Philip Deramo - Why You Need a Business Plan

Whether you are trying to start a new business or looking to expand an existing one, it is essential for your success to create a business plan. As Vice President at Berkley Re America, Philip Deramo knows the importance of having a business plan to achieve success as a business owner.

For the last twenty years, he has been creating business plans for his clients. Without a plan a business is largely rudderless creating haphazard and reactive day-to-day activities. Here are some top reasons why a business needs to have a business plan in place.

1.A business plan is a map to the future. It will help you to better understand your business and help you to set goals and chart a course of action to achieve those goals.

2.It will help you secure funding in order support growth. During the course of business, you will be provided with opportunities to grow your business.

3.You will need a business plan to assess opportunities and come up with a course of action to take advantage of them. 

4.A plan will help you to manage cash flow, an essential requirement for all businesses.

5.It provides the necessary information to support a strategic exit. At some point in time, you will decide it is time to leave the business.

Having clear business goals and the path needed to reach those goals is important for any business to succeed. Creating a business plan can help you stay in business and find success. As an insurance underwriting professional, Philip Deramo has been creating business plans for companies for twenty years.

Philip Deramo - Cyber Liability Insurance and Why You Need It

Philip Deramo has been working as an insurance underwriter for the last twenty years. In the last ten years, he has been building his experience with cyber liability insurance. But, what is cyber liability insurance coverage?

While most security professionals are required to attend a risk training session during their careers, many of them are unaware of cyber liability insurance. For countries like the United States, which have mandatory breach notification laws, this type of insurance has been most successful when used as a risk transfer option.

As data breaches become more common, the option of adding cyber liability coverage is increasingly attractive. The expenses associated with dealing with a breach, including the cost of compiling with the mandatory notification laws, can be extremely high, making adding this type of policy to a business’s existing insurance coverage is vital.

Cyber liability insurance covers a large range of situations, including:

• Data breach and privacy crisis management.
• Multimedia and Media liability coverage.
• Extortion liability coverage.
• Network security liability.

Some of the items covered under this insurance may overlap or be connected to other policies. Even if there is an overlap with policies, having a cyber liability policy in place will ensure that all of the associated cyber risks are covered. When looking for the right policy, it is important to obtain the right broker. Philip Deramo has spent the last ten years increasing his knowledge of cyber liability insurance coverage.

Philip Deramo - The Importance of Reinsurance

Reinsurance, a product line Philip Deramo has extensive experience in underwriting, happens when multiple insurance companies purchase insurance policies from other insurers in order to share the risk. An extension of the concept of insurance, it passes a part of the risk from the original insurer to others. There are four main reasons why reinsurance is an important part of the industry.

1. Reinsurance works to protect insurers from large claims. In order to spread out the risk of paying out a large claim, insurers take part of the original claim they agreed to insure and reinsure part of it with others. These reduce the risk that any one insurer will incur a substantial loss.
2. Peaks and troughs in the insurance industry throw off the balanced set of underwriting results insurers are looking for each year. With reinsurance, there is a cap on the amount of claims an insurer has to pay out during any given year.
3. When a country is vulnerable to natural disasters, it is important to spread the risk. Reinsurance may be used to help spread the risk outside the country.
4. If an insurer wants to insure a very large risk, but is unable to on its own, reinsurance can allow them to accept the whole risk and then reinsure any part that they cannot keep.

Reinsurance can help mitigate the risk any one insurer is subjected to. This can help an insurance company with too much liability lighten their load. Philip Deramo is a results-driven insurance underwriting professional with extensive knowledge and experience with reinsurance.

Philip Deramo - How to Successfully Write White Papers

As Vice President at Berkley Re America, Philip Deramo has been writing white papers on Cyber Liability Insurance for several years. White papers are authoritative reports that address a specific issue, and are aimed at an audience outside the organization that originates the report.

White papers are a common marketing tool. Each one requires an understanding of a product’s technology and how it is used to solve technical business problems. They are intended to show customers that the vendor understands their problems, describe the technology, and explain why it is the best choice for customers. They can list ways in which you will be able to streamline internal communication, or suggest how to use a certain product for a technical purpose. Following are the steps you will need to follow to successfully write white papers.

