Liability Insurance Explained

Hey, everyone, it's Caitlin here from Divers Alert Network, and we are back with yet another webinar. And today I'm here with Shelly Wright. She's our professional programs manager here at Dan. And what that means is that she works with our professional liability insurance program. So all of you dive pros calling in, asking questions about your policies, it's really likely that you've gotten to talk to Shelly. And we're really excited to have her on here today because she's especially qualified to answer some of your questions because she's actually an active instructor as well as an insurance expert here with us at Dan. So really excited again to have her. And just before we get started, I just want to say we're going to be giving a presentation and tell you guys all about Dan liability insurance, discuss some of the programs we have coming out for 2020 and 2021. And we're going to talk about some of the incentives we have going to help dive professionals out during this time. But Shelly, are you there? Hi, how are you guys doing today? Thank you guys for joining us. One moment as I load my screen here. As Caitlin said, I am the professional programs manager here at Dan. We are going to be going over first starting out with an overview of the liability program Dan is offering this season. Next, we're going to talk about the financial relief efforts our current liability insurers will have. Then we'll move into special incentives for our new insurers. Lastly, wrapping up with a Q&A session. So let's talk a little bit about Dan RRG. What exactly is a risk retention group? In 1986, liability insurance was either unavailable or unaffordable for individuals and businesses needing liability coverage. Due to this liability crisis, Congress passed the Liability Risk Retention Act, which allowed the formation of RRGs, or risk retention groups, to provide this much-needed protection. These state-chartered insurance companies can cover common business exposures and also subject to strict financial oversight by state insurance regulators. RRGs provide benefits of program control and long-term rate stability when compared to traditional insurance companies. The Dan RRG ensures that dive professionals and dive businesses have a stable source of liability protection in the diving industry. Also, the Dan RRG is fully owned by Dan and is backed by Lloyds of London. Our programs include professional liability, group professional liability, and general liability. All right, just one moment, guys. It sounds like we don't have the slides on screen, so one moment. While we work to get that up real quick, just so you guys know, if you have questions about professional liability insurance and things like that, go ahead and submit them in the comments. We're going to try and get to as many as we can during the time we have allotted for this today, but for those of you who don't get your questions answered or might be tuning in for the recorded version instead of the live stream, please feel free to leave your questions in the comments or send them directly to us at liabilityinsuranceatdan.org, and again, we'll have that email up at the end, and we'll put it in the description of the video as well if you didn't catch that from just me saying it. But, Shelly, it looks like we're up and we're good, so let's keep on rolling. Awesome. All right, so this was a slide about the Dan Risk Retention Group. Next, we'll go into what is the difference between dive accident coverage and Dan liability insurance? Why might you need to carry both? So diving accident insurance will protect you for your own personal SCUBA accidents or injuries, so that's going to be things like cuts, bites, stings, ear trauma, and decompression illness. Liability insurance protects you when you have a student or a customer that files a claim against you or your business claiming you were negligent or harmed them in some way, so these are very different programs with very different coverage benefits. Going into a little more detail about what we offer at Dan, professional liability can be purchased as an individual policy or as a group policy. Worldwide coverage includes bodily injury and property damage. It also includes refusal to train, and additional insurance can be added at no charge. The policy is an annual policy covering $1 million per event, $2 million general aggregate, the deductible is zero, and this is a claims-made policy. More on this on a slide a little bit later, but know that this is a type of insurance policy you will really want to make sure you fully understand its features and how it works. Endorsement for professional liability include technical equipment liability for the IPL, individual professional liability. It also covers rebreathers, and we offer excess liability limits of $2 million per event, $4 million general aggregate. Going into general liability, that's going to cover your business operations, so that's the tanks you fill, the gear you service, the gear you rent, trip and fall coverage on premises. It's also an annual policy covering $1 million per event, $2 million general aggregate. It is an occurrence-based policy, meaning it covers an event that happens during the policy period. It has a zero deductible. Endorsements include lakes and quarries, so this is only if you own a lake or a quarry you need coverage for. It also includes terrorism. Tour and travel agent liability, that's if you plan travel for your customers. Employee benefit liability, if you manage a benefit package for your staff, and additional locations can also be added at no charge. So switching gears a little, let's talk about what Dan is doing to help current insurers. We knew going into the liability season that many of our policyholders would be facing difficult times, and Dan wanted to do his part to help. All existing policies insured under the Dan RRG on May 1 were extended out in 90 days. This was done at no additional cost to the insured, and there was no further action required by the insured. Training agencies will be notified of those state changes. For IPO policies, or individual professional liability policies, at the end of the 90 days you will receive your renewal like normal, with a total premium being due. For general liability and group professional liability policies, at the end of the 90 days your policy will also renew as normal, with a total premium being due with the option to finance. For new IPO customers coming into the Dan Risk Retention Group, we're able to offer a split payment option. This means 25% down will be required at the time of purchase, with a balance being due within 90 days. This option will be available until July 31st of 2020. Understand we're not offering premium financing, we're only making an accommodation to how that payment is paid. In addition, if you're not already a Dan member, we're introducing a complimentary Dan membership as part of your enrollment. This entitles you to Dan member pricing on the professional liability policy, and it is a $35 value providing you with a medical transportation benefit anytime you travel more than 50 miles from home. For the general liability and group professional liability customers, Dan is able to offer premium financing with first insurance funding. This features a 25% down payment with the balance being financed in nine monthly installments. All the terms of financing are set by the premium finance company. Sorry, my screen seems to have locked up. My apologies guys, there we go. Going back to the claims made policy that we talked about earlier. These policies are very different in comparison to other insurance policies you might be accustomed to buying. This is a policy providing coverage when coverage is only triggered when the claim is made against you, and regardless of when the wrongful act which gave rise to the claim took place. For example, if there was an incident with a student two years ago, but you receive a notice of claim against you today, it is the current active policy you have in place now that will pay for that claim. It is not the policy from two years ago, but there is a caveat. For coverage to apply, you must have continuous coverage from the date the incident occurred, and this is true for all professional liability policies. If you had a lapse in coverage during that two years, you disqualify yourself from coverage. To add a side note to that, in the Dan RRG, we can cover prior acts as long as you have had continuous liability insurance, even if that prior coverage was with another carrier. The key is just to keep continuous coverage. So going into some frequently asked questions for our current insurers, does the 98 policy term extension affect my coverage in any way? No, your existing coverage and endorsements remain the same. What documentation will I receive to show that the term of my policy has been extended? Dan RRG will provide current insurers with a policy endorsement and a new declaration page to confirm the policy term extension. Since the term of my policy has ended, what will be the renewal date of my policy next year? The renewal date of your liability insurance policy will be the new date determined by your 90-day extension. So if your renewal date was pushed to September 30th of this year, September 30th will remain your renewal date for the future. I just renewed my policy before you announced the 90-day policy term extension. Am I eligible to receive the extended policy term? Yes, your policy extension would apply at the end of your 2020 or 2021 policy. My policy effective date is after May 1, 2020, but I renewed my policy early. Can I cancel the renewal and have my premium refunded? No, the renewal cannot be canceled or refunded, but the expiration date of your new policy will be extended by 90 days. For example, if the effective date of your renewal policy is May 15th, the term of your coverage would be extended until August 13th of 2021. Some frequently asked questions for a new insurer. If I choose the split payment option, will I lose coverage if I am unable to pay the premium cost within the required 90 days? Yes, the policy will cancel and the training agency would be notified. Am I eligible to receive DAN member pricing on liability insurance if I am not a DAN member? DAN will provide a complimentary membership to new insurers who have not yet joined DAN. Also, you can upgrade the individual membership to a family membership and or add accident insurance at any time. Is there a payment grace period if the full premium is not paid within the 90 days? No, there's no grace period. The balance must be paid within that 90 days. Is finance available for new general liability and group professional liability insurance customers? Yes, we do offer premium financing through first insurance funding for new customers. Can I finance a general or group professional liability insurance policy through a third party? No, outside financing is not permissible. Can I add endorsements, teaching staff, or additional insurers after I purchase my policy? Yes, some changes can be made through your DAN online account or contact DAN for additional assistance. In wrapping up with the slide presentation, there are a few things you need to know. We have a lot of information on our website at dan.org forward slash liability. You'll find information about pricing, additional frequently asked questions about the programs. You'll find our full master policy. You have the opportunity to review everything about our liability program before you make your purchase. Lastly, know we've been helping divers for 40 years. We're not new to the insurance industry. Proceeds from our programs are reinvested into initiatives that make diving safer. If you aren't sure the DAN program is right for you, feel free to call me at any time. I'm happy to discuss your options or challenges to see what we can do for you or your business. So, Caitlin, that wraps up the presentation. I believe you should have some questions for me. Yes, Shelley, that's right. An awesome presentation. That's useful for me, too, because I'm also a dive professional and I'm active out there. I can't wait to get back to diving once all of these restrictions are lifted. But it's really important to know about all of these insurance logistics, especially when we're getting right back into things. So, here are a couple questions coming in. But before we get to that, just so everyone is aware, all of these slides are going to become available on DAN.org as soon as we get this recorded and uploaded to DAN.org. You can go to DAN.org slash COVID-19 to find access to our other