Thanks to those that joined Pt. III of our R.E.D.E.E. Fest Series: Insurance Coverage Clinic. If you missed it, feel free to revisit the recording of the full session here or skim the takeaways below.

We sat down with a panel of local insurance experts to dig into the realities of coverage for small biz from common exclusions to detangling the jargon of insurance. Huuge thanks to our panelists!

Anthony Coker Program Manager, Neighbors Helping Neighbors at Fifth Avenue Committee 

Monroe Shannon - Program Manager, Insurance and Resiliency Services,  Neighborhood Housing Services of NYC

Ariel Jankolowitz Parametric Insurance and Risk Management Specialist, Owner/Broker at Insure Before

Ethan Middlebrooks  Insurance Recovery Attorney Legal Aid/Anderson Kill

Bruce Kirton  Farmers Insurance Agent and Broker, Owner/Operator at Bruce Kirton Agency 

Rolando Gonzalez Attorney at Community Development Project of Legal Aid Society 

TIPS

TIP #1: READ YOUR POLICY

• Remember that what you're purchasing is a contract, and what you're first presented with is often a standard policy.

• The declarations page is the summary, not the policy. Most people only ever read the declarations page, but everything that will actually decide your claim lives in the exclusions and endorsements behind it.

• Flood is usually not included in your policy, consider adding flood insurance or parametric insurance.

• Review your policy annually with your broker. Things change year over year. Your business grows. You spent money and labor on buildout. Your team changes. You want all of these changes to be accurately covered in your policy.

• Read the exclusions carefully, and especially before filing a claim. You don't want to write your claim in the exact language of an exclusion.

• Ex: Water is the classic trap. "Flood" is a narrowly defined term and it's excluded on most policies. But sewer backup, a burst pipe, or water that got in because a covered event damaged your roof are all different perils, and they may well be covered. If you call in and describe your loss as "my basement flooded," you may have handed the carrier an exclusion, even though what actually happened was a sewer backup.

TIP #2: GET TO KNOW YOUR BROKER

• This is a business relationship, but it's still a relationship. You have to advocate for yourself and your business, and you want someone who understands who and where you are rather than someone who just hands you numbers.

• It's important for your broker or agent to understand your business to help identify needs. If they don't know what you actually do day to day, they can't offer you coverage you didn't know to ask for. Brokers on our panel said the customers who ask questions are the ones they can serve best, because the questions are how they learn the intricacies of the business.

• Know who your person works for. A broker traditionally works for you, the policyholder. An agent represents the insurance company. Plenty of people straddle both, depending on which carrier they're placing you with.

• Ask up front whether they handle claims. Not every broker does. Some see their job as placing the policy and will hand you off when something happens. Better to know now than the week of a fire.

• Call your broker before you call the carrier. If you call the insurance company directly and describe a loss that isn't covered, you now have a denied claim on your record for no reason. Your broker can read the situation first and tell you whether there's a claim to make.

• Have the annual conversation. How's revenue? Did you expand? Did you redo the build-out? If you've upgraded your space and never told the carrier, you won't be compensated for it after a loss. Business interruption coverage that fit you three years ago probably doesn't fit you now.

• Shop around, especially if you're starting cold. Comparing quotes is one of the fastest ways to learn what you don't know you don't know. Carriers can differ by two or three times on the valuation of the same building.

• If your work is specialized, find someone who specializes in it. Artists, jewelers, makers, and anyone with hard-to-value inventory are usually better served by a broker who works in that space than by a generalist.

Tip #3: KNOW YOUR BUSINESS'S RISK AND RESILIENCE ECOSYSTEM

• Insurance is one layer, not the whole plan. What you do to reduce risk before an event matters as much as what you're covered for after one. When you think about your resilience stack, remember it’s a whole ecosystem including your risk, mitigation, coverage, and business realities.

• There IS such a thing as being over-insured. You're paying for coverage you can't collect on, since a policy only pays up to your actual exposure. It can also cut against you at claim time, when the carrier argues the property was never worth what you insured it for.

• Explore the parametric insurance option. Parametric insurance is event-based rather than damage-based. Instead of assessing what you lost, it pays a set amount when a defined trigger is measured, like a sensor hitting eight inches of standing water or rainfall crossing a threshold in a set window. Payouts can arrive within hours rather than months.

• A deductible isn't just a monetary amount, it could also be time. If you have to wait 72 hours to even claim business interruption, that's three days of closure you're absorbing before coverage starts.

• Understand how business interruption actually works for you before you need it, especially if you'd keep working off-site or fill orders from another location during a closure.

• Don't forget about things like cyber! Anything with customer data is risky. If you're storing or transmitting names, dates of birth, card numbers, or Social Security numbers, that includes point-of-sale data moving through your system, you have exposure. 

• Be aware of new exclusions and updates. Example: Carriers are starting to write broad exclusions for liability arising from AI use, particularly on professional liability policies. If you use an AI tool anywhere in delivering advice or services to clients, check that exclusion at renewal. You don't want to find out it's there after a client sues and it comes out that an AI-assisted process was part of the work.

FAQS

How do I figure out what my stuff is actually worth? How do I value things like unfinished art?

Find an expert, and update the number more often than you think you need to.

For property and build-out, there are industry-standard estimator tools like Marshall & Swift that price out a rebuild based on your construction, local materials, contractor costs, and overhead. Banks accept those numbers, so it's defensible. Build out is an area where small businesses need to stay on top of their value estimates. You're doing ad hoc work all year and none of it gets reported to your carrier. Then you have a loss and you're paid out for the space as it was five years ago. If you upgraded and never told your insurance company, you won't be compensated for it.

