Risk Management That Actually Matters

In this episode of Torch Talk, Lindsey Chupp sits down with Seth Buckwalter, President of Whitaker Meyers, for a practical and eye-opening conversation about risk management, insurance strategy, and protecting what matters most in business.

Seth unpacks real-world scenarios that many business owners overlook, from special event coverage and cyber threats to employment practices liability, directors and officers insurance, and hired and non-owned auto exposure. Throughout the discussion, he explains how even businesses that “haven’t done anything wrong” can face significant legal and financial risk, and why proactive education is more powerful than reactive damage control.

The conversation also explores how independent agents evaluate risk, what business owners should be reviewing regularly, and why policy language and changing operations matter more than most leaders realize. Seth shares candid examples from real claims situations, emphasizing that smart risk management isn’t about fear. It’s about clarity, preparation, and informed decision-making.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Why special event policies and host liquor liability matter
• The evolving reality of cyber threats and social engineering fraud
• How employment practices liability protects against costly allegations
• What directors and officers coverage actually does
• Why regular insurance reviews are critical as your business grows

This episode offers a grounded, practical look at the hidden exposures businesses face and how thoughtful planning can help leaders sleep better at night.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Take heart. There is hope. It's a big scary world out there. But you can be assured that big insurance companies like a Traveler's Hartford, a Chubb, or a Westfield, they're not going to put their money on the line if they don't believe that there is a very low likelihood of something happening.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome back to Torch Talk, the show where we spotlight bold local leaders growing their businesses and communities with grit and purpose. Today's guest is Seth Buckwalder, president of Whitaker Myers. In this Torch Talk episode, we'll explore his Blaze Business Expo presentations and his insights on risk management, leadership, and community-focused business, and take a deeper dive into how his approach helps individuals and organizations protect what matters most. Welcome, Seth. Thank you. Great to be here. So nice to meet you. Yeah, absolutely. Like we've run around a little bit, but we need to get to talk. So this will be our first kind of deeper dive discussion. So I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Likewise.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Okay, so you're going to be a part of the Blaze Business Expo at the time of filming. It is prior, but this will actually air after as a means to expand upon what you are an expert in, which is tell us actually. Why don't you tell us what you're an expert in?

SPEAKER_03 1:19

What are you an expert in? That's dangerous, isn't it? I like to think of myself as a teacher. And the area that I happen to teach in would be that area of risk management and insurance. And so it's really important to me to help educate my friends, my clients, in terms of what areas they may not even be considering when it comes to risk. What things they're doing that maybe they should be insuring, what things they're doing they should not be doing at all, and to truly help them ensure they can sleep well at night, knowing that what's important to them has been protected.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Okay. That's that's can you give me a give us a few examples? Because that's kind of like high level, right? So I always go to what are you said, what are the things that they should be doing that they're not doing immediately. Then my brewery is like, what should I not be doing? What?

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Yeah, what is well I have uh uh I have many different, I think, examples that uh can further demonstrate that. Um let's pick just one. And we haven't talked about this beforehand, so let's see how this goes. Um I would assume that you have a general liability policy here for Fierce Creative, yes?

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Correct.

SPEAKER_03 2:28

Yes, wonderful. Um we're getting ready to put on the Blaze Expo as we sit here and talk, and when people listen to this, we'll be after the expo. I assume now you need to ask your own independent agent, so the caveat there is always that, but I would assume that your general liability policy has an exclusion in there for special events.

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

And so as you get ready for this Blaze Expo, thinking about however many people are going to be there, being off-site, so we don't have premises liability for the site like we would here, you would need a special event policy to be written specifically for that event. And the unlikely chance that an attendee would slip and fall, somebody would get their feet tangled up in cables, something would happen where even if we've done nothing wrong, we as Fierce Creative have to defend ourselves against a lawsuit. So that's the question.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

So you need a special event policy.

SPEAKER_03 3:21

You do need a special event policy, most likely.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

I have a little bit of experience with that, like even with going to home shows with contractors and things like that, sometimes they have to buy a special policy for attending those types of events. Yep. Are those expensive? Easy to get. Yeah, but it depends.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

What's the uh as with anything in life, it simply depends. So if we plan to have 10,000 people there, a rock show that goes on until 2 o'clock in the morning, and it's bring your own beer, we've got a problem.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:48

Something like this, this probably will not be terribly expensive. It's a common exposure. The industry knows exactly how to handle it. I don't foresee it being a significant issue. It'll be rated on a number of things. How long is it going to go on? How many people do we anticipate being there? And the underwriters at the company will put a number to it, I doubt more than a couple hundred dollars at most.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

What are some other examples where businesses might need a special extra policy besides, I mean, most businesses are not putting on conferences, but are there other situations where they might need something like that?

