Seven top tips for school insurance renewals

Craig Smith, chief operating officer at Bedfordshire School Trust, gives his advice after recently renewing his trust‘s insurance premiums 

Whilst insurance renewal may not be the most exciting of annual tasks, it is an important one – especially when put in the context of what happens when you are making a claim, the legal requirements, and seeking to ensure best value for your school budget.

TIP 1 – Start early

Each year the task of renewing our trust-wide insurance policy seems to creep up on us (our renewal date is November 1^st) so last year we decided to be clever and put diary dates in for early summer to start the task in good time. This meant we were able to ask all our schools to check their school level information and share this with the broker we use to take to the market. I am sure this enabled us to manage the process for our needs rather than respond to tight deadlines as in previous years

TIP 2 – Chase for quotes early

Despite starting early, we have still found the insurance quotes come to us in mid-October – throw in half-term in late October and we still did not have that much time to complete the important stage of reviewing and negotiating with the broker. Whether you go direct to insurance companies for quotes, or use a broker, I think you need at least a couple of weeks to properly investigate and test out quotes. Leaving it late may force a rushed decision, possibly based on the need to ensure adequate cover is in place in time rather than securing a good deal – never a good place to be.

TIP 3 – Don’t be afraid to haggle

School business practitioners (and anyone else!) can find it difficult to haggle, especially as we are usually multi-taskers, juggling many demands, and don’t always feel we have the expertise or specific knowledge to challenge ‘experts’ in specific fields. I always route myself back to the core principle of working to secure the best outcome possible for our schools  – for me this equates to a good level of cover at the right price. Asking for better pricing or explaining why this quote will not be accepted – always politely – has been incredibly successful, including this year.

TIP 4 – Keep the claims low

Whilst this may be difficult to control it does lead to better quotes and increases your ability to secure the right outcome for your school(s). Any insurance claims need to come via the trust office so we work with schools to manage this as well as we can. Tricky but effective!

TIP 5 – Only pay for the coverage level you need

This is, perhaps, linked to being tight on time but most insurance renewals tend to be looking to secure last year’s level of cover plus anything obviously needing to be added – perhaps a new school has joined the trust, or a new building has been constructed? A thorough review of the level of cover, school by school, is often a very effective way to reduce your premiums without compromising on quality. Schools hold less and less cash yet cash in hand levels impact on your premiums – this is one of numerous quick wins in cutting your premium.

TIP 6 – However, make sure you are adequately covered

The key, as stated earlier, is to gain good value at the right price. New areas of risk emerge all the time and, recently, cyber insurance has figured prominently for us. Identifying the right risks for your school(s) is as important as removing any unwanted areas – driving down premiums by leaving your school without appropriate cover is never going to be a good policy in the long run.

TIP 7 – Use RPA to help you manage premiums

This could mean switching to Risk Protection Arrangement (RPA), if you are not already using it, or benchmarking against RPA to drive down premiums. Whilst RPA is not like-for-like it is very useful to benchmark against and we do this every year to ensure we maximise our leverage in the market; without question, RPA has been highly effective in keeping our premiums as low as possible. The ESFA asks us, quite rightly, to justify why we are not in RPA each year, so we always have the market testing information available to show we secured the best deal for us.

We approached the insurance renewal process with some concern this year – would premiums rocket after COVID and the school trip cancellations we all endured recently? Would increasingly tight budgets be under further pressure from an insurance industry that has had a difficult time over the last 12-18 months? I am pleased to say that a bit of forward planning, knowing our schools well and, therefore, what cover we wanted has worked well – at least until we start all over again next year!