Let’s face it: insurance is confusing, messy, and most of us don’t want to read 200 + pages of insurance documents for each of our communities. For this reason, associations rely heavily on their insurance agents to ensure their communities have the coverages they need. But did you know there are also legal nuances when it comes to insurance and some very specific requirements in CCIOA that apply to post-CCIOA communities? Oftentimes these nuances are missed because they involve a legal analysis of documents, and associations may not realize their insurance coverage fails to comply with the law or other requirements until it is too late.
So how do you ensure your association’s coverage complies with the law, your governing documents, and addresses other legal nuances? An insurance audit!! What exactly is an insurance audit? In essence an insurance audit involves a review of an association’s existing insurance policies and all related endorsements, as well as a review of the governing documents and the insurance requirements contained therein.
Upon review of such documents, a written report is produced identifying gaps in coverage, instances where insurance does not comply with the requirements of the governing documents or Colorado law, and identify possible legal consequences of various policy provisions.
At Altitude Community Law, P.C., we offer two types of insurance audits: a full insurance audit and a basic insurance audit. A full insurance audit includes review an association’s insurance policies (including property, liability, directors and officers, fidelity, workers’ compensation, etc.) and all related endorsements (all 200 + pages!). Once we complete the review, we will create a report that includes a comparison chart of what is required versus what the association has. The full insurance audit also includes comments and recommendations for each of the policies and endorsements the association has in place.
A basic insurance audit is a less expensive alternative to the full insurance audit. With a basic audit, we will review your governing documents and all declaration pages (the cover pages containing overviews of coverage for each policy) of your insurance policies and endorsements. Upon review of same, we will provide you with a report similar to the report for a full insurance audit. However, such report would not contain any comments on the policy contents outside of the declaration pages.
Both types of insurance audits are useful and can identify deficiencies in your insurance coverage, so please do not hesitate to contact an Altitude Community Law attorney at 303.432.9999 if you have any additional questions concerning insurance audits.