Update News for March 2026

Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:

• • E&O Insurance
  • For Me, Back to Windows 10
  • Things I Do NOT Like About Windows 11
  • I Am Now Using Avast
  • Our Current Programming Plans

•  

These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.

E&O Insurance

I know that as agents you are compelled by license requirements to carry Errors and Omissions (E&O) insurance. As a past president of a group formerly called the “Independent Life Insurance Brokers of Canada” (they have a new name now), we were instrumental in convincing the Ontario provincial government to abandon life company sponsored licenses as the ONLY system of licensing for life agents. That old system had basically enshrined captive agent marketing into that province’s law. Essentially, if you wanted to sell insurance for a different company than your sponsor, you had to get written permission and authorization from your sponsor company to the other company that you wanted to sell a policy for. And not only that, you had to get that written permission for each and every insurance policy that you wanted to place with that other company or any other company than your sponsor.

One of the points which the companies made to resist this change (and yes, life companies liked it the way it was), was to argue to the provincial government that any consumer wronged by an insurance agent would no longer have a life company standing behind that agent to make good on any financial losses the agent might cause to a consumer during the conduct of their business.

To counter this argument we pointed out that the property and casualty industry, which allowed a class of license called “broker”, resolved the issue by requiring that all brokers have errors and ommissions insurance. The logic was that if the agent caused loss to the consumer, then that E&O policy would act in place of the company that was sponsoring the agent’s license and give a consumer deep pockets behind the agent if a loss occurred. This satisfied the government, the sponsorship monopoly ended, and ALL life agents were then required to have E&O insurance.

While I understand the genesis of E&O insurance in Canada, it does not necessarily mean that was the same reason that there is a requirement for E&O insurance in the U.S. I assume that it is because state requirements mandate that agents have E&O insurance, and that agents name each company to regulators for who they represent and sell. What other reason would there be for the E&O insurance to be required by government? It must be to protect the consumer. If the agent screws up, and it costs the consumer financially, the logic is that the consumer has deeper pockets from which to extract financial compensation should the matter go to court (or settle before court). If I am wrong in this assumption, then I would really appreciate hearing from you.

While E&O insurance is intended to protect the consumer (FIRST), it also protects the agent in that if they make an error, the E&O insurer pays the cost of compensating the consumer and NOT the agent. And while that is good, governments don’t usually mandate insurance unless it is to protect someone you might injure, not to protect you because you injured yourself. For example, the government requires you to have automobile liability insurance, it does NOT require you to have fire insurance, life insurance, etc.

In addition to asking our American customers to correct me if I am wrong about this logic, I would also like to ask the following simple questions of ALL our licensed subscribers, Canadian and American, about their E&O insurance:

 

• 1. Do all jurisdiction (states or provinces), in which you are licensed, 

REQUIRE you

•  to have E&O?

 

• 2. Which insurance company is your E&O policy with?

 

• 3. What is your annual premium for E&O insurance?

 

• 4. What other companies are you aware of that offer E&O?

5. Does your policy contain an exclusion for fraud?

If you could email the answers to those questions to me at service@compulife.com, I would deeply appreciate your help.

Unfortunately Compulife was on the wrong end of a legal dispute with the E&O insurer of one of the defendants in the Rutstein legal battle. That dispute revolved around question number 5.

While we were successful in obtaining a judgment against the 4 individuals in that case, one was a life insurance agent who had E&O insurance and they made a claim on the policy for their defense. I am still bewildered as to WHY that E&O insurer thought they should defend the agent, but they in fact paid for that agent’s legal defense over a period of years.

After the agent lost, the E&O insurer REFUSED to pay the judgment we had against the agent. They argued (successfully) that because their policy had a fraud exclusion, that they were NOT responsible for the claim. Apparently it took them years to come to the conclusion that the agent committed fraud, never mind that the entire case was about theft.

Essentially that left Compulife, and the agent they defended (and I would add poorly), holding the bag for the claim. We haven’t been paid (yet) and the agent is now personally responsible for that judgment.

In the end the only party that was protected by the policy was the E&O insurer. It’s kind of ironic, what do you think? Has it ever occurred to you that if you are the defendant in a legal action from an unhappy consumer, that your E&O insurer can stick you with the claim by simply saying you acted fraudulently?

By the way, the agent in our case was NEVER convicted of or even charged with fraud. Fraud was simply the excuse given by the company for why they didn’t have to pay and the court agreed. I have NEVER liked the typical fraud exclusions in ANY policy of insurance, and in my view those exclusions should be mandated by government to say “criminal fraud” which would require an actual conviction for fraud.

To say that I am unhappy would be a gross understatement. I don’t think you should be happy either. I don’t like paying premiums for something to learn later that what I thought I was buying was an empty promise.

You can see how happy this insurance buyer was when their claim was denied:

 

I realize this example is about fire insurance, NOT E&O or life insurance, but when ANY insurance company fails to pay claims it diminishes the confidence that consumers have in ANY of the insurance products that they are buying, and that is particularly NOT good for anyone selling those products. At the end of the day, you are asking people to pay their hard earned money for a PROMISE made on a piece of paper. If the promise is no good, the policy isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.

