Glossary

A farm umbrella policy provides high limits of liability to protect an insured farmer against a catastrophic liability loss. This policy grants liability coverage that stacks on top of the primary liability coverage provided by the insured farmer's farmowners policy, personal auto, and any other scheduled underlying liability policy. It covers bodily injury (BI), property damage (PD), and personal injury (PI), which includes offenses such as libel, slander, false arrest, and invasion of privacy. The farm umbrella policy also fills some gaps in coverage over a specified deductible (often called a retained limit) in the underlying policy.

Follow form is when an umbrella policy provision follows the underlying policy as to how the provision applies. Follow form also identifies an "excess" liability policy that follows the underlying policies for most policy provisions. The policy may stand alone for certain exclusions, conditions, etc. while relating back to the underlying coverage for most provisions. This type of policy form is typically used excess of scheduled underlying insurance and usually contains a requirement that the insured maintain scheduled underlying insurance.

First dollar defense, umbrella, is an umbrella or professional liability policy provision under which the insurer agrees to indemnify the insured for costs of claims defense in the self-insured retention (SIR) area.

A follow form professional liability endorsement in an umbrella liability policy indicates that coverage applies under the same basis as in the underlying professional liability policy. In recent years, however, such endorsements are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain and are very unusual. This is because few umbrella insurers are also willing to assume the types of risks that professional liability policies cover.