SPEAKER_03 4:17

Yeah, sure. Lots of examples of that. Um, one might be, let's just say, for example, you're a power washer, you're a contractor, and what you do is power washing and cleaning. And this was a real life example that we had come up for us. Um you have, you think of a policy, there's really two sides to it. There's property coverage and there's casualty or the liability side of things. And the liability is what goes to pay other people. And so if you're a power washer and you're power washing, say, a bank, and you're cleaning around an ATM and you happen to overspray a bit, and you get an ATM, and this is real, this has happened. Well, there's actually a specific coverage called care custody and control that would be needed on the policy in order for the policy to respond and cover the damage to the ATM. And the logic there from an insurance perspective is that ATM, that property was in your care, your custody, or your control at the time the loss happened. Therefore, you had a duty to take care of it and you did not. And so if you don't have care, custody, and control in your policy, you're gonna be left as the insured holding the bag on that one, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, I have actually experienced some of that. I didn't turn in a claim, but our we've got our house power washed, and it literally stripped the coating off our door. Like we had to replace our schlage, you know, door codes handles. So they get a little out of control sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Yeah. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Is there an industry from your experience that is like the most expensive to cover? Like we work with a lot of construction companies. I have a lot of like roofing liability. Is there specific, you know, different types of risks within the city?

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Those tend yes, those are difficult. Um, I'll give just some broad categories. If you are, for example, a gun manufacturer, well, think of the world we live in. Yeah. And think of the litigious society that we live in. And so if you're making a gun, or even if you're making a subcomponent to a gun, well, you're gonna have some trouble out there in the industry finding coverage. And if you can't, it's going to be very, very expensive. Because, and I love all of my attorney friends, but there are some some bad actors out there that love nothing more than to dig their teeth into the big deep pockets, which ultimately ends up being the insurance company. Okay. That you make dynamite, good luck finding coverage for a building. Um, maybe a more real-life, more practical example for kind of the the Wayne County area that I primarily work in, um, foster care adoption, okay, um, youth services. So you think of the possibility of some sort of a claim arising from you know just the the worst of the worst, a child being in a foster care home and some sort of abuse happening. And then you also have a long tail on that because a child may be eight, nine, ten years old when the incident happens, the statute of limitations doesn't start till they turn 18. So if you're an insurance company thinking, do we want to cover an organization that is involved in this? There's a very long, long lead time till a claim might actually appear.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

So that is something yeah, I would not have thought of. Are there, okay, so I was going to ask, um, is cybersecurity something that you recommend as like an add-on as on a regular basis? And are there other types of things like that where you're like you really should revisit those types of policies?

SPEAKER_03 7:28

Cyber is a really interesting one. Um, generally speaking, yes, you should have it. However, I don't know that you can say that a blanket statement across everything. So let's go back to our the example of our power washer. Um, if it's one guy, he's running a truck, he's got very little customer information, he may not have a significant cyber exposure. However, it may not be unwise to buy just a small amount of cyber coverage on his package policy. If you have any sort of customer data, um, especially in the healthcare industry, medical records tend to be so valuable out there on the black market. And so that's what you're looking at. What's my exposure to a threat actor getting into the system, extracting data, locking it up, essentially calling me back and saying, hey, do you want your data back? Here's the ransom demand for it. So there's the demand to unlock your data, um, to maybe unencrypt or get you back into your systems. There's reality that, um, and we probably all get these letters regularly, Marriott got hacked and your data has been exposed. So now we the insured and the insurance company will back that have a responsibility to notify all clients that their data has been exposed, to provide maybe credit monitoring. And if a client can or one of the customers can demonstrate that there actually are damages as a result, there could be a significant liability exposure to it as well. Now, that sounds like a big company thing, right? It's a big company issue. Um it's it's not limited to big companies when it comes to cyber. Um I have a number of clients, even small manufacturers that would be well known in the area, that if a threat actor gets in and lock down your computer system, think how crippling that would be to businesses.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

I mean, it actually happened to a very large business in our area last year.

SPEAKER_03 9:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

So that was and it shut down their business for I don't know how many days, but it was pretty big deal.