For art, get it appraised. That removes any dispute over value. If an appraisal isn't realistic, keep records of what similar pieces of yours sold for, or at minimum the materials and time that went into the work. It’s hard to keep track of all your art and materials and if you’re early in your career, you may have no sales to compare to so try and build the habit of keeping records so make things easier in the future. Pick an interval you'll actually stick to, photograph work as you finish it, and keep the sales records.

Ask your broker about:

• Fine arts supplements and sub-limits. A lot of property policies have restrictions specifically around art.

• Over-insuring. If you can't back up the value, the carrier can come back after a loss and argue it was never worth what you insured it for. And you're overpaying the whole time.

• Studio risk. Oils and solvents make a space hard to insure, and that affects what you're offered.

After a disruption, should I stay open or stay closed?

This came up after the fires. Businesses that couldn't get into their space but could pull materials out, or buy new ones, and deliver on existing projects from somewhere else. The read a lot of them had was "if I do any business at all, I can't use my business interruption," so they gave up the claim rather than let clients down. Most small businesses will make that same call, because if you can work you're going to work.

Don't assume that's how your policy works. Ask your broker to walk you through what a partial suspension does to a business interruption claim before you're in the middle of one, because the answer sits in your policy language, not in a general rule. What you don't want is to write off coverage you actually had.

Two things to know going in:

• Your business interruption deductible may be time, not money. A 72-hour waiting period means three days of closure you absorb before coverage starts at all.

• Parametric coverage can also cover this gap. It pays on the trigger event, not on your damage, so operating at some level doesn't affect it. 

When should I call a lawyer?

Don’t call your lawyer first. You'll spend money on a lawyer you may not need to spend yet. Document everything, read your policy, and talk to your broker before you talk to anyone else.

Call a lawyer when:

• Your broker tells you something is off. If they look at your situation and say it is strange, or the cause of loss is genuinely tangled, that's your signal.

• The claim is denied.

• The claim is only partially paid or partially denied, and you have real reason to think more should be covered. Go back to your broker first. If they agree it doesn't add up and can't explain it, that's the point to bring in a lawyer.

• The claim is taking too long to adjust. You filed eight months ago and haven't heard anything back. Your broker may be able to move it, but sometimes it takes a lawyer.

• There are legal issues sitting outside the policy. Lease obligations are the big one. Almost all of a commercial tenant's rights live in the lease, and if you don't have a written lease, that's its own problem. Legal Aid's Community Development Project works specifically on the commercial lease side and can work alongside your broker on how the two fit together.

One caveat: not every lawyer wants to be the one filing your claim. Some will advise you and read the policy but won't run the claim itself.

VOCAB / 101

Deductible: What you pay out of pocket before coverage kicks in. It isn’t always a dollar amount, it can also be a period of time (ex: 72 hours of closure before business continuity coverage starts). Also, named-storm deductibles are often much higher than standard ones.

Declarations page: The one- or two-page summary at the front of your policy going over locations, coverages, limits, and premium. Although this page is critical, it’s also important to look at what’s not covered (which lives in the exclusions section).

Exclusions: Exclusions are all the things your policy won’t cover. Exclusions are important to review because seeing what’s not covered might make you think about a risk you hadn’t previously thought out. Also, read them before you file a claim so you don’t accidentally describe your own claim in the exact language of an exclusion.

Premium: What you pay for the policy. Remember that when you buy insurance, what you’re buying is a contract. Premiums differ by carrier, which is why it is so important to shop around.

Brokers / Agents: A broker traditionally works for YOU. In New York, a broker is a person who works for the policyholder while an agent represents the insurance company. Some represents straddle the line between both and may help you get your claim started, but typically, claims are handled by a different team at the insurance carrier. 

General Liability: Covers you when someone else sues you. This is the one your landlord and the city ask for, so a lot of owners assume it's their all-purpose protection. It is not in place to protect the property of your business.

Parametric Insurance: Event-based insurance rather than damage-based. Instead of assessing what you lost, it pays a set amount when a defined trigger is measured. Example: your business is prone to basement flooding and you can estimate an amount of money you may need to cover the gap between a flood event and when your insurance coverage hits. This is great for flood scenarios because of how critical immediate mold mitigation is, often needed before insurance money is available. 

Subrogation: After your insurer pays you, it steps into your shoes to go recover that money from whoever caused the loss. If this process is dragging on, that is something worth flagging. Carriers often have statutory timeframes to settle. 

Ensuing loss (exception to an exclusion): When an excluded cause sets off a covered one. Ex: Flood is excluded, but the flood sparks a fire in your basement and the fire spreads. The fire damage may still be covered. It depends entirely on whether your policy contains an exception to that exclusion. 

Suit limitation period:  A clause setting how long you have to sue your insurer if you disagree with its claim decision, usually measured from the date of physical loss. It can be shorter than what state law would otherwise allow. New York's general window for breach of contract is six years, but policies routinely write it down to one or two. 

Loss mitigation: Your duty to take reasonable steps to limit the damage. It's implied by law and often written into the policy. Example: moving your equipment ad drying it after a hurricane or flood event. The insurance company may cover costs for mitigation, and will often even require it. Some more extreme and expensive insurance policies require mitigation efforts like security cameras, etc.

Sue and labor provision: It covers what you spend to prevent imminent or further loss (ex: boarding up ahead of a storm). These costs are sometimes paid outside your policy limits and not subject to your deductible.