Director's Insurance

[Vlad Drkulec]

My brother's lawyer told him that anyone who is a director without director's insurance is a functional idiot except only the first two letters of the word were in the word he used in place of functional. My two brothers share the same lawyer. Both were involved in boards of directors for sports teams or associations involving hockey and soccer.

We were required to take general liability insurance along with the directors insurance for a total solution. Directors should not have to risk financial ruin for an unpaid position as a volunteer.

For the CFC's possible insurers the big red flags were probably the youth program and international exposure. A secondary red flag was the growing size of our events like CYCC. Some of the questions that we were asked was whether we host events for more than 300 people. Our answer was yes. If you include parents and spectators most of our youth events are bigger than that. A second question was whether we had exposure by operating outside of Canada. We do. Some said they couldn't insure us because of our youth travel. Others were not interested due to the large CYCC.

An effective member of the executive is worth far more than the $1900 that we paid. It seemed likely that we would lose one or more of our board if we didn't take this step. Apparently the price goes down if there are no claims. We are covered for lots of things like cyber hacks and falls.

I would expect provincial associations to pay less because they don't have the exposure that the CFC has.

[Paul Leblanc]

The BCCF purchased Officer and Director liability insurance recently. Our policy is with Intact Insurance and the premium was $700 for one million dollar liability. We are insured for legal costs and penalties in the case of lawsuits against the organization or any of the directors pertaining to such things as discrimination, harassment, business decisions, chess rulings etc.

[Kerry Liles]

Hi Larry,

I'm curious what eventualities are covered by such insurance (no need for a long list - just a handful of examples would suffice). I also wonder what specific issues in the past triggered you to seek out your "coverage" (whatever that means... I presume financial coverage?)

[Larry Bevand]

Hi Vlad,

I saw your post on the CFC site. For some reason I don't have access.

When Yves Charbonneau (Pascal's dad) was on my board many years ago, he insisted we take out this insurance for Directors & Officers, which we have done ever since.

We pay over $20,000 a year in insurance for this and many other things.

We are with Ecclesiastical.

I know it sounds expensive, but they have always been there when we have had issues in the past.

Larry