Will My Insurance Contract Protect What I Need? Insurance Traps 101

FRA

Insurance is often the only safeguard a lumber-related entity can purchase to reimburse after a severe property or casualty loss. Yet, after nearly 50 years of collective experience insuring loggers, sawmills, and related business owners across the country, it pains to recognize insurance procurement is too often a daunting, confusing task for business owners and often considered a necessary evil due to:

Insurance is often the only safeguard a lumber-related entity can purchase to reimburse after a severe property or casualty loss. Yet, after nearly 50 years of collective experience insuring loggers, sawmills, and related business owners across the country, it pains to recognize insurance procurement is too often a daunting, confusing task for business owners and often considered a necessary evil due to:

• Insurance being mandated by banks, vendors, and states (i.e., Auto insurance). No independent business owner enjoys being told where hard-earned profits must be spent.
• Insurance is a legally binding contract (i.e., Courts call it a “Contract of Adhesion”) and, as with any legal contract, difficult to understand due to a myriad of conditions, definitions, and exclusions. 
• Insurance is purchased when all is right in the world, and no claim has been made, yet it is only after a catastrophic loss that business owners normally read their policy in full. 
• Business owners are often frustrated when insurance carriers “lawyer up” on the exclusions and limitations in the policy and refuse to pay claims that were assumed to be covered. 

Read More at FRA: Will My Insurance Contract Protect What I Need? Insurance Traps 101 - Forest Resources Association