Procuring insurance in an FE college

February is the time of year when FE colleges begin to consider their insurance renewal process to ensure that all policies are in place for the next academic year.

The Insurance Act of 2015 (incepted 2016) introduced a Duty of Fair Presentation which gave guidance in the following areas:

• What needs to be disclosed to insurers
• Who within your organisation has the relevant knowledge
• How should that information be presented to potential insurers

The following principles apply when considering the disclosure and delivery of information:

1. The college must disclose every material fact or circumstance that it knows, or it ought to know. The term ’ought to know’ is critical as it places the onus upon the college as the insured party to carry out a reasonable search to discover this information
2. This information must be provided by the Senior Management Team (SMT) as they are the ‘significant decision makers’ within the college and therefore should be knowledgeable about all college activities both current and upcoming during the term of the insurance cover

After consideration of that information once it is known, the following principles detail the delivery of that information:

1. All information must be presented in a manner which would be ’reasonably clear and accessible to a prudent insurer’
2. All information relating to matters of fact must be substantially correct and every material representation as to a matter of expectation or belief must be made in good faith

Contracts of insurance are contracts made in good faith, hence given the introduction of the Insurance Act in 2016, it is critical that the fundamental principles outlined above are adhered to by all colleges when drafting the ITT documentation for disclosure to the marketplace.

There are many types of insurance policies that an FE college may need to have in place to mitigate and cover risk within normal business operations.

Standard covers normally include:

• College Building and Contents
• Terrorism
• Loss of Income and Additional Cost of Working
• Employers Liability
• Public Liability
• Professional Indemnity
• Governors and Officers Liability
• Engineering Insurance and Inspection Services
• Motor Fleet
• Travel

Additional covers dependent upon college activities may include:

• Motor Trade
• Environmental Liability
• Personal Accident
• Loss Assessor Services
• Medical Malpractice
• Airside Liability & Aircraft
• Marine craft (Ship Hull)
• Cyber
• Contractors All Risks
• Restrictive Covenant

There are numerous risks that can be covered dependent upon the range of activities undertaken by your college. The best advice is always to talk to an expert if you have a query or need to confirm your cover levels or gain an understanding of the indemnities provided under your policies of insurance. CPC members have our appointed specialists, Risk to Value who provide support services that underpin the CPC Insurance and Associated Services for Colleges framework.

CPC fully understand that the procurement of insurance within an ever-changing further education landscape can present difficulties in understanding if risks are covered for your institution. We have prepared a 40 minute presentation to help our members working in FE with their insurance knowledge, written by Graham Peck of Risk 2Value in conjunction with our Head of Procurement, Pat Condon, who before joining CPC had insurance responsibility for a major multi-sited UK FE College.

Watch the College Insurance Procurement and Risk presentation and if you have any questions relating to the procurement of insurance for your college, please do contact our dedicated Senior Contracting Manager, Gary Sadler on 0161 974 0940 or by email to [email protected] for advice.

Finally, insurance renewal can be a convoluted and lengthy process, especially in consideration of ensuring the Invitation to Tender documentation satisfies the requirements of the Insurance Act previously discussed. Many colleges tend to go to market in May/June for an August renewal and this places pressure upon the marketplace when responding to tenders as they may be selective in those that they respond to. Maximise your opportunity to receive the very best responses by delivering your requirements to market as early as you can, this will provide more time for the insurers to respond with a strong response before they become too busy in May/June. The CPC team are specialists in this area and look forward to helping our members to continue to generate premium reductions, which in 2019 exceeded 40% for those members that provided feedback. Read the ‘Members are saving on average 40.16% on annual insurance premiums’ news article outlining this performance.