In the above video example you will note that the home owner has taken the matter up with state regulators but, as in my case, those regulators are being VERY slow to act or even get involved. And when that happens, it usually ends up in the media.

In my own situation, I have now written 3 lengthy letters on this matter, two of them to insurance regulators and lawmakers, none of which have responded (yet). I plan to write many more such letters if I continue to NOT receive responses.

I have been down these types of roads before, dealing with lazy and irresponsible government regulators and lawmakers, and I am confident that at some point I will find the right pin that pops the balloon. I consider the E&O policies you are required to have to be DEFECTIVE and it is going to require the government to step in to fix it.

At some point I plan to share many more details about all this with you.

To summarize, fraud exclusions amount to loopholes that let insurance companies off the hook and those exclusions are being used too often, and are too broadly and loosely interpreted, making it too easy for insurers to deny claims. In my case, it is NOT just the aggrieved party (my company) that was injured, it was the agent who must now foot the cost of the judgment out of his own pocket.

For Me, Back to Windows 10

I promise, this is my last discussion on this subject. I’m not sure that anyone has been following this topic as I have had ZERO feedback.

For the last two months I have been talking about installing and running Windows 11 on older computers, computers which Microsoft says Windows 11 is not compatible with. If you have an older computer, and Microsoft is telling you that you can’t run Windows 11 on it, there is still a strong possibility that you can install Windows 11 on that older computer, particularly if you had Windows 10 on it. VERY old computers will still not be able to run Windows 11, but I have a laptop computer that was first introduced in 2013 and it is now running on Windows 11.

Using the instructions from the two preceding months, we have upgraded a number of our older computers to running Windows 11. Having said that, as a user, there are issues and problems that I had been having with Windows 11 which were making me contemplate that I might go back to running Windows 10 on the desktop machine that I routinely use. My other desktop machine (I use two) is running on Windows XP and it is NOT connected to the internet. That is the core system from which all of the updates for Compulife, both monthly and midmonth, come from.

An unfortunate problem with a regular Windows 11 routine update pushed me over the edge and caused me to decide to go back to Windows 10 on the other computer (the one that is connected to the Internet).

As I told you, before I upgraded that machine I had backed up my C: drive (by copying it) so that if the upgrade to Windows 11 screwed up my system, I could simply go back to the way it was before the upgrade. Having said that, the initial installation of Windows 11 went well and several subsequent updates also went well. Then, after my first report on that upgrade, I received a Windows update that did NOT work, and the computer, after encountering the problem, rolled back to the previous version – all was still well at that point.

I then talked about that issue in last month’s bulletin, and carried on with Windows 11 on that machine. In the middle of February I had it happen again, and this time when the computer attempted to go back to the previous setup (Windows 11), I ended up with a fatal error. At that point the only option I had was to reinstall Windows 11 which the system stepped me through doing.

And that is where a BIG problem occurred. All my previous Microsoft office products (like Excel and Word), which were OLDER versions, were WIPED from my computer; no warning, just gone. Apparently Microsoft is quite happy to consider those old LICENSED versions of that software to be cannon fodder, and that they have no responsibility to preserve those products on your computer.

That made me more than a little unhappy. I was NOT subscribing to those old versions of Outlook, Excel and Word, not to mention Paint 3d, I had purchased a license to use them (no expiry date in the license). Now in fairness to Microsoft, they had been forthcoming about the fact that Paint 3D is part of the Windows 10 operating system, and NOT part of Windows 11, and that as part of Windows 10 it is no longer available in Windows 11. However, when I first did the upgrade, and preserved all my existing software, Paint 3D was still available and still worked as it had and I was a happy camper.

Anyway, this was just the latest (and final) aggravation that I had been having with Windows 11, and it was the thing that pushed me back to Windows 10. I’ll explain my other unhappiness in a moment, but let me add that of the other computers we have upgraded to Windows 11, this was the only computer that encountered this major issue (so far). I should also note that the computer was quite fine after the reinstallation, it was simply missing the old Microsoft software that I use routinely.

Also remember that my computer uses two hard disks and that ALL my important data is kept on the D: hard disk, which I backup (copy) quite routinely. Going back to Windows 10 was not that difficult, I just made a copy of my backup disk and began to use the copy of the backup and carried on.

Things I Do NOT Like About Windows 11

My first BIG BEEF with Windows 11 is that its CMD option, which produces a window(s) with the old DOS command prompt, has been butchered by Microsoft. Windows 10 gave me VERY important control over the size and fonts used in that window, something that Windows 11 now completely ignores.

The Windows 10 lets me have multiple CMD windows at the same time, and multiple variations in their configurations. That has been replaced in Windows 11 with ONE window with multiple tabs (NOT AN IMPROVEMENT!). The most recent update now means CMD is a secondary option to Windows Power Shell (which I never use).

As Windows 11 has progressed with updates, you can actually see a regression in the CMD option with newer versions, which leads me to suspect that Microsoft would like to get rid of it entirely. I’m not hanging around to watch them get rid of another important tool I use routinely. That won’t happen with Windows 10 because it is no longer being updated. While that is good (for me) that does leave Windows 10 vulnerable but keep reading.

