Is Your Insurance Broker Telling You These Eight Things?

1. Consolidate your assets into one master insurance program.

Are all of your assets in separate insurance programs? Feeling lost in a sea of policies? We do not blame you. You need a master insurance program that covers all assets in your portfolio while still complying with lenders, investors and leases. This allows you to increase coverage over all of your assets, add assets faster in acquisition, insulate your portfolio from loss volatility and reduce overall costs. Through a consolidated program, you will not need to renew an insurance program every week. Instead, you can focus on what you do best—growing your Net Operating Income and portfolio.

3. Outsource certificate tracking to experts who can do this in their sleep.

You hire smart people, but an internal employee with little insurance or risk transfer experience is probably not tracking the latest update to ISO form CG2010. Did you know there are trained teams who can review certificates and contracts to ensure compliance? Find a broker that can take this fiduciary responsibility off your plate and become your back office—managing all of this for you with expertise and a technology platform to ensure accuracy. Outsourcing certificate tracking lets you focus on gaining more assets and tenants while remaining confident the ones you do have will hold up to your lease agreement and/or service contracts.

7. Lean on your broker for lender requirements.

You are in business to grow and be profitable. But if your broker is not familiar with lender requirements for new acquisitions and/or refinancing at renewal, you can be in hot water. Again, lean on a broker with experience to help expedite your process for closing on financing.

It is not every day we sit and think about our insurance policies. There is no shame in taking a moment to assess your current business insurance coverage and consider if changes need to be made. Here are eight things your insurance broker should be telling you that will not only minimize risk, but also make your life easier and bottom line happy.

Anthony Way serves as senior vice president and practice leader at Assurance, overseeing the public entity, education and real estate industries. He has more than 20 years of experience in the insurance and risk management fields.

5. Check your rates—they’re higher and you have less coverage than the competition.

You deserve to know how your company stacks up to the competition and what to do with the data available. Benchmarking compares your coverage, losses and premiums within the insurance marketplace to similar organizations. Your broker should utilize benchmarking to analyze your insurance program and its overall performance. You will know what coverage is needed, where to improve your insurance and risk management program and how it compares with competitors. Say goodbye to worrying if you are properly covered, experiencing too many losses or paying premiums higher than your competitors. By benchmarking yourself against others, you are taking a proactive approach to your insurance program.

2. Ditch the 1980’s technology and paper trail.

How many emails do you have to search through to find all the forms for your insurance program? Do you have binders collecting dust? You should have a client site to store and manage all the pertinent data related to your insurance portfolio that you can access 24/7.

Through a data management system, it is much easier to manage each location’s financial data relative to insurance. Through a client site, you can improve internal processes and make it easier on employees who need critical data to do their jobs effectively.

4. Don’t expect multiple LLC’s, trusts or individually owned assets to be covered.

Limited Liability Companies (LLC’s) are one of the most preferred forms of business entities to hold investment real estate properties. This fact alone makes real estate insurance a completely different animal. Does your broker know which policies need to be modified to properly protect your assets? Proper structure for LLC’s gives peace of mind that you have coverage prior to a claim, not after. This is the most common error insurance brokers who do not understand commercial real estate make. Knowing your entities are protected saves you from unforeseen hits to your operating expense, which in turn, preserves your returns and relationship with investors.

6. Ignore the fuss; premium allocations are not complicated.

You finally convinced your broker you want a master program, but they leave it up to you to sort out the costs and billing with the insurance carrier. Then your NNN tenant wants an invoice, and you would think you are asking for an organ donation from your broker. The advantage of working with a broker that has industry depth is that they know allocations should not stand in the way of your master program. By allocating premiums, you are in a sense breaking out properties that are performing from those that are not. It also serves as a great tool to discover where more attention is needed from a risk management standpoint.

8. Hang with those who have industry relationships and can get deals done.

Real estate is a small world. Everyone knows everyone. Insurance is the same. If your broker (or broker’s team) does not know your story or have strategic market partners that understand the industry, you will be moving at a snail’s pace. This, as well as the very high volume of premium with strategic market partners, pushes your submission to the top for faster turnaround and achievement of insurance program objectives. By working with a broker who has these relationships intact, you’ll be able to leverage their expertise and build a program that will increase your competitive advantage.