9
OPINION
Mitigate risks by reporting
There has never been a downside to reporting circumstances to your professional liability insurance carrier, but there can be a huge downside for failing to report them.
F or many years, most professional liability insurance carriers have allowed architects and engineers to report circumstances; in fact, they typically offer pre-claim assistance on matters where they feel it will reduce the chances of a claim being made. Indeed, there has never been a downside to reporting circumstances, but there can be a huge downside for failing to report them.
Lauren Martin
As a practical matter, unless a claim is made and either reserves are posted or payments are made, reporting a circumstance will not affect the AEC firm’s loss ratio. Furthermore, an experienced claim consultant supplied or recommended by the insurer can often provide valuable insight on how the design firm might proceed to resolve the situation or minimize the potential for a claim. REPORTING CIRCUMSTANCES NOW MORE CRITICAL FOR AEC FIRMS. In recent years, developments in the AEC professional liability marketplace have made it more important than ever for design firms to report circumstances on a timely basis. Notably, there are many more carriers offering AEC professional liability coverage. Consequently, more design firms are changing their carrier than in the past. Certainly, some
of these changes have been initiated by design firms as they shop to find the best coverage available at the best pricing. In other situations, changes result from carriers reducing their overall book of business due to poor loss experience or one-off decisions to non-renew an existing client. Any time a design firm changes carriers it is extremely important to review their projects and report any with red flags to their current carrier before the policy expires. In this context, red flags may include accidents on the jobsite that resulted in serious injury or death, projects that are behind schedule or have an excessive
See LAUREN MARTIN, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER JANUARY 29, 2024, ISSUE 1522
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker