Why Religious Institutions Need Specialized Church Insurance Policies
Churches are primarily places of worship but also feature unique socio-legal and cultural environments. Currently, churches are used for various purposes in educational, social, and goodwill-related domains. Your local church might run Sunday school, host wedding ceremonies and funerals every now and then, and at the same time run donation drives all year round.
The church is a far more complex organization than we believe it to be. Owing to the unique environment that it features, the church is also at a greater risk of encountering many scenarios wherein someone is injured or harmed mentally or physically.
Typically, when a person or business fears a potential liability claim, they purchase liability insurance to protect themselves financially. Since churches are often sued in much the same way, should they also go for regular liability insurance policies?
Why Churches Don’t Benefit From Regular Liability Insurance Coverage
Even though your church may have employees, volunteers, and a board of directors, just like regular organizations, your entire organization’s work is far more multidimensional. To put it in a clear-cut way, your church has unique church insurance coverage requirements that cannot be fulfilled adequately by a normal insurance company. Let’s take a look at some of the ways a church’s insurance coverage needs differ from everyone else’s.
Church Property
The church is a unique entity when it comes to its buildings, landscape, and furnishing. The cost of constructing a church can be far greater than that of ordinary buildings, and it may contain many valuable items within its premises. What’s more, churches are also safe-keepers of elements that are of historical significance and value, such as pews, church pianos, organs, and various other objects.
They’re also more likely to suffer from theft and vandalism. In a disaster, if a church sustains damage, repairs can be quite expensive. Due to these reasons, any church property is in need of an extra layer of protection.
When obtaining a church property insurance policy from the standard insurance company, they do not have the needed replacement cost estimators that are tailored to calculating rebuilding costs. This is why it is essential to use a church insurance specialist with access to insurance companies specializing in church insurance. They have access to church insurance programs to ensure your church will be properly rated and classified.
Church Liability Insurance Risks
Churches are sued all the time for a number of social ills. Whether on purpose or unintentionally, many church leadership and church staff members end up hurting other people by way of discrimination, malpractice, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and mental infliction. Lawsuits can be expensive, and if a church liability insurance claim is made against your church and its ministries, it can leave your church organization in financial distress.
Additionally, many missionaries go on church-sponsored mission trips outside of the US. The trip itself can involve many risks, including greater costs of travel than estimated and medical expenditures in case of injury or illness during the journey. For these reasons, churches also benefit from special missionary coverage.
As church insurance brokers, we receive all different kinds of claims scenarios regularly. Many are well-founded claims, while others are not. No matter what, both fraudulent and legitimate insurance claims need to be defended. Having the proper church insurance coverage in place will ensure your organization is properly protected.
Your church needs to protect itself from a variety of church liabilities. For church property insurance, missionary insurance, church group health insurance, and countless more church insurance policies, contact our brokers at Integrity Now Insurance if you want to connect with a reliable church insurance company in the US.
