Author: Chris Boggs
Insurance policies promulgated by Insurance Services Office (ISO), American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS), the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) and other state or independent bureaus serve to establish consistency in policy wording. Even when a carrier creates and uses a proprietary form, that form generally contains much of the same policy wording promulgated by these advisory organizations.
However, state laws can alter HOW policy wording, even consistent policy wording, is applied to a loss. Similar losses covered applying similar (or exact) policy language can be adjusted differently from one state to the next. The moral is, agents must understand how state laws affect coverage.
Likewise, statutes and common laws often affect specific activities of carriers and, at times, agents. To confirm your insured is treated in accordance with the laws of the state, agents are required to know state laws.
Because so many facets of insurance are affected by state law, the Virtual University (VU) is building a library of state laws that directly affect the application of coverage and activities of carriers and agents. The VU plans to build this library ever larger as time goes by, regularly adding state-by-state laws and requirements.
Although there are many comparison forms to follow, below are descriptions and links to the comparisons available for you right now. Stay tuned as we add more.
- Auto Statutes: In this spreadsheet you can find the auto statute of each state, the minimum limits required by each state, whether the state requires UM, UIM or both, if it's a PIP state and if a driver can be excluded.
- Commission Disclosure Laws: A few states still have commission disclosure laws in place as a result of Elliott Spitzer. Check out the laws of those states still applying such laws.
- Condo Laws: Each state promulgates its own law regarding condo ownership. This spreadsheet links you to the condominium laws effective in each state.
- Dog Bite Laws: Is the state a strict liability state, a negligence state or a “one bite" state? Find out with this spreadsheet.
- Duty to Defend: This document offers court findings and opinions regarding an insurance carrier's duty to defend. Specific cases are listed to allow for additional study.
- Faulty Workmanship: This chart lists state-by-state court findings regarding whether faulty workmanship constitutes an occurrence in the CGL.
- Mid-Term Cancellation: There are only certain reasons an insurance carrier can cancel a policy mid-term. This document lists these reasons and other requirements.
- Over Insurance Statutes: Agents are often asked/required by the mortgagee to insure a property at a higher limit than is developed using a replacement cost estimator. Our advice is to ignore the bank and send them a copy of the statute disallowing this practice. This spreadsheet provides the necessary information.
- Personal Auto Policy Education Resources: Agents can set themselves apart by offering personal auto training classes to new drivers in their agency. This builds rapport with future customers and cements relationships with current customers (their parents). Each state provides educational resources agents can use to conduct these classes. This spreadsheet links to those resources.
- SLAPP Laws: Many states statutorily address Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Policy, or SLAPP lawsuits. These lawsuits are intended to dissuade people from saying anything negative about a governmental entity or, in some states, business entity.
- Underwriting Period: Insurance carriers have a certain amount of time to review a new policy to decide whether it is an acceptable risk or one they don't want to write – this is the underwriting period. Each state dictates this time period. This spreadsheet provides the specific statute and the relevant limitations.
- Valued Policy Laws: Valued policy laws generally require the insurance carrier to pay the face amount of the policy in the event of a total loss regardless of the true replacement cost. Each state may have differences in the law regarding the type of property to which the law applies (dwellings only up to all real property) or the cause of loss (fire only up to all losses covered by the property policy).
- Work Comp Extraterritoriality and Reciprocity Laws: When employees travel to other states to work potential coverage problems are created. In these situations the agent must manage the exposure, and to do so requires know the laws of each state regarding extraterritoriality (does the work comp follow the workers) and reciprocity (does the state to which the employee travels honor that coverage). This spread sheet helps you find the answer.
Last Updated: October 26, 2018