SPEAKER_03 9:21

So cyber policies can be very small, maybe a fifty thousand dollar limit, not very robust, or um they can absolutely expand beyond that to have very high limits, to have lots of little extra coverages on there. Um ransomware demand uh can even help with equipment. Um if it's been quote unquote bricked or locked up, the laptop is gone. Um think of yourself being a one or two person uh law office, a small firm. Um all of your data, and for me this is true in the insurance agency side, all of my data is online, it's all in the cloud. If that gets locked up, and the small uh loyal uh law firm example is a great one of that. If all that data is locked up and the threat actor says, I need two million dollars to unlock it, well, you're dead in the water.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:09

Unless you have a policy that's ready to stand behind you uh to back it up. Now, here's an interesting thing too. And the industry, the insurance industry has really wrestled with cyber. How do we best handle this? Where are the bad guys coming from? How do we keep them out? So it's gotten harder and harder to get a cyber policy. You have to demonstrate much more. I've closed this port, and there this is a world that I don't fully understand, right? Close this. We've done that, all these loopholes, multi-factor authentication and everything.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

So we actually went through the steps to try to get a cyber policy and can't because of the way that our like our rent with our internet and our landlord, I don't have control over the server in this building. And because of that, I can't really get a cyber policy with that. And so then we are looking at how do we protect. I'm not looking at Garrett in the face right now because he's like, please protect our assets. Our risk is all of our content, like our photos, videos. Sure. Like I can probably memorize all of our client information, it's the rest of it that we would, you know, lose if something would happen.

SPEAKER_03 11:04

But yeah. Well, think from an insurance company perspective, right? So you're a fairly small organization, you're not going to spend$20,000,$50,000,$100,000 a year on a cyber policy. For you to be able to buy it, it probably needs to be in the$5,000 or less range. Here's a another real life example. This really has happened. Um, imagine the threat actor gets into your email system and is watching emails going back and forth and just so happens to see a cyber policy going back and forth with, say, two million dollar limits. Well, when that threat actor decides to strike, locks everything up, and gets to you by email and says, Hey, by the way, we've locked up all your data and we need$2 million to unlock it because they've seen a cyber policy go back and forth. Well, how do you price that as an insurance company? How in the world can you protect yourself there? And I think um having good backups, and again, the companies have become so much more sophisticated in terms of knowing how the bad actors get into the systems. Um, but having a plan, having backups, um, testing it regularly. Um, another real life example uh a cyber incident happens, and um the company executives get together on a team's call to try to discuss their response. Here's what we're gonna do, here's our response, here's how we're going to handle this, here's what we're going to do over here. We made this, be careful engaging with that. Got a follow-up email from the bad guy saying, That's great. I was actually on your team's call and heard all of that and watched it go around. So, like, right, the things you do, can you even imagine that happening? So, having a plan in place that says if this, then that, and the insurance companies are heavily invested, financially invested, in you not having a claim, and they really want to help along the way.

SPEAKER_00 12:46

One of the things that, because we um are really good friends with a local IT company, one of the things they talk about all the time is um somebody coming in and monitoring emails, intercepting account numbers, and really like hitting companies hard from an ACH perspective, which I don't know who's doing wires and ACH is over email anymore, but so is that something the cybersecurity policy actually covers, or is that something different?

SPEAKER_03 13:12

Yeah. So what you're talking about there, there could be some cyber components to it, but this probably falls more under the crime coverage, actually. So um a couple and and an easy one to talk about, another one I've seen a lot of activity in in the industry, social engineering fraud. So somebody pretends to be somebody they're not and tricks you into doing something, let's call it legitimate. Um you are uh this will be a real life example, so I'll I'll protect the innocent here, but um, you're a large organization engaged in a multi-million dollar building project. And you're working with a contractor and you get an invoice from the contractor for more than$900,000, and it looks legitimate. And you wire the funds off to this contractor, kind of as you always do. But what you didn't realize is that the bad guy got in, was watching invoices going back and forth, grabbed one, modified it ever so slightly to include his bank account information instead of your contractor's bank account information, and you just sent$900,000 to the wrong bank account.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 14:14

You talk about having a bad day at the office, yeah, and that's it.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

I mean, even at a smaller amount, like to me, like$10,000 is a big deal. Like I lose some sleep over like losing that amount of money.

SPEAKER_03 14:25

So and especially for small business, and that's what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

$100,000 is it's actually really scary how email phishing has evolved. I've had employee, I've received employee emails saying they need to update their direct deposit information. I know that that's not real. So we've had it's gotten to the point where I actually don't even trust all the emails I'm getting from. I'm gonna call them and I say, hey, is this real Instagram reset codes?

