Insurance renewal shocker!!

SVJKarate

I've just renewed the club insurance for 2016 and the premium is almost 100% increased over 2015. Our club has been in operation for a very long time without any claims ever, so this is a real blow to the club financials. Our insurance is via a broker with RSA.

Has anybody had experience of similar with their premiums? Any thoughts on options to reduce the costs?

Subcomandante Marcos

Did you shop around at all?

SVJKarate

Subcomandante Marcos wrote: »

Did you shop around at all?

Yes, quite a bit. I found the price was very high in the 'usual' places for Irish clubs, with varying levels of cover on offer. I did find cheap quotes on UK websites but when I contacted them I was told they could not cover ROI clubs, or they could not cover clubs where there was any contact between participants, which is just madness.

yomchi

SVJKarate wrote: »

Yes, quite a bit. I found the price was very high in the 'usual' places for Irish clubs, with varying levels of cover on offer. I did find cheap quotes on UK websites but when I contacted them I was told they could not cover ROI clubs, or they could not cover clubs where there was any contact between participants, which is just madness.

Have you tried the old reliables in AMA or WAKO GB?

thedooner

What was the difference in prices? And did your old policy also state no contact?My Sensei's insurance wants the names of his clubs while mine states I can teach 10 lessons anywhere in Ireland and am covered for public liability only, so no sparring allowed. But,pricewise,there is very little in our two prices, between 350 and 400 euro.

SVJKarate

yomchi wrote: »

Have you tried the old reliables in AMA or WAKO GB?

I had tried looked at AMA a couple of years ago and didn't like it. I can't honesty say that I remember why, but I have a vague recollection that I had difficulty getting clarity around the level of cover.

I will be researching them this year though, with a view to trying to cut our costs for 2017.

PS: I've just looked at their website and it does seem that they want the details of every student registered, which is an administrative nightmare. The fees per-person are very high, so I'm not sure that AMA would be competitive for us.

SVJKarate

thedooner wrote: »

What was the difference in prices? And did your old policy also state no contact?

The increase was 100%. Our club buys both Public Liability and Personal Accident policies. It seems the PA element is the one which has risen so sharply.

We've never had a no-contact clause in our policies. That would pretty much rule out any serious form of karate training. We don't do a lot of contact (semi-contact, very controlled partner drills) but there's enough contact for people to go home with bruises on them. I can't see the point of training without contact. . . how can you tell if you're applying a technique correctly if there's no contact?

SVJKarate

thedooner wrote: »

My Sensei's insurance wants the names of his clubs while mine states I can teach 10 lessons anywhere in Ireland and am covered for public liability only, so no sparring allowed.

10 lessons in a year? No contact? How do you manage that? (and BTW what style are you teaching?)

yomchi

SVJKarate wrote: »

I had tried looked at AMA a couple of years ago and didn't like it. I can't honesty say that I remember why, but I have a vague recollection that I had difficulty getting clarity around the level of cover.

I will be researching them this year though, with a view to trying to cut our costs for 2017.

PS: I've just looked at their website and it does seem that they want the details of every student registered, which is an administrative nightmare. The fees per-person are very high, so I'm not sure that AMA would be competitive for us.

Any insurance cover that provides member to member insurance will want the names/details of said students. It's actually a very handy add on to any policy. At the end of the day most if not all brokers here and in England are underwritten by Lloyds, so it's the same policy.

SVJKarate

yomchi wrote: »

Any insurance cover that provides member to member insurance will want the names/details of said students.

Neither RSA nor Sportscover required a list of names when I've bought Personal Accident insurance (which covers member-to-member incidents). Having to list names would be a problem for me (and I guess for a lot of clubs) as we have good deal of churn (new members & members leaving) throughout the year, especially among the kids. For an average of 60 members training it would not be unusual to have 75+ names as people come and go. Insurance name-by-name is a more expensive option, and runs the risk that an injury might occur during the first lesson, before the name is recorded.

yomchi

SVJKarate wrote: »

Neither RSA nor Sportscover required a list of names when I've bought Personal Accident insurance (which covers member-to-member incidents). Having to list names would be a problem for me (and I guess for a lot of clubs) as we have good deal of churn (new members & members leaving) throughout the year, especially among the kids. For an average of 60 members training it would not be unusual to have 75+ names as people come and go. Insurance name-by-name is a more expensive option, and runs the risk that an injury might occur during the first lesson, before the name is recorded.

