AE Blog - Evaluating Your Professional Liability Insurance Broker

Insurance exposures and coverages for design professionals are very different from main street business. Similar to selecting a physician for important medical care services, you will find brokers who are generalists or who claim to be specialists. Protecting your design firm from loss requires a thorough evaluation of insurance brokers in order to make an informed selection about who will perform best when representing your interests. Key factors to consider are:

• Expertise – An experienced broker understands the insurance exposures you face every day and knows that a one-size-fit all approach doesn’t work for design professionals, engineers and consultants. Your business risks are unique and your insurance coverage should be too.

• Access To Resources – While placing quality insurance is an important service of a broker, access to expert resources to avoid or minimize loss is equally important to you. For example contract reviews by brokers with expert resources can eliminate the avoidable assumption of a loss and/or a scar to the stellar reputation you worked hard to build over the years.

• Seamless Coverage – Access to seamless brokerage/consulting service across multiple insurance lines of coverage helps prevent gaps in coverage or costly duplication of coverage. A broker should have proven experience and a product portfolio in all lines of coverage including and not limited to professional liability, property & casualty, auto, excess/umbrella, pollution, and workers’ compensation.

• Purchasing Power – A brokerage firm that places thousands of policies for design professionals, engineers and consultants benefits you greatly with purchasing power to procure the most competitively priced and broadest coverage available. The broker with a streamlined quoting process facilitates you by securing the coverage, price and financial security that best suits your unique requirements. Your contracts will likely require insurers with A “Excellent” or higher A.M Best financial ratings, so it’s important that your broker represents insurers that satisfy these requirements.

The process of buying professional liability insurance probably is not one that you look forward to each year. And although “quick and painless “may appear to be the most rewarding promise that an insurance broker can make, our goal is to bring greater value to the process through professionalism and experience. Hall & Company recently added to our staff of brokers, Chris Engstrom Senior Producer. We are confident Chris’ 26 years of commercial insurance experience will not only accomplish our goal to add greater value, but enhance our client’s overall experience in obtaining professional liability insurance.