Automobile insurance generally falls into two categories:
Coverage – Protects church owned automobiles against third party claims. We recommend $1,000,000 per incident.
Cost – $1,000 per vehicle.
Coverage – Provides automobile protection to employee’s automobiles during Church activities and can also include coverage for rented / leased vehicles.
Cost – $250 annually.
When discussing liability insurance, be sure to review these five categories:
Coverage – Insures your church and its operations against third party bodily injury and/or property damage. Please notify your Insurance Agent before going on Mission trips to make sure you are adequately covered with General Liability.
Cost – Determined by square footage of area occupied. 2,000 square feet will cost about $200 annually.
Coverage – Protection from lawsuits resulting from wrongful discharge, sexual misconduct, discrimination, etc.
Cost – $35-$75 per employee annually.
Coverage – Protects Ministers and Lay Counselors against claims and lawsuits arising from counseling services. Usual coverage is up to $1,000,000 in occurrence and in aggregate (total of all occurrences) annually.
Cost – Rates vary $50-$250 annually (based on # of clergy or professionals and type of care offered). Note – If you are outsourcing consulting to one particular person or entity, then we recommend you ask that person or entity to place you under their insurance coverage. Most underwriters have two requirements: 1) at least one staff member needs to have a seminary degree and 2) the church needs to submit a formal typed plan on childcare precautions.
Coverage – Protects church employees and volunteers against claims and lawsuits arising from sexual misconduct allegations. You should have this Insurance once the church has youth programming.
Cost – $500-$1,000 annually (based on # of volunteers and childcare/daycare programming).
Coverage – Protects Board Members and Officers against alleged third party lawsuits for mismanagement. Typical coverage amount = $1,000,000 per occurrence.
Cost – $50-$250 annually.
When reviewing property insurance, be sure to discuss these five categories:
Coverage – Insures office furniture, machinery and computer equipment.
Cost – $20,000 in contents is approximately $250 annually.
Coverage – Additional content coverage that specifies computers / software against additional perils not covered by a typical contents policy. Examples include damage from electric surges and loss of data. You will need to itemize your computer equipment and software. By that, we mean you will need to list your equipment and software and the cost on an EDP (electronic data processing) form. This is known as an “additional rider”.
Cost – $1.50-$2.00 / $100 value annually.
Coverage – Insures mobile property such as a laptop computer, video / sound equipment. You may be required to itemize these mobile properties as well.
Cost – $1.50-$2.00/ $100 value annually.
Coverage – Check your lease agreement to see whether or not you have improvements (walls, re-carpeting, re-painting) and betterments to insure.
Cost – usually included in the Contents policy at that going rate.
Covers commercial buildings and personal property against a wide variety of perils or causes of loss, such as a fire. Obviously, you will not need Building Insurance until you own the facility.
Cost – Usually a rate multiplied by the replacement cost (this means no deduction for depreciation will be accounted for when the insurer pays your claim). Cost varies widely from $.30 – $1.10 per $100 value annually. Rural and coastal areas are more expensive than urban areas; frame is more expensive than brick, etc.
Over the next few posts we will be discussing some basics of insurance. This can be an interesting topic, but for most of us, it’s as bad as discussing Taxes! Regardless, it’s a necessary evil, so hopefully the next few posts will make this topic more understandable.
Church Insurance falls into five main categories:
We recommend that you develop a relationship with an independent insurance agent rather than buy coverage directly from an insurance company. Insurance companies can increase their premiums from one year to the next. As such, an independent agent’s responsibility will be to quickly find a more economical policy, or policies, for you, as they have access to multiple underwriters / companies.