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Do you want a job? Uh man, do I Because that's it. I know.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

So uh positively verifying all of those requests is really key. Yes. And the industry has said, if you're not doing that, you have to be doing that. And if you have a claim and you can't verify that you've done that, then we may not pay out. So when you receive that email, and I get those two, hey, can you update my payroll information? Um, I I know I gotta walk around the corner and talk to so-and-so because this is not, they don't communicate from a Gmail account.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

Most of the time, I'm like, yep, delete. I know that that one's not legit. Rachel, uh, our COO received an invoice once with a whole email thread that they produced that made it look like I was authorizing something back and forth. And she said, literally the only way I knew it wasn't you is because you were too nice. They made me sound way too nice in the email thread. Well, thanks for the backing.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

So okay, well, tell us we talked a lot about like security and some what other core challenges do you see facing businesses right now? Is there something you wish you could just tell everybody? You're like, I just wish if people could get this.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

Yeah. I think, and I don't want this to sound like a cop-out, but go talk to an independent insurance agent. Because I've talked about, you know, you're a small contractor, hang a drywall, or power washing, or you're a large social services nonprofit dealing in foster care and adoption. Every single business is unique. Their risks are all unique. And that's where you need somebody that's willing to ask the questions and try to understand what do you do? It's transportation. Who's responsible for the goods when they're in transit? Um you are installing cabinets, do you bring them in on a truck and they go in right away, or they may be left on site overnight? Because then we need an installation floater to make sure we're covering that the material that's there before it gets installed, at which point it becomes property of the homeowner. There are so many different things. It's almost impossible.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

Well, what so what does your process look like at Litaker Myers to uncover those things? So kind of I I'm actually genuinely curious. So tell me.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

Yeah. I it starts by asking a lot of questions because it's just so broad. And that's one of the things that I love doing the most, is just simply getting to know people, understanding who they are and what they do, and asking a bunch of questions. And so just very simply put, um, if you came to me and said, I need help, we're gonna have a meeting like this. Maybe not the cameras on, but we're gonna have a meeting where I'm gonna ask questions about what you do, um, what your day-to-day business looks like, what sort of extra this and that, um, how many autos do we have? They're going, there's a lot of information gathering. And then that kind of goes together for me into an application that's ultimately going to go out to the insurance marketplace. And I recommend working with an independent agent. That's what I am. Um I've got lots of uh, you know, friendly competitors around in the area that do the same thing. Talk to an independent agent that represents a lot of different insurance companies. That essentially, you know, my goal would be in a perfect world to make you such an amazing risk when it comes to the insurance marketplace that I've got companies salivating to work with you. And that's ultimately where I want to be. And then we're gonna have conversations about okay, we carry uh a policy with liability limits of let's say a million dollars. So if I slip and fall on the sidewalk when I'm coming in here, you've got a million dollars to put me back together, so to speak. Is that enough? Well, we don't have a big foot traffic exposure here. It's mostly employees. It's probably enough. If you're a grocery store, um, a restaurant, a barber shop, something that has a lot of foot traffic, we're gonna have a different conversation of do we need higher liability limits? Are there other things that we're doing or could be doing to try to mitigate some of that risk? It's hard, those are difficult conversations. What's the right number? I don't know. Up until this point, hopefully it's been zero, but the unknown of what happens tomorrow, that's the part that keeps me up. I imagine it's what keeps some business owners up at night, too. And so that's where we aim to say at least educate, inform. I'm never a hard sell. I'm never never going to tell you you have to buy this policy with these limits. With the I want you to know and understand what you are taking on and what maybe you're choosing not to take on. In in the insurance world, um, there are a few ways that you can essentially handle a risk. Um, we can avoid doing it, we might stop manufacturing our dynamite. Um, we might transfer all of the risk to insurance. We might buy an insurance policy that if the the building goes boom because of a dynamite you know being lit, um, it's it's going to entirely be transferred off to insurance. Um we might retain a part of it. Think of that as being like a deductible. So if we um have a small claim, we're gonna handle the first$2,000,$5,000,$10,000 of it. Or we might choose to simply retain all of it ourselves. You might roll the dice and say for the Blaze Expo, I don't need a policy, I don't think anything's going to happen. And I'm and and as an your agent, as long as you've made an educated decision, I'm okay with that. I may not do it myself, right? But I'm okay with it.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

Okay. So what is support from you from your end look like after somebody is working with you? Like do you do you do regular check-in? I don't I'm yeah, I never hear from my insurance agent, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

So well, I never want to be a nuisance. Okay, but I think every at least every couple of years, there should absolutely be a sit-down or a phone meeting to say what's changed, because one of the dangerous things in my business is I can write a policy one year, and if we're not all over that every single year or every couple of years, asking the insured what's going on, what's changed.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I mean, they might have grown 50% and you don't know, and then they're covering.

