Construction Accidents in NYC Impact Insurance Costs for Building Owners
The recent spate of construction site accidents in New York City in the past several months couldn’t have come at a worse time.
The ALS Group
July 24, 2012
We manage more than a quarter billion dollars of premiums for a diverse range of clients around the globe.
The recent spate of construction site accidents in New York City in the past several months couldn’t have come at a worse time.
It’s not your imagination that the cost of doing business in New York keeps climbing. The increasing costs of Workers’ Compensation insurance in New York are a major part of the overall increased cost of doing business in the state.
So you may have received a Certificate of Insurance (COI) from your vendor, and you feel comfortable that its employees now can be allowed on your building’s property. To you this may seem like they have given you a familiar card from Monopoly. With your supposed “get out of jail free” card, you allow vendors access to your building and allow contractors to perform work on your property. However, you may not be as “free” as you think.
One of the most talked about risks today is a data breach which can and will cause havoc in any organization. Most mid-size companies have not taken this risk seriously despite almost daily news about the effects of cyber risk. The recent article in the February 2012 issue of CFO magazine notes it is happening more frequently especially to mid-size companies, and should serve as a clear warning to a company’s senior leadership – Get your “Cyber” House in Order!
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article outlines a tragic elevator incident resulting in one fatality and several injuries. This event should spark the interest of all building owners to examine how their own “contractual risk management program” will be effective in insulating the Building Owner against such events. Many organizations have programs in place that purport to obtain indemnity and insurance from vendors but in practicality, it is often overlooked and almost never audited for compliance. When it comes to Elevator Maintenance Companies many attempts to provide a separate “Owners & Contractors Protective” policy (OCP) in lieu of extending their own coverage and affording the more traditional “additional insured” status.
As the holiday shopping season began last week, Cyber Monday became the heaviest day of online shopping ever. Cyber Monday is just one example of the increased online presence of businesses and individuals alike, and with so much information being transmitted and stored online comes the increased risk of a privacy breach. A recent article in Risk and Insurance gives a good illustration on how a company can be affected by a cyber breach and outlines where liability falls if and when a breach occurs. In general, any information stored electronically is at risk, regardless of the industry a company operates in and cyber attacks can seriously impact its day-to-day
Last year we released an article that outlined the dangers Property Owners face from slip and falls on their property resulting from improper removal of ice and snow. This is one of the unfortunate aspects of winter in the Northeast.
Trying to insulate yourself from downstream risk is always a suggested (if not arduous) Risk Management Best Practice. In the attached Rough Notes article regarding Vassar College, there are a few twists and turns to take note of.
In a disturbing ruling by the Georgia Court of Appeals on October 5th 2011, the interpretation of language in an OCIP Program sponsored by the Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport was held to create a third-party beneficiary relationship for the estate of the injured worker. The contract stated the city’s OCIP was “to provide one master insurance program that provides broad coverages with high limits that will benefit all participants involved in project”.
In Monday’s (October 31, 2011) Wall Street Journal there was a curious article explaining many security breaches resulting from unsuspecting employees. It also touches on another huge problem: The trend to share more and more personal data on social networking sites.
