Randy Cooper of Life Transition Planning in Tampa, Florida, says errors and omissions insurance is no substitute for a clear set of values. In a conversation with writer Marlene Y. Satter, Cooper laid out his thoughts.
All that's going on in the industry, and Wall Street, and the regulatory environment-it's individuals losing their own values and replacing them with the corporate or culture values that they're operating in. How can anybody think that [what happened in recent high-profile scandals] was right? What happened there? The rules aren't changed enough, and the SEC is asleep.
Why are we settling [E&O claims] with money? Why aren't we [getting offenders] out of the business? The truth is, they always generate more revenue than the award. They're allowed to stay there, and they finance it with E&O. That affects the rest of us. We didn't used to have E&O. We used to know how to walk past business that wasn't right, to say "no" to a customer who is saying, "that's what I want" because they're caught up in the moment. We have to be the professionals and walk past business that's not right. We have to say, "we'll have to wait on that." We used to do that. I still do it.
