PRODUCT: Commercial umbrella
COMPANY: Liberty Mutual
BEST RATING: A (Excellent)
AVAILABILITY: Coverage is available through agents and brokers appointed with Liberty’s National Insurance business unit.
FOCUS: When Liberty Mutual surveyed its top agent and broker partners about commercial umbrella coverage, the carrier learned that what the distribution force wants most is clarity. “Insurance is complex; umbrella and excess insurance can be even more complex,” says Doug Manwaring, senior vice president and chief underwriting officer, Liberty Mutual National Insurance.
With its new and improved commercial umbrella form, Liberty Mutual wanted to show agents the company was listening to those concerns. “We wanted to make the new form easier to read,” Manwaring says. “We’ve created greater clarity to help agents and brokers better understand the product and explain it to their clients.”
Compared to the prior edition, the new form is more intuitive—it’s been significantly simplified in terms of language and structure, and it requires far fewer endorsements. “We wanted to provide broader coverage by building it directly into the form,” Manwaring explains.
COVERAGE DETAILS: For starters, Liberty has built in tracking aggregates, so the umbrella follows the aggregates that are in the primary policies.
“The benefit to the agent or broker is when they see they’ve got a per-location or per-project aggregate in their primary coverage, our umbrella mimics that—they don’t have to endorse the umbrella to get the same aggregate protection that exists in the primary,” Manwaring explains.
Also built in is a negotiated partial settlement provision, Manwaring says. “That means the umbrella agrees to pay when either the insured or the insured’s underlying insurer has met their obligation of their retaining limit. Sometimes there are difficulties in reaching an agreement on how to pay for a loss. As long as that retained limit obligation has been met either by the primary carrier or by the client themselves, that will trigger our policy to respond.”
The new umbrella also includes follow-form coverage for both manned and unmanned aircraft—a key enhancement as more commercial clients incorporate drones into their everyday operations. Additional built-in enhancements include bodily injury to co-employees; employee benefits liability; excess and non-contributory; blanket waiver of subrogation; and a broadened definition of who is included as an insured.
Endorsements are available to cover broad form named insured; crisis management at a $250,000 limit; business continuity; and named peril time element pollution. Liberty is also introducing industry-specific enhancements for the restaurant, real estate and retail sectors.
UNDERWRITING: Liberty will write the umbrella either supported or unsupported, with capacity available up to $25 million. Submission requirements include an ACORD or broker application with description of operations; five-year loss runs with details on losses exceeding $100,000; historical exposures; requested limits; named insureds; renewal exposures, relevant safety information or a completed supplemental application; and underlying proposals.
MINIMUM PREMIUM: $10,000.
TARGET: Midsize to large domestic companies “that have an active commitment to managing and controlling their risks,” Manwaring says. “We write across a number of industries—we’ve got a well-diversified umbrella portfolio.”
Appetite includes commercial real estate and property managers, construction, cultural institutions, energy, financial services, hospitality, law firms, manufacturing, printers and publishers, professional services, restaurants, retail, sales and service organizations, and wholesale.
COVERAGE TERRITORY: Worldwide.
COVERAGE AVAILABILITY: All U.S. states except Florida, Illinois and Virginia, where approval is pending, and Alaska and Hawaii, not filed.
CONTACT: Doug Manwaring, chief underwriting officer, excess casualty; Liberty Mutual National Insurance; 513-603-2752.
Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.