SPEAKER_03 20:24

Something different. Right. A new service.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah, then decided to do sideing, not just roofing, and you're like, Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Yeah, and then we're doing commercial roofing for 10-story buildings, and that's vastly different than a flat roof on a one-story building. My uh own business is a great example. We started 157 years ago in Worcester as an insurance agency. And over the years we've added to our practice. So we added a benefits group that does health insurance. Um, in I think 2010, we added a wealth management group that's grown by leaps and bounds. And well, we have your home and auto, we have your health insurance, we have your money, can you do my taxes as well? And so we added a tax practice a couple years ago. So I'm a completely different company than I was even five years ago. Um, now we have the advantage of uh you know carefully keeping an eye on that ourselves, but sometimes we get caught too. It's the old, what is it, the cobbler's children have no shoes. Like we we have to very carefully watch to make sure we're insuring even our own buildings appropriately and our own exposures appropriately.

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Well, and the world changes so fast. I mean, I feel like marketing is changing like it's really wild right now with the introduction of AI and all of the things. Like, there's a lot of implications to some of these things. We don't even know what that looks like 100% yet.

SPEAKER_03 21:35

So Yeah. And that's true of my industry, and it's also not true because insurance in some ways, like it there it goes back way, way far, yet also even over the last couple hundred years. And a significant piece of that is there's a boat floating across an ocean with stuff in it, and I want it to get to the other side. And if it doesn't make it, I don't want all of that risk myself. I have a building, we light by candle, and if Burns down, I'm not able to replace it myself. And so those things are still real to my industry today. Lots of new things have come along. Cyber is one, but at the end of the day, protecting the things that you hold that you own, balance sheet protection. If we have a large loss over there, I want to be able to keep going as a business. But yes, ever changing.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Is um key like stakeholder insurance and looking at those types of things, life insurance policies, is that something that you recommend as well on a regular basis?

SPEAKER_03 22:29

Yeah, I same thing. Talk to an agent that knows what they're doing. I wouldn't say that's an area of expertise for me. We have people in my group that do that, but absolutely a part of the personal commercial.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

I think about it as commercial, but I guess it's not. It's more life insurance, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:43

It they are life insurance products, yes. So you need to carry a different uh license for that. Um but it it's critically important because what happens if you have a key employee depart, you're a small group and you have somebody that's a major contributor depart. You may not want a million-dollar policy for that, but you may want$100,000 because you recognize I may lose a client, it's going to have to go through an extensive search, we're going to struggle because of it. Um key man policies from a life perspective. So my business partner and I have life insurance policies on one another. Because if I were to unfortunately pass away, the reality is he's probably going to want to buy out my wife, who would be the owner of it. Yeah, and nor does she want to be wanna run an insurance agency, but there's significant debt obligations, having bought the business, that need to be satisfied. And so absolutely, that's an important part of it.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

What about if you're a soul owner? Is there like what what does that look like?

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_00 23:39

I it's more for me like I need to make sure everybody here has a job if I die. And I talk about dying way too much around here. So I'm always like, what I don't know what your job is if you die. And they're like, they look at me like this. I'm like, listen, I know you're 25, but you might die. So unfortunately, we had to prepare for every situation.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

I think there probably there are insurance things that you probably could do with that. And and you might, and an attorney is going to be able to help work through too. What does that succession planning look like? Um, is it immediately it passes to a spouse who then is probably going to liquidate? Um, do you have a good business continuity plan in place? Do you have a strong second, third identified that are ready to step in and and take your place? And I know we've got some other phenomenal speakers that the Blaze Expo that might even be better positioned to answer that question than I am.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

That's good. But so it it ties in a little bit, but it's kind of like an outlier.

SPEAKER_03 24:30

A little bit. Got it. Yeah, a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

Okay. Any um like any other stories you want to share, case studies, things like that? I know that you have brought some ideas.

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, almost where do you start? There's all kinds of different phones.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

I mean, I think I could sit here and listen to them all day. And then you'd be like, oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

And you'd leave terrified and yes, wanting to do what? All your insurance agents.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

So I'm good with it.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

Well, so um here's another area that I think we've seen a lot of activity in recently: employment practices.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:00

