The Insurance Playbook: Tips for Pool and Hospitality Pros

In this episode of the Insurance Interlude, hosts Steve Sherwood and Pat Grignon delve into the complexities of insurance, particularly in the context of the pool and hospitality industries. They discuss the inevitability of accidents, emphasizing the importance of preparedness and proper signage to mitigate risks. Pat shares insights on how training programs can lead to insurance discounts, highlighting the significance of proactive safety measures in reducing workplace injuries and improving insurance rates. The conversation also touches on the nuances of auto insurance, where liability coverage often constitutes a significant portion of premiums, and the hosts encourage listeners to engage with their insurance agents to explore options for better rates and coverage.

keywords

insurance, pool safety, workplace injuries, auto insurance, liability coverage, insurance discounts, safety training, California Pool Association, risk management, insurance tips

takeaways

• You can never completely prevent accidents, but you can prepare for them.
• Proper signage is crucial for emergency response effectiveness.
• Training programs can lead to insurance discounts.
• Incentive programs for no workplace injuries can improve safety culture.
• Auto insurance liability coverage is often the most significant part of your premium.
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Sound Bites

• "You can never completely prevent accidents."
• "Training programs can lead to insurance discounts."
• "Auto insurance liability coverage is often the most significant part."

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Insurance in the Pool Industry

01:50
The Importance of Safety Training

06:11
Incentives for Safety and Insurance Discounts

10:27
Understanding Auto and Liability Insurance

15:16
Navigating Insurance Costs and Coverage Options

17:22
Conclusion and Final Thoughts

LaMotte Company
LaMotte Company is a leading manufacturer of water quality testing products & pool test kits

California Pool Association
Pool Industry Trade Organization

CMAHC
The Council for the Model Aquatic Health Code promotes health & safety at public swimming pools

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And welcome to another episode of the insurance interlude with Steve Sherwood and Pat Grignon from California Pool Association. So, Pat, thank you so much for staying on with us all the time. We really appreciate it. And I know you said that, like, uh, not many people probably want to hear about insurance. Man, the feedback that I get on this is just so great. So, people really do like hearing about this insurance stuff. And we always talk about the good, the bad, and the and the ugly, you know? So I it's a new year, and I always think that like one of the funniest meme, no, if it's not funny meme, but um, there they have the ball drop, and then they always have like the this many people has been killed on the highway this year, this many people have gotten killed smoking. And the one that I saw is like it, you know, it goes back to zero after it. And they also do that in some of the hotels that I have as clients. They're like, there has not been a workplace accident in X amount of days or whatever it is, right? And with the CPO class, I always say that you could have the best team. You could love coming to work, everybody gels, you guys make a ton of money, and everybody's super happy. But the thing is, you're never gonna stop kids, especially around the pool and in the pool, you're never gonna stop kids completely from running. And if it's like an HOL or an apartment complex or um a hotel, even you're not gonna, you can't be in the room with the people. So if people are gonna if adults are gonna drink and do drugs, they're gonna drink and do drugs in their room, and then you're just gonna see them at the pool afterwards. So I always say that you could have the best run facility ever, and it's has nothing really to do with you. It's really about what you do once those accidents happen, right? So we do talk a lot about, you know, making sure that your signage says exactly where you're supposed to, you know, tells people where they are. Because right now I'm sitting in Jersey City, New Jersey. But like if there was an accident and you called 911 and you were like, hey, I'm at the La Kinta in Manhattan, they might be like, sir, there are 67 Lakinta locations in Manhattan. You know what I mean? Like something something crazy like that. So is there a way? Obviously, you're never gonna prevent accidents, right? But is there a way that as a team you can do some sort of training or you know, what can help you with that? And then I also have heard some crazy stuff like if you do certain types of training, you'll actually get like a discount on some of your insurance. So does this exist? And does this exist with you guys?

SPEAKER_03 2:35

And what kind of programs do you have for waiting for?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

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SPEAKER_01 5:59

If you do certain types of training, you'll actually get like a discount on some of your insurance. So does this does this exist? And does this exist with you guys? And what kind of programs do you have for that?

