Looking to find out the best ways to find and secure affordable scuba shop liability insurance. Who is out there that I can contact? Comments on pricing would be interesting.
Liability Insurance
- Thread starter jkaterenchuk
- Start date
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We use Willis. Heres a link to their site. http://www.wrsdi.com/dive-facility.php
Cost depends on the options you choose. I have my instructor liability insurance tied in with the shop policy and we have a charter boat as well. I'm not sure exactly what our premium is but your looking at $1000 to $2000 per year. Again, that cost depends on what coverage you need. I was talking to another shop owner about this one time and he said he pays around $11000 per year. He runs a couple of big charter boats as well but that seems pretty steep to me. The people at Willis are great. Give them a call. Tell them about your business. They don't try to sell you insurance you don't need, or haven't tried with me anyways.
Cheers,
Scott
Cost depends on the options you choose. I have my instructor liability insurance tied in with the shop policy and we have a charter boat as well. I'm not sure exactly what our premium is but your looking at $1000 to $2000 per year. Again, that cost depends on what coverage you need. I was talking to another shop owner about this one time and he said he pays around $11000 per year. He runs a couple of big charter boats as well but that seems pretty steep to me. The people at Willis are great. Give them a call. Tell them about your business. They don't try to sell you insurance you don't need, or haven't tried with me anyways.
Cheers,
Scott
I use Willis as well, cost is about $3000 a year. They will let you break up the payments, which is nice. I've tried to get quotes from Vacencia & Buckley since I'm a PADI Dive Center. They will never give me an exact quote, but they have given ballpark quote of around $5000 a year. Needless to say, I'm sticking with Willis.
OP
Thanks for the replies. I had to move forward several months ago and I decided upon Willis. Everything mentioned in your post are my experience also.
John
John
Anyone ever use Witherspoon & associates or get a quote from them?
we got a rate of $7000 this year which will come due again in June from V&B for our shop + 5 inst + 2 DMs.
we got a rate of $7000 this year which will come due again in June from V&B for our shop + 5 inst + 2 DMs.
This is good information, thanks for discussing it. I've used V&B since we've opened for the most part becuase I never looked forward enough to shop it, and over paid I did, specially when you look at that PADI fee added to it. Thanks again for the discussion.
In case anybody new is looking we use "IMS" (Insurance Management Services).
Witherspoon is the way to go. V&B is expensive for the same coverage and IMS is joke - or at least they were so when I used them through NAUI. Witherspoon drafted a letter for me that covers me when I do airfills for paintball and are quite proactive in helping you before you do something that might open you to liability.
Witherspoon will also support you making changes in forms and documents to reduce your risk. The old RSTC medical forms that nearly every agency uses in some form are outdated with certain medical conditions and procedures. There was a thread on here dealing with what can a shop or instructor ask a prospective student about their med history. My Gf is a therapist who works with people that have eating disorders and it turns out that gastric bypass type surgerythat some people undergo can have serious consequences that can show up suddenly for example. So I added a question regarding that in my learning agreement as well as a couple other items. One of which deals with concussions where the person was not completely knocked out. It is still a concussion but not asked about on the med form. I asked them at DEMA if there was a problem with doing this in response to another instructor asking how my insurance company felt about this. They were totally ok with it. It is a risk reducing effort on my part and that is something they like.
John's staff is great and easy to deal with. They are also less than most others. And IMS? They tried to poach me from Witherspoon a couple years ago with a letter saying some bogus crap about my insurance with Witherspoon about to expire. It made it sound like they were acting on their behalf. What they did not know is that ever since I got on with Witherspoon all I have to do to talk to John himself is ask for him. Bad move on their part.
John's staff is great and easy to deal with. They are also less than most others. And IMS? They tried to poach me from Witherspoon a couple years ago with a letter saying some bogus crap about my insurance with Witherspoon about to expire. It made it sound like they were acting on their behalf. What they did not know is that ever since I got on with Witherspoon all I have to do to talk to John himself is ask for him. Bad move on their part.
We use IMS, and Carol and her staff have gone above and beyond making sure things work for us for both Store, Quarry, as well as our group Instructor policies for the last several years and the price doesnt hurt as bad as the others.
I started out with Witherspoon but dropped them when they informed me that I wasnt covered for the MDEA classes I had been teaching. The issue I had was that I wasnt informed about this until about 8 months after they no longer covered them. I was told that it started with an argument between the John and the agency. Either way, it left me uninsured even though I paid for insurance and thought I was covered. I couldnt deal with that so I switched ASAP.
I started out with Witherspoon but dropped them when they informed me that I wasnt covered for the MDEA classes I had been teaching. The issue I had was that I wasnt informed about this until about 8 months after they no longer covered them. I was told that it started with an argument between the John and the agency. Either way, it left me uninsured even though I paid for insurance and thought I was covered. I couldnt deal with that so I switched ASAP.
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