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The publication describes several ways in which an insurance professional can help builders:
- Evaluating the builder’s insurance coverage needs and potential coverage alternatives. This can enable the builder to decide how much risk he should retain and the appropriate manner in which to do so.
- Promoting relations with underwriters. Professionals can help builders prepare for insurance much earlier than in previous years and assemble a persuasive submission for the underwriter. Along with the usual numbers on losses, sales, pro forma construction values and the like, it is now just as important to provide detailed information about the builder's quality control programs and other risk reduction.
- Presenting the builder's claims history in the best possible light. If a builder has a good history, an insurance professioinal can help explain factors that have kept claims low — such as long-term relationships with a stable group of contractors and experienced superintendents that have kept quality high; or an outstanding customer service operation that has prevented small problems from escalating into lawsuits. Losses similarly need to be explained. They might be attributable to a one-time event such as a hurricane or the failure of an architect or a product that the builder no longer uses.
- Assisting in non-insurance risk management efforts. Beyond procuring insurance, "the insurance professional can assist the builder with loss control and safety expertise, claims handling assistance, input to the builder's counsel in revising construction contracts and assisting in implementing programs for obtaining proper certificates and additional insured endorsements from contractors and design professionals.
Beyond the new brochure, NAHB continues to try to resolve the liability insurance crisis through other methods, including partnering with the Marsh global insurance and consulting firm in an effort to develop new GLI products that will meet NAHB members’ needs
The association’s relationship with Marsh has three main goals:
- To produce an accurate national picture of the loss experiences of the residential construction industry through comprehensive data collection
- To utilize actual loss experience and exposure data to develop new GLI products for NAHB members
- To structure any new GLI products so that they can be purchased from state-licensed local insurance agents with whom NAHB’s members already do business
An intense effort to gather insurance and loss-experience information from NAHB builder, remodeler and trade-contractor members is currently underway. Association members are being urged to complete an insurance survey and to send a consent letter to their insurance carrier giving the carrier permission to share loss information with Marsh. To participate in this survey, click here.
(To read the President’s Message on this issue, click here.)
For more information about NAHB’s GLI initiative, click here, or e-mail Blake Smith or call him at 800-368-5242 x8583. For specific questions about the current data collection initiative, contact Clayton Traylor, x8490, or Brett Diggs, x8453.
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