BUS 331 RISK MANAGEMENT AND INSURANCE RESEARCH

Students are asked to complete a research paper related to a topic we cover in this course, an assignment worth a total of 150 points. For your convenience, I have listed a number of acceptable topics at the bottom of these guidelines. The topics listed are designed to be instructive, rather than exclusive, and you are responsible for selecting an appropriate topic.  Advance approval of topics MUST be obtained no later than the end of Week 3. To encourage you to be working on your paper, an outline must be provided by the end of Week 5. Failure to obtain timely approval of your topic or to provide an outline will result in a loss of points.

The paper must include the following sections: title page, content, including an introduction that clearly identifies your topic, research and analysis, a strong conclusion, and a reference page. The paper must be in APA format and there should be no mistakes in grammar, spelling or punctuation. Times New Roman 12-point font and double-spacing is required. The paper must be submitted to Blackboard in .doc, .docx or .pdf format. Please note that if I cannot open your submission, I cannot grade it and your score for the assignment will be zero. The written portion of the paper should be at least 4 pages long. There should be two additional pages: the first should be a title page, and the last page should be a references page - these are not included in the page count, so your entire paper should be a minimum of six pages. There will be a substantial penalty for papers that do not meet the page length requirement.

The paper must contain a minimum of five (5) references, including the text. Look on the internet (at least one educational website), in professional journals (at least 1), in periodicals or magazines pertinent to risk management and/or insurance (at least one), in books other than your course text, and your course text. Use peer reviewed academic journals, books, and educational websites. Wikipedia, as much as the instructor likes it, is not considered a viable source for this paper, nor are other similar websites which do not contain peer reviewed/scholarly content, i.e. dictionary.com, nolo.com, websites created by or sponsored by insurance companies and the like. A clarification – in some cases you might use information from these types of sites for illustration purposes, however, use in this way will NOT count towards the reference requirement (you can use more than five references). I would suggest that you use the EBSCO online database at the PSC Library to identify most of your sources.

This assignment will be submitted to SafeAssign, a plagiarism detection program, so please be sure that your work is yours alone and that you provide proper attribution for all sources you use in creating the paper.  Continued enrollment in the course constitutes permission for the assignments to be submitted through SafeAssign. The paper is due by Sunday at midnight of Week 7. Late papers will not be accepted unless exigent circumstances exist or prior arrangements are made.

The following is a non-comprehensive list of suggested/acceptable topics:

Incontestable Clauses                                                                    Misrepresentation and Fraud in the Insurance Industry

Marketing of Insurance Services                                                  Life Insurance – identify a specific topic in this area

Health Insurance – identify a specific topic in this area                       Risk management – identify a specific topic in this area

Insurance Underwriting                                                                  Microinsurance

Climate change and the insurance industry                              Aging of the US population & associated insurance products

Environmental disasters and insurance/risk management     Risk management at universities/colleges

Risk management in specific industries                                     Major challenges in risk management                                               

Please remember that I must approve your topic. Please submit your topic for approval prior to the end of Week 3, ensuring that you leave me enough time to approve the topic before the end of the week. This means that a submission on Sunday evening may not be timely if you do not choose an acceptable topic.

I have also provided a grading rubric and several resources regarding proper use of APA format and avoiding the pitfalls of plagiarism. These documents may be located in the Course Documents tab in Blackboard. Please contact me if you have any questions regarding any aspect of this assignment.