The $340,000 Program I Thought I Knew

One of my longest-standing accounts is a great family-owned California business I’ve insured for more than fifteen years. Massively complex: several distinct operations, multiple entities, over $340,000 a year in premium. I’ve reviewed this program myself for over a decade.

This year, I pushed the whole thing through Coverage Intelligence, the analysis tool I built and customized specifically for the way a broker actually works. I was shocked at what it surfaced. A little embarrassed, honestly.

Business income coverage wasn’t in the program, and I don’t think it had been put back on the table in years. For a business that earns roughly three quarters of its revenue in three or four months of the year, that’s not a small gap; a forced closure in peak season is a seven-figure loss. We walked through it. They still passed, and that’s their call to make. My job is to make sure they see the exposure clearly, and now they do.

Pollution came up the same way: real exposures, pointed out plainly, and a client comfortable self-insuring them with eyes open.

And cyber, which I’ve brought up many times over the years. This time, instead of just offering the coverage, the tool pulled a half dozen specific cyber loss examples that applied to their exact operations. Different conversation entirely.

In the end we didn’t change much of the program. What changed is the customer’s understanding: what’s covered, what’s self-insured, and what the loss scenarios actually look like. That’s a win on both sides of the table.

And the tool gets smarter with every review. Who said insurance can’t be fun?