Okay, well, what is that, Seth? Um, broadly speaking, employment practices liability insurance or EPL, EPLI, would protect you, the business, in the event there's some sort of an allegation of wrongful termination, harassment, um, failure to hire, wage an hour. So um, we've got an employee that's been harassed here at work, and they resign and file a lawsuit. These happen all the time. Um we did not hire somebody because of protected classes, age, race, things like that. Um even, and this is really important in in my world too. Even if we're not wrong, even if we haven't done anything wrong, the allegation of wrongdoing leads to just as damaging. Yeah. Um and it can be financially uh devastating if you don't have policies in place standing behind you. Um this is a part of it. So third-party liability falling underneath that employment practices part. Imagine the same delivery guy shows up and your ladies are out back there making comments and harassing the delivery guy. That actually falls in this as well. And those things happen, right? And you laugh about it because it seems crazy, but that's just the world that we live in. So employment practices is a really important one. And uh, these claims happen, they actually happen regularly. And again, I have so many wonderful attorney friends, I'm not throwing them under the bus. But let's let's take our Tim Misney, right? You've seen the billboards. If you drive to Cleveland, if you go south, like South Carolina and Florida are horrendous for this. The uh injury and accident attorneys that will grab hold of anything and everything. From an employment practices standpoint, I've had numerous clients have this even over the last couple years. Something happened at work. Um, an employee feels like maybe they weren't trained appropriately, something happened, they weren't protected, whatever it might be. Frequently these issues lead to absolutely nothing in a court of law. And we, as the the insured, may feel like we've done nothing wrong. I'm gonna, we're gonna fight to the death. We're gonna win this in court. And the insurance company can come alongside you, kind of put their arm around you, and say, listen, here's the deal. We believe you, but if we go to court, we're gonna spend$250,000 defending this. The demand is$50,000, we're gonna offer them$25,000, and we're just gonna make it go away. And that's what happens. And yet we've done nothing wrong. But you don't want to be on your own in that. You don't want to be with the other.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

So that's a special writer or addition to an existing policy that okay. I'm curious, have you had any um this relates to our world, ADA compliance lawsuits? Yeah, with our websites.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

Yes, that actually is an interesting one because that tends to fall under the cyber uh realm of things. So yeah. Yeah, it usually will fall into there. Now, again, look at um policy language, ask your agent. There are going to be some exclusions for that sometimes too. Um you're a web designer, and so yes, you absolutely have an exposure there.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

So, well, we we actually uh allow people to opt in or opt out. The opt-out says we hold you not responsible.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:08

Like so we offer ADA compliance as a service, but we did uh have a local company who was being sued.

SPEAKER_01 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Even though they were not I mean, it's not illegal yet. However, I was not sure. I think that it fell under their general liability policy. They ended up settling that. But we had to rebuild their website, so it was actually ADA compliance.

SPEAKER_03 28:27

Yeah, I that's surprising to me. Normally I would expect to find that in cyber, and these always come out of the People's Republic of California. Um, it's just where they come from. And I think their attorneys that make a living, my poor my attorney friends. Listen, I am not anti-attorney. We have so many wonderful ones. Uh my friends at Critchfield, but it tends to be even the allegation of wrongdoing is what leads to we gotta respond, we gotta defend, we've got to jump, and yes, especially if there are damages sorts of trouble. Um another really big area uh would be broadly called management liability. There's going to be a number of coverages that are going to go into that. We've talked a little bit about employment practices, that's going to fall under management liability. Cyber frequently can fall under management liability. Um fiduciary, if we manage employee plans, think most commonly we manage an employee 401k plan, and there's an allegation of misappropriation of funds, um, we didn't invest in the right funds, we should have done this, done that, and can demonstrate a financial loss. Our employees can come after us in that situation. And maybe one of the biggest ones in there to talk about would be directors and officers. And I think this impacts many people, maybe even without realizing it. So you think directors and officers, okay, I'm a big Fortune 500 publicly traded company. Um, I've got a number of directors of the company, I've got a board of directors, I've got officers of the company. There is a significant, let's call it, decision-making exposure there. Property insurance, a building burns down, that's one thing. Liability insurance, we got to pay somebody else because there's bodily injury or property damage. You get to DO insurance, directors and officers, you're talking more. I can't necessarily demonstrate that you've injured me, bodily injury. There's no property damage, but there's still some sort of an injury. Um, imagine a shareholder suing um a CEO of a company because the shareholder had invested in the company. The CEO made a decision that the shareholder deemed was uh wrong, led to a some sort of financial loss, bring suit against the company. Okay. D and O can help cover that. That's also a I don't know how much of that we have going on in Wayne and Holmes County.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Yeah, I have not really bring it down a little bit, right? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Um for nonprofits, this is really, really important. Um, one of the things that I think is really important about my role, I imagine you do as well, giving back to the community. And frequently that looks like, well, we're gonna serve on a board of directors or board of trustees for a nonprofit. You should want to ensure, as somebody sitting on a board, and um any director or officer of that uh nonprofit should want to ensure that there's a directors and officers policy in place in the event somebody comes back against the organization for an allegation, accusation of mismanagement, wrongdoing, something's not not going right here. Now, you don't own a nonprofit, run a nonprofit, nor do I. These are for-profit entities. Another interesting um area that directors and officers will pick up, usually um the policy usually responds when you come down to things like breach of non-competes, non-piracy. So we've even had this happen for us. We've hired employees away from our competitors, and they've come back against us alleging, well, you're taking our clients or some sort of allegation of this. And were we not to have had a directors and officers policy, we're on the hook for that ourselves. And I know that's one that most people, I'm a small company, I why do I need a directors and officers policy? You might want to consider it even if just for that very reason alone.