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, look, I think, you know, when it comes to third parties, like you mentioned, you know, you can't control what people do before they show up. Um, so I'm looking at it kind of two two different angles here. So, you know, you've got your liability for people that are on your property. You got someone who drank in the room, came to the pool, ended up, you know, whatever, falling, breaking their leg. You know, can you, you know, can you can you have meetings and can you teach, you know, the team or your staff, or is it, you know, can can you can you teach them how to keep a better eye out for that? You know, I really think about, you know, when it comes to when it comes to like teaching safety, um, I think about like employees, right? Because you know what's better than than you know having work comp to cover a workplace injury is like not having a workplace injury to begin with, right? Sure. Yeah. Of course. And and so you made the mention, you know, like we haven't added, you know, no accidents. They've got it posted, no accidents in 500 days. You know, a lot of companies they run incentive programs where, you know, if you're uh if if there are no workplace injury employees get injured, you know, then they have incentives and they give whatever. Uh, you know, they give a company party or they give gift cards or whatever or bonuses. PS5. Yeah, depending on certain milestones that are made. Because, you know, look, I you know, if I had to wear a hard hat in the factory, I would, but hard hats probably not gonna not gonna save my life.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

If you get crushed, yeah, if you get crushed by a pylon or something, pile of bricks hits me in the head, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:41

So you know, so really incentivizing that sort of thing. And I've seen it a million different ways where, you know, like I've seen Work Comp loss runs that have like a ton of little stuff in there. And you know, I'll tell you like the underwriters look at pricing more favorably if you have one bad thing, that one big loss for workers comp, but nothing since. And you can show that you've implemented a bunch of safety procedures um since that. Like they'll give you better pricing than if you have a million dollar price tag on a bad accident versus like five thousand dollar ones.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Well, what kind of what kind of incentives are they? And then like what kind of pro like what kind of pro like what do you have to do to to get this? Do you have to run like a class? Does it have to be like a Zoom thing? Do you guys provide this training? You know what I mean? Or is it something that like I run in my office and then I show it to you and I get so it sounds like it's almost like continuing education credits.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

It is, yeah, right. And I mean, look, there's a lot of companies they do a monthly safety meeting and just go over, you know, stuff that could potentially happen. It doesn't even need to be. I mean, shoot, I've had, you know, don't quote me on it, but I've had some contractor, you know, buddies that, you know, they they do a safety meeting at the bar every month and uh talk about a couple things, sign the form, and uh, you know, have a nice rest of the night. After cut after kite boarding, we would go uh to the bar and we would cut, we would say it's a board meeting. Totally. You know, when it comes so yes, the the work comp carriers that we can get you signed up with, they've got a variety of different things. We, of course, you know, it depends on the business. Everything's kind of a an arrow in the quiver when it comes to getting better pricing. And and, you know, do you have safety procedures in place to be able to answer yes? And here's three of them that we have. You know, incentive program for no workplace injuries over a period of time. Here's the bullet points of how it works. It doesn't need to be a uh a manual or encyclopedia, sure. Just some simple stuff. We do safety meetings every month, you know, and again, it doesn't need to be crazy, but just doing some basic stuff.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

What are some other ones? You know what I mean? Like I'm interested in this now. I want to get the best rate for my insurance, for my auto, for my liability, for you know, what are other than workers comp, are there is there any other, and I guess not just for you, but like in general, is there any programs out there that we should be looking out for?

SPEAKER_02 10:04

Yeah, well, for for sure, and they differ, right? I mean, so work comp is intended to be for you know employees that get injured, and so can you provide an environment that you know encourages safety, fitness challenges, things like that, like all of that, all of that helps plead the case for lower rates. Okay. For auto, you know, they've got different devices that kind of monitor and you know track, so you can look into some different, you know, some tracking and monitoring devices that they'll give you some significant discounts for. Obviously, you got a little bit of Big Brother syndrome there, so that's a dealer's choice whether that feels like something you want to do or not. You can do, you know, verified mileage. Obviously, mileage on an auto premium. The mileage is important because if you drive 50,000 miles a year versus 5,000 miles a year, you're gonna be in an accident more often the more you drive. So, you know, there's certain things that you can look at with there, where there's some of the the electric uh you know, metric items, but even you know, reporting your mileage, you know, every six months to make sure it's on track. There's a lot of different ways that it's a little bit of a, I don't know, everything's kind of a pain in the ass to some degree, but it ain't much. And if you can save, you know, a couple grand depending on how how big your premiums are, it could be a lot more. You know, all of it adds up, you know, once for for a couple extra steps, it adds up and it could be a big number depending on how the portfolio looks.

