What's new at Cayuga Mutual
New People
The past year has seen lots of changes at Cayuga Mutual. With Steve Quinn's appointment as Assistant Manager and Irene Huitema's promotion to Underwriting Manager we now have a Management Team led by our General Manager, Kathryn Adie.
Steve's responsibilities include training our agents in new ways to serve our policyholders. They are now responsible for completing dwelling evaluations. This new duty provides them with a further understanding of your needs.
We continue to maintain a lost prevention officer on staff who is responsible for inspection of all new properties. We have also created a new internal committee to work with Steve during this transition to research the best ways to provide loss prevention in the future. We also welcome Danielle Neill in the property underwriting department.
New Corporate Logo and Website
A major project undertaken in 2008 ad nearing completion is the launch of our new functional website www.cayugamutual.com. The first step in that process was the development of a new corporate logo. We've continued to maintain focus on our building in the new logo, which we view as the heart of Cayuga Mutual Insurance Company. Our goal was to achieve a traditional professional logo that will be utilized not only on the website but on all promotional material, business forms and stationery.
New Payment Options
We continue to add options for you to make policy payments. By far the most popular methods are VISA and Mastercard payment, however; internet banking and debit payments continue to grow. In addition to cash and cheques we are now able to accept pre-authorized payments.
Corporate Governance
The board of directors undertook a complete review of the company by-laws in 2008 partly as a program of professional development and to comply with new regulations regarding prudent person investing. This major project is complete and the bylaws will be presented for approval as our Special Annual Meeting.
New Technology
Our legacy system has served us well but it is time to move on. The company shares ownership of the Mutual Concept Computer Group (MCCG) with thirty-three other mutuals and will commence the move to that system in the near future. It will require additional time and effort by all of our staff. We hope the move will be transparent and we will aim to continue to provide the same level of service to our policyholders as we have in the past. We anticipate that it will be a smooth transition but we ask for your patience and understanding. We're striving for a greener environment and hope that through the improved use of technology we will be able to reduce the amount of paper we produce. There will be secure areas on our website for confidential documents to be stored, viewed and accessed by authorized board and staff eliminating the need to print reports. The website development is a long term project with plans to provide our policyholders with the ability to view your policy information and make payments directly online.
New Ways to Support the Community
We continue to provide the use of our community room without cost to non-profit organizations with our community. We have approximately two dozen regular groups that take advantage of this opportunity. In conjunction with Cayuga Mutual's 135th Anniversary we will support Cayuga's 150th Anniversary Celebrations. Your Board of Directors are pleased to support the 1859 Heritage Dinner to be held on July 11th, 2009 at Ruthven as the kickoff to the weeklong birthday celebrations.
We so many new things happening at Cayuga Mutual it's a good thing to know that we still maintain many of the "tried and true" old ways. During these times of financial crisis our Investment Policies remain conservative. Our goal is for preservation of captial in order to meet claims liabilities and other oblications and yet continue to provide our policyholders with "Peace of Mind".