It seems odd that RSA or Sportscover would not need a list of names of active members. I don't know for sure but I would guess that if you had a member sue another member and the insurance company had no details of said member, they would wash their hands of it and not pay out a penny.
It would be like having any random person driving your car and your insurance company being ok with it.

I have my cover through Kickboxing Ireland who have cover via O'Driscoll/O'Neill. They have an online database of active members. There's over 120 on my database, it's not such a big deal and you can remove and add people with ease.

If I was you I would swallow the administrative pill of uploading names and details of your members so to avoid the rip off charges of the Irish brokers and either go to WAKO GB or AMA. It's all the same policy.

SVJKarate

yomchi wrote: »

I don't know for sure but I would guess that if you had a member sue another member and the insurance company had no details of said member, they would wash their hands of it and not pay out a penny.

I suspect we're talking about different types of cover. Personal Accident cover provides support for members that are injured while training or competing by contributing a fixed amount to the injured member. Thus for example a member who loses a tooth could claim a contribution towards the cost of dental repair treatment without the need to sue anyone.

The person most likely to be sued for a serious injury in most clubs is the instructor, no matter how the injury occurs. For this reason the instructor may be covered by a Professional Indemnity policy. The other likelihood is that the venue may be sued, on the basis that the floor was not properly maintained, or equipment was faulty etc. This is where the club will cover their activities by Public Liability cover.

At the high end of the MA sport, person-to-person indemnity cover would provide insurance where two proficient members were sparring (perhaps in a competition) without supervision and one caused an injury to the other. This situation is unlikely to occur in Traditional MA ("weekend warrior") clubs, as free-sparring without direct instructor supervision does not occur. I think you're right that in this case each member would expect to be named on a policy somewhere.

I suspect most clubs in Ireland (other than those clubs which operate at the 'elite athlete' level with a lot of competition activity) would only have PA or PL cover, or both. For competitions, the organisers usually take out event insurance to cover themselves for injuries there.

yomchi

Not exactly, if a member throws a reverse hook kick (spinning) and knocks out their training partners front teeth and breaks their jaw by using their heel, they can be sued for legal negligence (from a Kickboxing point of view, we train in light contact continuous and the rule stipulates that spinning kicks must land with the flat of the foot and not the heel). Our insurance cover only activates if we are operating under the rules of WAKO IF. So a kick with the heel is outside of the rules and thus leaves the person open to being sued for negligence.
It's a complicated field for sure and insurance companies are happy to allow you to do what you like until you need cover, then they go looking through the fine detail to see of they can opt out.

Either way that doesn't help you cause here as you are being ripped off. I would repeat that AMA or WAKO GB might be options for you.

SVJKarate wrote: »

I suspect we're talking about different types of cover. Personal Accident cover provides support for members that are injured while training or competing by contributing a fixed amount to the injured member. Thus for example a member who loses a tooth could claim a contribution towards the cost of dental repair treatment without the need to sue anyone.

The person most likely to be sued for a serious injury in most clubs is the instructor, no matter how the injury occurs. For this reason the instructor may be covered by a Professional Indemnity policy. The other likelihood is that the venue may be sued, on the basis that the floor was not properly maintained, or equipment was faulty etc. This is where the club will cover their activities by Public Liability cover.

At the high end of the MA sport, person-to-person indemnity cover would provide insurance where two proficient members were sparring (perhaps in a competition) without supervision and one caused an injury to the other. This situation is unlikely to occur in Traditional MA ("weekend warrior") clubs, as free-sparring without direct instructor supervision does not occur. I think you're right that in this case each member would expect to be named on a policy somewhere.

I suspect most clubs in Ireland (other than those clubs which operate at the 'elite athlete' level with a lot of competition activity) would only have PA or PL cover, or both. For competitions, the organisers usually take out event insurance to cover themselves for injuries there.