SPEAKER_00 31:55

Aaron Powell How do they prove that? I guess it's different if you if you're an agent and you're moving agencies, you're likely to take a book of clients with you. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

And they're all going to be unique, but think uh a financial advisor who worked with clients at one firm comes over to another firm.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

They're very likely to follow the person.

SPEAKER_03 32:16

Yep. And there's a real number, there's a real dollar amount tied to that person um working for one organization versus the other. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Yep. From the old, because you're competitors, so it it doesn't take a whole lot for you to get frustrated with a competitor across town.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

They can have a big book of business be leaving with them.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

So and you may even find that same situation should you hire somebody away from a competitor here. Um if accounts start trickling over, um, just be careful. And there may not have been a non-compete for that employee that you've hired away, but if there is a non-compete, a non-piracy, some sort of employment.

SPEAKER_00 32:48

Non-competes are not legal in the state of Ohio anymore, are they?

SPEAKER_03 32:51

Um there's legislation around that. I you'd this is where you definitely want to ask your attorney friends. We need their help. Um, I think some of that was maybe on hold. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

So it's still worth considering. I think it's still out there. Got it.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yeah. Okay. That's a very real one. Another interesting one. Let's go to our manufacturer's example. Um, we've probably all seen that horrendous infomercial for the ladder back in the day, and I don't know, like 30 years ago, where this guy's got this ladder that folds up and he's going across it, and he look, it's so sturdy, and the thing just collapses on him right in the middle of it, and he gets like folded up backwards under it. Um, products and completed operations falls under the general liability form and actually picks up the exposure. Should our product not function as it should, our ladder collapses, or our completed operation not function as it should as well. Um, think I'm a carpenter, a contractor, and I install a deck on a home and it's elevated, people are on it, a support collapses, and now I've got significant bodily injury, maybe death, have to put it all back together. Um, those are things that absolutely have to be considered and contemplated when you're when you're looking at a commercial general liability policy. Let's talk about maybe even auto just for a second. Do you own, does Spears Creative own any automobiles?

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Only my vehicle.

SPEAKER_03 34:11

Is owned by the business? Yes. Yep. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

But employees will drive for work sometimes in their own vehicles.

SPEAKER_03 34:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:17

Right. So let's not talk about it, Seth.

SPEAKER_03 34:20

No, let's talk about it. Okay. Because the industry knows how to handle that. That's what I do. I drive my personal vehicle. I drove it down to Fredericksburg from Worcester. Um, let's play out a scenario where I'm driving down here and I cause an accident and somebody's injured. It's unlikely that Whitaker Myers is going to get pulled into some sort of, you know, lawsuit surrounding that, but it absolutely could happen. Here's maybe a more relevant example. Um, you're a small contractor, and your truck that you use is owned personally. It's not owned by your business. Um, you've got tools, you've got supplies in the back of the truck, and same thing. You're driving to a job site and you cause an accident. You've got big old magnetic stickers on the side of it that say, you know, Joe's contracting service LLC. You can bet the injured party, their attorney, is going to bring Joe's contracting LLC into the lawsuit. The way that the industry protects against that is a coverage called hired and non-owned auto. They typically go together. Hired auto would just be a rented auto. Um, so you fly to a conference in Orlando, you rent a vehicle down there, you cause an accident. If you have hired and non-owned auto coverage, you actually have liability coverage for the business for that hired or rented auto that you're using. It's the same thing with non-owned. So any personal vehicles would be an example of a non-owned vehicle. Um, an interesting question for you. Um, there's a coverage called drive other car coverage. Now, you're an executive here and you have a vehicle that is insured by the business. So I'm sure you have business auto. Um, if you drive your business auto, there's liability coverage for it. Um if, for example, you weren't married, didn't have a personal auto, it was all you used was the company provided vehicle, we would want to add a coverage called drive other car, which literally is just what it sounds like. If you would happen to drive another car, your business policy is not going to respond if you cause an accident. So we just want to add this coverage called drive other car in the event that, well, you would drive another car and cause an accident, have some sort of a liability exposure. Yeah, weird, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yeah, well, we need to look at that a little bit. I I okay, I have another question. This is actually relevant for I'm curious to see. We have a policy inside our employee handbook around um drinking at social events. So beautiful. We go to the chamber networking event, there's some drinks there, everybody drives their own car home. How do we protect ourselves? I also don't want any employees acting crazy, acting a fool in public. But my biggest concern is they might have had too many drinks, drove home, and I don't want to be responsible for that. How do you how do companies manage that from a risk perspective?

