Insurance for Smaller Churches
When your church is on the smaller size, your budget can be a bit tight. When obtaining insurance for smaller churches, it can be tempting to cut a few corners.
When you decide to cut a corner or two off your insurance policy, it is essential to remember your church is now 100% liable for a loss for that specific coverage you decided to remove.
As your church insurance brokers, we recommend obtaining quotes based on our recommendations to see where the pricing comes in at. Next, if the pricing is too high, let us see if we can reduce some of the insurance limits versus just removing the coverage altogether.
We can also look at raising our deductible, taking you from a $1,000 deductible to a $2,500 or $5,000 deductible.
Having to pay an additional four thousand dollars in deductible cost is much better than one million dollars if you remove the coverage altogether.
Property Insurance for Smaller Churches
As a smaller church, typically your church building will be five thousand or so square feet. As a result, the church building may be classified as a basic or average church building.
From an insurance perspective, we can design an insurance program that provides the needed insurance for smaller churches.
This means the construction quality and materials used are not typically high-end. In addition, the shape of the building will more likely than not be a square. The simpler the design, the lower the cost to replace the building in the event of a total loss.
When looking over your church building insurance coverage, it is vital to properly insure the building and not over-insure or under-insure the church building.
Business Personal Property Insurance for Smaller Churches
Smaller churches will typically have less stuff that they have acquired as well. This is due to them either being newer or simply there is not having enough space to have lots of business personal property.
When evaluating this specific coverage, we typically recommend insuring your contents at 18% of the building coverage amount. However, as we review your church’s contents, your church may not need this much coverage.
This could be an area where we can save you some money on your insurance premiums.
Business Personal Property insurance for smaller churches includes:
- Sound Equipment
- Computers
- Desk
- Chairs
- Tables
- Stoves
- Refrigerators
- Offering Plates
- Books
- Children Toys
These are just some of the business personal property churches have and acquire over time. It is important you consider all items you would need to replace in the event of a loss when calculating your insurance coverage.
| Stand Insurance Policies | Church Insurance Policies | |
|---|---|---|
|
General Liability Insurance |
Included |
Included |
|
Building Insurance |
Included |
Included |
|
Pastoral Professional Liability |
Limited / Excluded |
Included |
|
Directors & Officers Insurance |
Excluded |
Included |
|
Abuse & Molestation Coverage |
Excluded |
Included |
|
Religious Expression Insurance |
Excluded |
Included |
|
Employment Practice Liability |
Excluded |
Included |
Liability Insurance for Smaller Churches
Church insurance has a lot of different liability insurance coverages we must deal with. Some church insurance providers would argue they take on more risk with a smaller church than a larger church organization.
This is because larger churches have more financial resources at their disposal. For instance, a larger church will typically have all the needed written policies and procedures in place to manage risk.
They may even have an onsite risk manager to oversee the church to help implement practices to reduce the possibility of a loss.
Smaller churches typically have a Sr. Pastor and no other employees to manage the entire church operations. As a result, things can tend to fall through the cracks.
Let us review some of the liability insurance your church should consider.
General Liability Insurance for Smaller Churches
General liability insurance for small churches covers third party claims made against the church. These claims are most commonly looked at as slip-and-fall types of claims.
However, it can also include trees falling on a neighbor’s car, advertising injuries such as copyright infringement, and slander and libel claims, to name a few.
When we consider liability insurance for smaller churches, we may recommend starting out with the minimum coverage limits.
While having higher general liability insurance coverage would provide additional insurance protection, it may not be feasible for your church.
Abuse And Molestation Insurance for Smaller Churches
As your church insurance agent, we evaluate the size of your church when considering this coverage.
We will want to know how many members are part of your organization and how many kids your church has.
If we took an average small church that may have 75 members with 20 kids, we would want to look at providing between $100,000 to $250,000 in abuse coverage. We do not recommend any church obtain limits lower than $100,000.
As your church grows, you may want to consider higher sexual misconduct insurance limits of $500,000 or $1,000,000.
When you increase these insurance limits, the church insurance providers will place a higher burden on your church to comply with additional requirements.
Pastoral Counseling Insurance for Smaller Churches
Most church property insurance companies offer pastoral counseling insurance coverage as part of the general liability insurance limit.
This coverage protects the church and the Pastor based on the religious messages and counseling they provide to its members.
Directors and Officers Insurance for Smaller Churches
This coverage protects the board members who make financial decisions on behalf of the church organization. Many church insurance companies will include $1,000,000 as a standard limit.
It is possible to obtain a standalone directors and officers insurance policy at a lower coverage amount; however, the cost would not be feasible in most cases.
Workers’ Compensation Insurance for Smaller Churches
Depending on which state your church is located in, you may have the opportunity to obtain lower workers’ compensation insurance coverage.
Most states require organizations to provide $1,000,000 in protection.
However, some states allow coverage limits as low as $250,000 or $500,000.
If your church is in one of these states, we could compare pricing between all available coverage limits.
Employment Practice Liability Insurance (“EPLI”)
If your church has a single employee, you should consider obtaining an EPLI policy. This will protect the church from wrongful termination and discrimination claims.
We do have the flexibility to structure coverage as low as $100,000 to $1,000,000.
Most claims will fall below $100,000; however, we have seen several reach higher over the years.
We Want to Help Your Small Church
Integrity Now Insurance Brokers has helped many small churches obtain their needed insurance. Whether you rent a church building or own the church property, we are here to help.
We have access to the best church insurance providers known for caring for churches.
Not only can we help you with your church building insurance, but We also offer church insurance coverage to including liability insurance for churches, workers’ compensation insurance, church Bus insurance, abuse, and molestation insurance, directors and officers insurance, Employment Practice Liability Insurance, group health insurance, and more.
We have partnered with the best church insurance companies, so your organization is obtaining to obtain the best coverage at the lowest price.
Request a Church Insurance Quote Today!
