Frederick J. Fisher, JD, CCP

Mr. Fisher writes on professional, directors and officers, claims, and fiduciary liability issues for IRMI.com.

Mr. Fisher is the president of Fisher Consulting Group, Inc., and is the founder of ELM Insurance Brokers, a wholesale and managing general agent (MGA) facility specializing in professional liability and specialty line risks. He is a member of the Editorial Board for Agents of America, a faculty member of the Claims College, and a member of the Executive Council, School of Professional Lines as sponsored by the Claims & Litigation Management Alliance. He is a course designer and webinar instructor for the Academy of Insurance (sponsored by the Insurance Journal).

Since beginning his career, Mr. Fisher focused on one vision: providing financial security to the client. The result was a successful 43-year career in specialty lines insurance. In 1975, he began his career on the service side, as an independent errors and omissions claims adjuster. In 1982, he bought the company and continued with claims while expanding the firm's services to include qualitative claim auditing, risk management and loss control services, and acting as a third-party administrator (TPA). Mr. Fisher's claim-auditing techniques and recommendations resulted in substantial client savings (including the Southern California Rapid Transit District, which is now known as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority). Many insurers and self-insured's adopted not only the performance standards raised in the audits but adopted his recommended attorney management guidelines as a base, which are still in use today by many major insurers. During that time, proprietary TPA and auditing software was developed, which was state of the art at the time. Mr. Fisher is creator of FOREriskTM, a series of risk management information software packages that includes actuarial forecasting, claims and litigation tracking, cost allocation functions, and certificate of insurance tracking.

In 1995, Mr. Fisher formed what was known as ELM Insurance Brokers, a firm that has acted as an MGA and wholesale broker of professional liability insurance and specialty lines. He has lectured extensively on professional liability issues since 1978 and authored over 64 articles in trade journals and periodicals. He is the author of Broker Beware: Selling Real Estate within the Law. Mr. Fisher designed a program to conduct on-site pre-underwriting risk management assessments of a client's professional liability exposures.

In 1989, he became a founding member of the Professional Liability Underwriting Society (PLUS) and was elected to the PLUS Board of Trustees in 1993. After serving in all officer capacities, Mr. Fisher was elected president in 1997 and was the recipient of the PLUS Founders Award. He remains a special materials expert for several Registered Professional Liability Underwriter courses and is the senior technical adviser for Professional Liability Insurance, first published by IRMI in 1990. Mr. Fisher was an original faculty member and author of the professional liability courses (Level 1, 2, and 3) offered by the Claims College—Professional Liability School as sponsored by the Claims and Litigation Alliance from 2013 to 2016. He has taught over 100 continuing education classes and lectures. He testifies regularly as an expert witness in cases dealing with the duties and obligations of professionals, as well as on coverage and claims-made issues.

Mr. Fisher received a B.A. from the University of California-Berkeley and a J.D. from Lincoln University School of Law in San Francisco.

Mr. Fisher also contributed to IRMI Workers Comp and Construction Risk Management.