webinars. But we'll put that up on our page and we'll share the link once that's available, too, so you guys can have access to the slides if that is something you want. But now we'll go ahead and get to some of the questions. So, here's one coming in from an audience member named Dan. He says, is Dan interested in writing general liability insurance for scientific diving training? It depends on, that's one that's going to take more investigation and more detail. So, I'll have to defer to answering that question at the moment. Please contact me at liabilityinsuranceatdan.org, that email address that we have on our website, and I'll be happy to investigate and talk about that one a little bit more. That one's going to take a little bit more investigation before I can answer that one. Got it. And then here's another one. So, some people are asking what regions this liability insurance is applicable to. So, do we have liability coverage that covers residents of Canada or Europe? Not at this time. The programs that we have available are only available for purchase in the U.S. They will cover you anywhere in the world you train, but the actual purchase of the policy must be a U.S. resident who purchased the liability coverage. Perfect. So, if I'm a resident of the state of North Carolina and I decide to take a class and teach in Cozumel, am I covered? Yes, you are covered. Right on. Okay. And moving on. So, Barton is saying, I am an independent instructor and most pools in his area are requiring general liability insurance. And he wants to know, can he only have liability insurance if he creates a business and insures his business? That is correct. So, general liability is for businesses only or the coverage is for businesses. So, there's no way for an individual to purchase a general liability policy. So, if I'm a private instructor and I'm teaching private lessons just under my own name, would I need a professional liability as well as general or just professional? You could because we're seeing it more and more where swimming pools are asking for general liability coverage. So, they're wanting you to show proof of if someone gets hurt, trips and falls at the pool, they're kind of removing their liability and putting you first and foremost before theirs kicks in. So, it's happening more and more. Happy to talk to you more about your individual situation on that. But it is something we are seeing a lot of and you do have to have a business to buy general liability. Well, that's really good to know. I don't know if I'm going to have to start a business or not, but hopefully I can keep operating as usual. But anyway, moving on. So, we have another question coming in. This one's from Donald. He says, my liability insurance is up next month from another company. If I come over to Dan, is the price going to be reduced due to this COVID-19 pandemic? Well, I'm sorry. What was that again? So, Donald is asking, he has liability insurance through another company that expires next month and he wants to know if he switches to Dan for professional liability insurance, is there any price reduction or any other incentive due to this pandemic? Well, our prices are already very competitive. But as far as just to blatantly answer the question, no, the price wouldn't change, but we are able to offer the premium financing that's not necessarily available with all companies. Okay. Well, that's all good to know. Our next question is coming in. This is just kind of clarifying. Some people are just wanting to confirm that, let's say, their policy expires June 30th. So, now that we've done this 90-day extension, would it now expire September 30th? So, correct. So, if your policy was due to renew on June 30th, we would extend the policy 90 days. I think that actually calculates 90 days would be September 28th, but that would be your renewal date going forward, each renewal cycle. Got it. So, their payment would then be due September instead of June. Right. Each year after that, it would be due September. Perfect. And then, Nancy wants to know, is there a maximum age of participant for the liability insurance? So, I guess she's asking, do we limit ages of students per instructor? Well, Dan doesn't put any restrictions on the teaching standards. So, whatever the training agency has said is okay to do is what we're going to back. Perfect. And then, here is one coming up. So, Michael wants to know, are there any restrictions to offer coverage to dive professionals whose business is located in Puerto Rico? So, we cannot offer coverage in Puerto Rico at this time. Okay. And then, is there a maximum age for any of the instructors actively teaching? So, do we have age restrictions for professionals that we insure? No. Awesome. And then, Shelly, we have a couple of travel insurance questions, but since this one is geared toward the pros, do you want to go ahead and handle those now or should we get to those on a case-by-case basis? Those, we should probably forward over to membership and insurance for those questions. Okay, perfect. So, you guys, a lot of you guys have travel insurance questions right now. It might be best for you to reach out to member at dan.org or give us a call. On our regular phone lines, if you want to get an answer very quickly. Otherwise, we're going to be able to get right back to you in the comments as soon as we can. Okay. And let's see through here. I think we might have some more. Okay. So, this is a great one. Ken is asking, he says he has both professional liability policy and a general liability policy for his business. And he wants to know if the 90-day extension applies to the general liability for his store as well as his professional individual policy firm. So, the policies, all of the policies insured through the Dan ROG were pushed 90 days. So, every single policy at Dan with liability was pushed 90 days. Awesome. Very good to know. And just a quick clarification. I think we might have asked, we kind of referred to it when we asked about the Puerto Rico one. But when we talk about U.S., does that cover its territories or just the continental U.S. and then Alaska, Hawaii? So, coverage is valid anywhere in the world. So, if you're teaching Indonesia, wherever you happen to be teaching, you have coverage. It's just you have to purchase it while living in the