Another problem I had was an inexplicable bug with Windows 11 when using USB thumb drives (memory sticks) with the computer. Sometimes when I plugged in the USB memory stick it would recognize it and assign the drive letter to it, and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes closing some of the browser windows I had open would fix it, sometimes I would have to do a restart. That was quite annoying as this is how I move files back and forth between my computers.

Another problem I had was with my Outlook 2007. Note, I do have a newer version of Outlook but I had the newer version blow up on me at one point when I tried to connect it to my Google gmail account, and going back to Outlook 2007 immediately resolved the problem. And I like the look, feel and function of Outlook 2007, and it works, so WHY upgrade? I actually prefer the 2007 version and how it works. However, with Windows 11 the indexes created to allow you to search your emails no longer work, and so you had to turn off those indexes for Outlook 2007. This did NOT mean you could not do a search, it just meant that doing a search took longer because the indexes were no longer connected. More delays.

Now I am back to Windows 10, and all those issues are resolved.

I Am Now Using Avast

Having made the decision to go back to Windows 10, I have also added Avast anti-virus to that computer. Given that the Windows Defender product in the Windows 10 operating system is no longer being updated, you really do need a GOOD third party anti-virus product. My choice is Avast.

Now that I have Avast, I am having to deal with many more warnings of possible viruses, and they are for the most part false positives. That’s the one thing I liked about Defender, it is only triggered by legitimate threats. Having said that, I like the fact that my Windows 10, which I am VERY happy with, is no longer going to be screwed around with by Microsoft. The changes they have made in Windows 11 are just of no benefit or consequence for me, and some of those changes are NOT helpful, they are as I said regressions. And who knows what they will be doing tomorrow.

The other vulnerability is Microsoft’s “Edge” browser. As the browser comes with the operating system, I no longer trust it to be updated routinely. Your browser represent a LOT of the potential vulnerability because it is your computer’s routine connection to the web. Personally I use Google Chrome but there is also a browser that comes with Avast, and then there is Firefox and others out there. I find most of our customers are using Google’s Chrome; it’s not a bad idea to have more than one. Sometime a website that looks bad or works poorly in one browser, works much better in another. That’s a whole other topic.

I will still be following the evolution of Windows 11 because my laptop that is my road computer is on Windows 11 and I intend to keep it on Windows 11. I don’t want to fall behind in my experience with using it as many of our subscribers use Windows 11, and so I need to understand it when providing technical support for our software on that platform. We’ll see where Windows 11 goes in the future, I suspect I will begin to like it about the same time they roll out Windows 12.

Progress On CQS.EXE Has Further Slowed

A decision here at Compulife has slowed progress on CQS.EXE yet again. As you know I have been talking about updating our old data file format to a new type of file format, a format that we are currently using with our renewal rate file. We have previously decided that rather than store most renewal rate tables with the individual products themselves, that we would store them in a separate rate file. This has proven to be a great decision, and has been both a space saver and time saver from a maintenance standpoint. Those renewal rate tables are in a much better file format than our basic rates tables.

However, we have received some new advice that has led me to believe that there may be an even better file format than that one, and I am persuaded that file format needs to be looked at VERY hard.

In that regard we are currently working to make a change to our renewal file format, to see if the new format is indeed better. That work will take a couple of months (at least) and it is possible, after doing it, that we may come to the conclusion it was a waste of time. We don’t think it will be a waste of time, which is why we are taking time, but we need to find out and we need to be able to fall back to our current position if we decide to do that instead.

What I did NOT want to do, was change the base rates file format to the current renewal table format, and then have to convert both afterward. In other words, I would prefer ONE conversion on the old file format; NOT TWO.

So, this is our latest delay but we hope you are patient with us as we continue down this road. We believe that the end result will be a better result for you, albeit minor, but will be a much better result for us (major improvement).

In the meantime we have an existing product that is SOLID, dependable, and working VERY WELL. We are happy to continue to update that software (and could do so for many years) until such a time as the new format has been rolled out, tested and proven to be as good, before we say goodbye to the current system.

NOTE:   None of this will impact your use of our software or the options that we currently give you. Remember, Compulife is NOT big fat software company. Because we are small, I believe that we pay closer attention to what our customers like and don’t like.

Our Current Programming Plans

The following is the current order for new work that we will be doing moving forward:

 

• • Introduction of New PC Version: CQS.EXE.

 

• • Overhaul Of Current Product Data Files.

 

• Introduction of Compulife Mobile Plus (with Pick 12).

Anyone with questions about any of these upcoming projects can call Bob Barney to discuss:

 

Please don’t email me essay questions; just call. If I’m not in, email me your phone number, I’ll call you.

These planned objectives will easily consume our programming time during the balance of 2026. The good news is that once the product data files have been converted, and we have introduced the new CQS.EXE and upgraded our internet engine to use the new data files, Compulife will be turning its full attention to our web-based, Compulife Mobile software. The long-term goal is to have a web-based product that does everything our PC-based software does.