 1-800Contacts, Ken Woolley of Extra Space Storage, and Jon Huntsman of Huntsman Chemical.

This year’s group of exceptional entrepreneurs was selected by an independent judging panel made up of regional business, academic and community leaders. The winners will be revealed at a gala event on June 27, 2008 at the Salt Palace Convention Center.

The Utah finalists for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award in 2008 are:

· Agel

· American Name Services

· AtTask, Inc.

· Companion Systems Design & Manufacturing

· Costume Craze, LLC

· Discovery Investment Group

· Doba

· G Code Ventures/ Utah Flash

· Harmons

· Mindshare Technologies

· Move Networks, Inc.

· Mozy Inc (Berkeley Data Systems)

· Packsize LLC

· ProPay, Inc.

· R&O Construction

· Seastone LC

· Skullcandy

· SnapLock Industries, Inc.

· Suh’dutsing Technologies, LLC

· Thomas Arts

· Titanium Solutions, Inc.

· United First Financial

· Wescor, Inc.

· Xactware Solutions, Inc.

· Xlear, Inc.

We salute all of the finalists and anxiously await the big gala to see which of all of these great companies are Award Recipients.

How much would a customer privacy breach impact your business? Most businesses are not aware of the many factors that can contribute to the financial impact of a data privacy breach.

We have a number of clients that deal with highly sensitive customer data. Many of you have databases containing credit card numbers, social security numbers and many other highly personal, highly sensitive bits of data.

Matt Henriod in our office recently found a Privacy Breach Impact Calculator that can help you determine just how much that recent privacy breach may cost you or how much a theoretical breach could impact your business. I spent some time on the calculator (provided by Information Shield™ — no affiliation to Diversified Insurance) and it appears to be quite comprehensive and potentially very useful. Take a look HERE.

The soft cycle for commercial property/casualty insurance got even softer in the first quarter of 2008, according to the latest Commercial Market Index Survey by The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers, with three-fourths of the agents and brokers reporting that renewal premiums for their small and medium accounts were down 1-20 percent compared with fourth quarter 2007. See full article HERE.

The insurance industry refers to premium pricing cycles as being hard or soft. Hard markets occur when capacity ($) is tight — premiums go up, underwriting standards are more strict and coverage terms constrict. Soft markets occur when there is excess capacity ($$$) — lower premiums, looser underwriting standards, and broader coverage terms. Our goal at Diversified is to beat the market regardless of whether we are in a “Soft” or “Hard” market. We have access to pretty much all of the important insurance carriers and can assume that we will get the best price.

Our strong relationships with the carriers allow us to broaden coverage terms and have our carriers “look beyond the numbers” to properly evaluate the risks of our clients. Superior knowledge of the insurance market and of our client’s risk profile allow us to properly present the risk to our carriers for underwriting. In many ways we pre-underwrite our clients and present a case to the carrier that allows us to get the best coverage and price for our clients. Our goal is to have our clients receive the absolute best coverage without paying a single dime more than is appropriate for the risk.

Diversified Benefit Services Group, headed by Jeana Hutchings, is holding a series of Benefits Seminars at Diversified Insurance’s offices at 136 E South Temple #2300. They are held the second Wednesday of each month from 8:30 - 10:30. The topics are covered twice each year.

The current schedule of topics are as follows:

• April 9th – Consumer Driven Health Care
• May 14th – COBRA
• June 11th – Underwriting 101
• July 9th – Principles of Wellness

The Seminars are for current clients and can be attended in person with a great breakfast of bagels, fruit and juice or via a GoToMeeting webinar - (sorry you have to then provide your own breakfast ;-))

Please contact Kadee Humphrey at 801-325-5051 to RSVP for the next seminar. Let her know of your attendance preference. We will send login instructions to those wishing to attend via webinar.