After years of working in the financial world and then in business-to-business sales, I embarked upon a career in athletic insurance. Over the years, I have met and spoken with thousands of great folks in the collegiate athletic world and have enjoyed every minute of it. Though my contacts at each school change frequently, the number one question that I get asked remains the same, “How can we keep our premiums from constantly increasing?” The answer is more simple than you’d think-you pay less per injury. Well, duh, Chris, but how do I pay less?
One of the core traits of secondary athletic insurance is that it is considered excess or pays secondarily to other valid and collectable insurance plans. The more ‘other insurance’ your athletes have, the less your secondary insurance is responsible for. Further, if a claim does find its way to your secondary coverage, it is important to have established discount agreements with your local medical providers to reduce, and possibly eliminate, the balance owed. It is really that simple, yet athletic departments across the country struggle to understand (and implement) this strategy and are missing the surefire way to stabilize their athletic insurance premiums for years to come.
The default approach to annual athletic insurance renewals is to ask your broker to obtain competitive quotes from several insurance carriers in order to make sure that you are getting the ‘best’ premium. But, that is the reactive way of managing your program and may render only short-term gains. What if you challenge your broker to assist your department with implementing a strategy to increase the prevalence (and quality) of the primary insurance your athletes have? Or to be proactive in pursuing direct discount agreements with the financial decision makers at your top medical providers to pay a reduced rate for services rendered on your student athletes. These two actionable items may not immediately decrease your upcoming year’s premium, but they are sure to reduce your annual paid claims total. You will begin to see the savings/stabilization as soon as the following year. And that, my friends, is the key to a successful athletic insurance program.
Now, of course, there are additional factors that can impact the program on a year-to-year basis such as medical inflation and anomalies in injuries/claims (looking at you COVID-19) but, in general, working towards a more holistic approach to how you manage your athletic insurance program will help you improve your financial commitment for athletic insurance.
So go forth and ask these questions of your insurance partner next time you talk to them: What can you do to help our primary insurance utilization rate? What can we do? What can you do to help us work towards establishing (or improve) direct agreements with our local medical providers?
THE ATHLETIC INSURANCE GUY 