Distressed by Insurance – We’re working on a solution
By Peter Vaughan
Anecdotally we are being advised that it is more and more challenging to obtain nursery industry business insurance. In particular for the hard to insure items such as glasshouses, shade houses, greenlife stock growing in open air, severe weather events, business continuance insurance and cool rooms.
This has been identified as a national issue and with the support of State NGI Associations, Greenlife Industry Australia (GIA) is working on a solution to for a nursey industry insurance scheme.
GIA has established a Greenlife Industry Insurance Working Group comprising of Peter Jong, Scott Tallis, Karen Brock, Hamish Mitchell, Anita Campbell, Sonya Gifford and Peter Vaughan. The working group has met several times to review, discuss and assess a number of options including commercial insurance policies, discretionary mutual funds (DMF), captives and self-insurance.
The working group met on 11 March 2021 and received specific presentations on a DMF, Aggregated Deductible Funds and Captives. The various approaches have pros and cons for nursery businesses and a recommendation will be made to the GIA Board at their upcoming meeting on 23 March on which scheme to progress.
The basic steps to establishing a nursery insurance fund are:
- Conduct a feasibility study
- Conduct insurance modelling
- Determine if prospective membership achieves scale
- Determine ‘excess of loss’ insurance level
- Scheme implementation
Please be assured that Greenlife Industry Australia is working with our Member Associations for an insurance solution for the greenlife industry. We will be consulting with the industry during the process and will ensure clear information is provided on the feasibility of establishing a fund.
This has the potential of providing businesses with a practical and cost-effective method to manage business insurance with all of industry approach.
If you are facing challenges with business insurance, we want to hear from you!
