Most insurance, risk management, and legal professionals are never taught
the proper way to read and interpret an insurance policy, discover drafting
errors, or correct poorly worded policy language. Unfortunately, this lack of
training results in surprise coverage denials, missed opportunities when
reviewing competitors’ policies, damage to professional reputation, lost
clients, and bad faith or other legal claims that could have been avoided with
accurate insight.
Recognizing that you, your team, and the industry need some help on this
front, IRMI has responded with a new edition of How To Draft and Interpret
Insurance Policies. This working tool guides legal and risk professionals
step by step through the process of interpreting existing policy language, from
applying a basic coverage analysis, to looking for overriding concerns, to
understanding advanced coverage issues like the reasonable expectations
doctrine.
How To Draft & Interpret Insurance Policies covers these
topics.
- Fundamental Principles of Policy Interpretation
- Basic Coverage Analysis
- Overriding Concerns
- Advanced Coverage Issues
- Statutes and Administrative Law
- Public Policy
- Promises, Conditions, and Representations
- Insuring Agreements and Exclusions
- Endorsements and Other Customized Provisions
- Semantic Ambiguity
- Syntactic Ambiguity
- Contextual Ambiguity
- Style
Download
Table of Contents
Agents, Brokers and Account Support Staff
- Quickly learn the right way to read and interpret policy wording that
is the foundation of your success.
- Identify mistakes in your competitor's policies to pick up new
business.
- Avoid wording and punctuation catastrophes in your current
policies.
- Understand mistakes made by claims adjusters so you are prepared to
deal with wrongful claim denials.
- Differentiate yourself from your competition and acquire and keep
more profitable business as a result.
- Design acceptable and effective manuscript endorsements.
- Train your staff inexpensively!
Risk Managers, Financial Executives & Insurance
Buyers
- Identify and correct policy wording problems!
- Avoid costly surprises when a major loss occurs.
- Critically evaluate one insurance proposal against another on the
accuracy and appropriateness of policy wording and structure.
- Recognize whether an agent and their staff really know what they are
doing.
Underwriters
- Increase your product knowledge.
- Discover and correct policy wording errors and critical punctuation
flaws.
- Earn the trust and respect of your agents, brokers, and
insureds.
- Get the policy structured right the first time to avoid loss of
profitable accounts when errors are discovered later—sometimes the hard
way!
- Train your staff inexpensively!
Claims Adjusters
- Make the right coverage call from the start and support the rationale
of your claim decisions.
- Structure rock-solid reservation of rights letters.
- Avoid disputes and increase customer retention.
- Train your staff inexpensively and give them what they really need to
improve their performance.
Attorneys
- Gives the insight and leverage you need to go toe-to-toe with big
coverage firms.
- Secure more clients by differentiating your policy expertise over
other lawyers.
- Know when to fight and when to settle.
- Train associates inexpensively on the unique nuances of insurance
contract interpretation.
Consultants
- Helps you understand the meaning and legal consequences of policy
provisions.
- Provides insight on how to modify policy language to fit a particular
risk scenario.
- Provides third-party support for your coverage interpretations.
- Gives you valuable insight for dealing with claims disputes.
Your purchase of the online version of How To Draft & Interpret
Insurance Policies comes with a digital copy of the Fundamentals of Insurance Law - a comprehensive, 150-page overview of legal principles
for risk and insurance professionals. Fundamentals of Insurance Law has 13
chapters addressing topics such as: insurance regulation, characteristics
of contracts, the anatomy of an insurance policy, property law, legal
liability, the legal environment for underwriting and claims adjusting, and
consumer laws affecting insurance.