U.S. Okay. So, that's just all 50 states at this time? All 50 states, yes. Okay. All right. And then Ernie wants to know, can a dive club get general liability? Our general liability at the moment is not going to have what a dive club is going to need. They're going to probably need DNO coverage, directors and officers coverage to give them coverage for that particular situation. Happy to talk more about it, but we're probably not going to have at this point what they need. That is something that we are entertaining adding at a later date, but we don't have DNO coverage at the moment. Gotcha. And here's another one from Fletcher. He's asking, do you automatically notify training agencies that liability insurance is enforced, and is there automatic renewal? There is not automatic renewal at this time. That is something we are entertaining, but yes, the training agencies automatically get a copy of the policy. So, each agency that you list, if you're with more than one, each one of those agencies will get a copy of your insurance. Perfect. And that's easy. So, as soon as you sign up and the policy is active, what if you teach with multiple training agencies? Each agency should get a copy of it, yes. Great. And then here's another one coming in from Chris. They're asking, will the new policies with updated dates be automatically sent to additional insured and training agencies as well? So, kind of piggybacking on that, the extension, will that be? So, the training agencies will get the new policy. The additional insured, that's going to be on a case-by-case basis. So, we can certainly help with that, depending on the type of policy it is. Okay, perfect. We have another question coming from Cindy, asking, are there any issues with instructors teaching public safety classes? So, if you teach public safety, do our professional liability insurance policies cover you? Yes, it will. It'll cover teaching public safety. It's not going to cover you while working in public safety, but it will cover you while you're teaching. Okay, very good distinction there, because that's all really important to know. And we have a question coming in from Devin. He says, my main question is, as a young person new to the dive profession without extensive resources and contacts, he's trying to think outside the box as for what this means for the future of teaching. So, we're kind of moving through. This is a really long, so I'll try to keep it short. He wants to know, what are things he should consider with the differences in liability insurance for not using public space and for using something like a private space to teach in? So, I guess what he's really asking is, should he prioritize using private pools, like customer pools, like at their own personal house, versus using a public pool? What are some things for him to consider? Like, we mentioned the trend about meeting general liability if you're going to use a certain public pool. But I guess he's trying to ask, as a private instructor, would you recommend him just getting started with a professional liability insurance policy? So, that's one I would rather talk a little bit more one-on-one about, just because of the details involved. There are a lot of things that can go into that that can be problematic, and that's what I would want to explore. The homeowner may or may not have proper insurance to cover something like that. Their homeowners is probably not going to cover you as a DA professional should anything happen. So, we need to talk through the things that can go wrong and the things that can go right for that particular type of exposure. So, I would rather take that one offline. Okay, yeah, perfect. Got it. No problem there. And then here's a question coming in from Larry. He says, are all the training agencies supported, are they in support of Dan professional liability insurance? For example, can I have Dan professional liability insurance even if I'm a PADI instructor, a NAOI instructor, SSI? Every training agency, pretty much. Pretty much. I mean, all of the major training agencies, definitely. If for some reason we don't have one listed, please reach out. I'm happy to talk about it and explore whether or not we can cover it, but all the major training agencies are covered. Perfect. And then, does professional liability insurance cover non-diving courses like gas blending or visual cylinder inspection courses? No, there's going to be some areas there where that is not going to cover and we don't have endorsements for that yet. That is something we are exploring, but we don't have those yet. Got it. And there's several on here. Oh, here's a good question. So, this one comes from another Dan. He's saying, I own a dive center. Do you offer an inland marine policy? Inland marine policies can be on a variety of different pieces of property and some of it can be on, you know, like laptops and different things. If you're talking about marine coverage, no, but inland marine, we don't offer that either. So, either one of those, we're not going to be able to provide coverage for. Okay. And there's, yeah, we still have a bunch of questions, but it looks like we are running out of time. So, again, thank you guys for being so engaged and sending your questions. We will be sure to get back and answer everyone's questions individually. And again, if you have specific case-by-case things you'd like to discuss, we really would like you to reach out to us. So, Shelley, you can pick up the phone, as well as our other liability specialists who are standing by. And the phone number to reach them at is 919-684-2948. And for specifics on liability, just shoot us an email at liabilityinsuranceatdan.org. And for other membership, Dan Dive Accident Insurance questions or travel insurance questions, the best people to reach out is going to be our general membership department. And you can reach them at memberatdan.org or, again, at that phone number, 919-684-2948. And Shelley, any parting words? Guys, thank you so much for being with us today to talk about the Dan programs. Again, anything I can do to help, reach out. I'm happy to talk about your individual situations because it can vary from one person to another. Thank you again for joining us. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Take care and stay safe out there. Bye, guys.