SPEAKER_01 11:24

Right. So that's super interesting that that you guys are able to do that and you know pull those strings. So what about is there anything else like as far as like uh things that we can do to get cheaper insurance? Or is there something that like makes my company a gold standard that we could work towards and gives us better insurance than anybody else because we have this or because we do this? Or is there, I guess, really, is there something that you wouldn't want to do? Like if you're a leak detection company or you're a construction company or you're an ex company, like it's really hard to get insurance because you do this.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

So you start getting into that that hard-to-place insurance, you know, like an insurance agent, um, it's still a very manual process. Auto is auto auto is still a lot of you know, you're you're typing stuff in and the computer's telling you what the rates are. Well, it depends. If you've got a 24 truck policy that you're dealing with an underwriter's, you know, you're able to paint a picture and then they can determine discounts and rates. You know, I would say there's not one thing, there's no silver bullet out there. But, you know, if you can, if you can just paint the picture of and be detailed with your insurance agent. You know, I've dealt with a a ton of people over all the years, and you know, like, I'm not the insurance police, like, talk to me, let me let me paint, you know, if I have if I have a deep understanding of your business, then I can paint a vivid picture of why you should get lower rates. So you know, I would say there's not just one thing, but talk to your insurance agent and say, hey, what can I do? Is there certain things that I can implement? It's it's the combination of a lot of things that makes it an attractive um, you know, it makes it got it give a discount.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

So, Pat, are there things that I can implement and stuff? You're like, get my rates down. No, and I like look, my rates are, I don't know, honestly, if at the beginning I was kind of going back and forth, and when we first met, I was looking at some other insurers and making sure that we were getting the best deal. To be honest with you, now I don't really give a shit if I'm getting the best deal because I know that you guys just go above and beyond. I know that you're very competitive with that. But is there something that you would say that is like with general liability, obviously it's super, super important. Um, but is there any insurances that are very pricey for what you think that you're getting? But it is really important to have. Are there any insurances out there?

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Yeah, it really autos become the most expensive. Um, and if you look at auto, there's two parts to it, right? You've got liability, which is going to be for other people that you run into, and then there's then there's physical damage on on your actual vehicle, you know, which if it's financed, then they require it, but if you own it, then it's not. If you look at the if you look at like the pricing per line item, the liability line item is 80% of the total premium. So if you've got a policy that's 30 or that I'm sorry, that's three grand, 2,500 of that is gonna go towards the liability limit versus you know, a lot lower percentage that goes to actually covering the vehicle itself, unless you're driving a Maybach or something. Um, but the the liability, you're looking at it, it's like, oh, I'm gonna go with 50, 100,000, or I'm gonna go with 300,000. You know, I I get the price jumps up when you carry a million, but like your auto, your primary auto liability is by far the most realistic line of coverage that's gonna get tapped. So you'll see the price jump up and be like, yeah, I don't know. I mean, another thousand bucks, but I'm also looking at it like, okay, it's $1,500 more dollars per year, but I'm taking my coverage from $300,000 to a million. You know, I'm not looking to throw $1,500 around like nothing, but you know, that's a lot of bang for your buck. So keep an open mind when you're looking at that. You know, talk to your insurance agent about, you know, carrying higher limits. It's the most, again, like I said, it's the most realistic coverage that's going to kick in is anything on your auto. And it's pricey, but you know, be open-minded about it. You get a lot of you get a lot a lot for the dollars, although the dollars aren't.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So don't be afraid to like when I've had a lot of different clients come to us and tell us that we need to have this insurance, whether it be X, Y, or Z. And uh, a lot of it is those weird insurance policies where they were like, hey, you know, you need a million dollars in auto. And that million dollars in auto was three months of our service, you know. So with that, like, don't be idiotic either. And just, you know, because you want this client so bad, go back to the client and say, Hey, like this isn't realistic. Like, uh, we need you to pay for this. So we're gonna send you another contract and it's gonna have the cost of your insurance in there and you just pay for that straight away. You bet. And I've never had someone turn that down because now when you're getting into those types of clients, now you're getting into the Fortune 1000, Fortune 500. You know, you're getting into those bigger companies where they understand that like if you're a two, three-person company, you're not gonna have the same type of revenue that they are. So don't let the big guys bully you around in that aspect. You know, take take what you can get for for what you can get it. But definitely I do agree that the insurance, uh, the auto insurance is definitely gonna get tapped most often. Pat, thanks so much for coming on. Uh, we're always going back to this damn auto insurance, man. It's so, so super important. And it's because my like my dad taught me how to drive, bro. And he said, you know, Steve, like you're great, but everybody else out there is crazy. So you can't, it's one of those things where you could have the best run business and it doesn't really matter, but you are not going to change other people's driving habits. And this the honest truth is a lot of people out there don't know how to uh so be safe out there on the roads. And as always, if you have any questions, reach out to us at talkingpools at gmail.com. If I talk about your stuff on the air, I will send you some swag, which is pretty cool. And then California Pool Association will also give you a hundred dollars off your general liability annual insurance plan if uh if you sign up with them. So give CPA a call, reach out to us, and keep on listening. So I hope your first month of the new year has been super profitable. And uh let's keep it rolling into February. Have a great have a great week, everybody. Thanks, Steve.