1.You need to identify the main issue that your audience is facing and how you purpose to solve the problem. This should take the form of something that you can phrase in a few simple words, like “decreasing sales,” or “slow network speeds.”

2.Figure out what the level of expertise is for your audience, as well as their attention span. You don’t want your white paper to be too simplistic, or too complex.

3.Decide how long your white paper will be. Typically, these can range from a single page up to five pages in length. Its length depends on who will be reading it.

4.Choose a title for your white paper. This should be fairly generic and include the term “white paper.” You also want to make sure that the title describes the problem that is being addressed.

5.Use the introduction to the white paper to describe the problem that you have identified. Be sure to describe the problem in clear, precise terms. Keep the analysis of the problem short; no more than a single paragraph.

6.Next, list specific aspects of the problem. When doing this be sure to include figures, dates and names.

7.When discussing the issue, make sure you are providing the necessary background information about the problem. This can include things like a description of the market’s size or developments recently made in technology.

8.Adopt a step-by-step approach to describe how you propose to solve the problem. Be sure to make it clear exactly how you will implement your idea.

9.The closing paragraph of the white paper should summarize the problem and describe how you are planning on solving it. Be sure to also include the results you hope to see.

For Philip Deramo, Berkley Re America’s Vice President, the recent issue of Cyber Liability has been the topic of his white papers.

Blog | Philip Deramo

Blog | Philip Deramo

Philip Deramo - Longtime Senior-Level Professional of WR Berkley

Philip Deramo was integral to the success of insurance company WR Berkley for many years, serving the firm on a foundation of extensive industry experience, as well as his considerable skills as a lawyer, claims manager, and underwriter. His journey to WR Berkley began in 2002, when he joined a small underwriting consulting company for insurance firms called Berkley Capital Underwriters. When Deramo joined, the company consisted of only four experienced insurance workers, including Deramo himself. He joined as the Assistant Vice President of the company. One of his first accomplishments as a company leader was underwriting the Quota Share Treaty Reinsurance program that gave ceding companies capital surplus relief.



During his time with Berkley, Philip Deramo flashed his skill and creativity for providing new and improved insurance policies to all clients, corporate or individual. By the time that Berkley Capital Underwriters became WR Berkley, Deramo had begun managing a $15 million treaty book and was responsible for the review and approval of contract language. Philip Deramo drew on his legal skill and experience to perform his many duties for WR Berkley. As the Assistant State Prosecutor for Connecticut, he learned a great deal about establishing proof and legal language in contracts and agreements. His knowledge of how the legal system worked in the Connecticut and the United States made him an invaluable asset to WR Berkley until he left the firm in 2015.

Philip Deramo is proud of the service he provided to WR Berkley, as well as the service he provided to all of the company’s clients over the years. Deramo helped the company grow from a small startup to a large player on the national scale that assists in the underwriting of insurance policies.

Philip Deramo - Experienced Insurance Underwriter

Philip Deramo set himself up for success in the insurance industry by studying law at Quinnipiac University School of Law in 1987. He then worked as an Assistant State Prosecutor for Connecticut and entered the insurance industry as in-house counsel for Kemper Insurance after a few years cutting his teeth in criminal courts. Kemper Insurance is a family of companies with scattered over the United States. Kemper has over 30,000 representatives offering customers the best auto, home, and life insurance policies possible to help them prepare for the future. After working as in-house counsel for several years with Kemper, Deramo became an underwriter, a position that he has maintained for much of his career in insurance.

Philip Deramo has performed many different duties as an insurance underwriter throughout his career. He has researched prospective clients on behalf of his employers to decide if the company can offer these customers certain insurance policies and figure out which products will fit with their needs the best. Philip Deramo has learned early on that he had to be very attentive to detail and analytical so that he can give his clients the best policies for their individual situations. Underwriters often rely on their experience and their instinct in many cases, as well as their understanding of the policies their company offers. Deramo has developed excellent instincts and abilities throughout his career.

Philip Deramo gained experience as a mentee of experienced underwriters on his way to leadership positions within the insurance industry. He trained hard to gain the knowledge he needed to get started, but he has also taken advantage of the help that others offered him.