How to Writing High-Limit Environmental Accounts
Posted on March 10th, 2010
In today’s market, a few million dollars of coverage is often not enough to adequately insure a business. For many larger firms involved in complex projects, limits of ten to fifty million are becoming increasingly common. While many agents routinely build these types of programs for their clients’ regular casualty lines, they seldom have the experience to do so for environmental exposures. Although in principal these are similar exercises, there are real issues to be aware of when doing so for an environmental program.
No tower is stronger than its base, and this is true of environmental coverage as well. Far too frequently agents are struggling to fill out limits where the primary layer was constructed wrongly. An example is when a carrier uses a Contractors Pollution Liability form to provide coverage for an insured’s product. While the policy can be modified to provide some degree of coverage, it is significantly better to simply go to a carrier with a Products Pollution Liability form and have them write the primary properly. This gives cleaner coverage on the primary and makes it easy for excess carriers to step up on a true follow form basis.
Another common issue is using a Site Specific form to cover an insured’s job site. Again, this can work, but only with significant modification of the primary policy. As in the first example, this approach puts excess carriers on notice that something strange is happening, and makes them far less interested in writing the higher limits.