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Yeah. Yeah, I think policies and procedures are going to be really important there. I think it's it's highly likely, let's just say an employee goes to a work function and causes some sort of an incident. There is a chance that your commercial auto insurer is going to say, that is not our responsibility, and they will not defend. A personal auto policy should respond in that situation. Um one of the things you can do is ask all of your employees to carry, let's just call them sufficiently high limits. What's the right number? Impossible to tell. I would suggest your employees should probably all carry at least a half a million dollars in combined single limit. That means a half a million dollars per accident that we caused for bodily injury for property damage, right? We've injured somebody, we've destroyed their car, we've you know run into their house with our car, things like that. Um and that would be one uh at least one good practice that I think you should should implement. Um, if it was an example of you driving on behalf of work, um the hired and unowned policy may respond there. And absolutely, if you're driving that business auto, the auto policy should respond in that situation. But scary world and dangerous, and actually let's talk about drinking.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 38:11

Okay. That's not where I thought we were going here. But um at our agency, every couple of weeks on a Friday afternoon, we're right around the corner from Vuellers in Worcester on the north end. About 4 15, I'll drive around the corner, I'll grab some margaritas for the ladies, beer for the guys, something to snack on, I'll bring it back around the corner. And we just we wind down at the end of the week with happy hour. Now, let's just imagine one of my uh colleagues there at the agency has a couple too many margaritas and causes an accident on the drive home. We have coverage in our policy, and most I think most commercial general liability forms would include it, or at least could include it if needed, called host liquor liability. Where I'm not I'm not a bar or restaurant. That's not my business. That's going to be liquor liability, and that will be covered separately. But I just every once in a while I host a happy hour and we have a little bit of liquor there, and if something would happen, that host liquor liability policy is going to step in and respond.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

That's what we need.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

Yeah. And I've got it. Christmas party.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Like I'm thinking like Christmas party Thanksgiving. Like we don't do it often, but a couple times a year we might have an event.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Well, you know, and and on events, uh, I know we talked about this before, but this is important for my nonprofit clients. You like to hold a 5K fundraiser, a golf outing, some sort of big dinner at Greystone or whatever. Each one of those most likely needs their own special event policy. Some companies will still allow you to put special events on the general liability, you know, business owners policy. But for the most part, I'm seeing companies pushing away from that and saying, we need to know exactly what's going on there. We need to know how many people are going to be there. You've got a 5K, no big deal. You've got a 5K with drinks afterward. Are you controlling access? Are you serving? Are your servers tips trained? Lots of questions that'll come out of that.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

So I understand.

SPEAKER_03 39:58

That's part of that regular check-in with your agent. What are you doing? What are you forgetting to tell me about what exposures do you have out there that we really need to be considering?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Let's talk about the foreign travel. So we're a part of um we partner with branches worldwide. So they're a nonprofit I'm heavily involved in. I've been to Uganda and to Mongolia with them. So tell me like what I should be considering when it comes to foreign travel. We actually are considering take sending employees on trips with them in the future. So what do we need to think about?

SPEAKER_03 40:26

Yeah, so what you're gonna be looking for would be like a travel accident policy. Big things essentially. Something happens overseas. What do you even do? Um, Chubb would be an example of a phenomenal multinational company that has a wonderful policy they put together, and they'll give you a card that goes with you to say, I'm in Africa and something has gone horribly wrong. What do I do? Um, there'll be coverage for accident. I mean, you know, it's unfortunate.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

I'm not driving in Africa, FYI. I I was on the road. Have you ever been?

SPEAKER_03 40:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

It's a little scary. It is scary. I'm never driving there.

SPEAKER_03 40:59

So that's a I drove in the Dominican Republic one time, and that was terrifying because noable español, I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm doing. What's the speed limit? It's a hundred kilometers an hour. Okay, I'll drive 62 miles an hour, and a Corvette goes by doing a hundred miles an hour. Yeah, no rules. Uh so yes, you're wise not to drive when you go to those foreign countries. Um, but if you're there, having coverage for an unfortunate accident has happened, um, even in the event of death, like repatriation of remains gets to tends to get included in that. And then um, depending where you're going and what you're doing, even adding a kidnap and ransom policy on there.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

Yeah, that's you know, is America. I just went to Mongolia by myself, got stranded in um Turkey for I don't know, like over 12 hours in the airport by myself. I was too scared to leave the airport. Yeah, so I stayed up all night because I'm like, listen, I'm a middle-aged blonde American woman in the middle of the Middle East by myself. You're worth a lot of money. Yeah, it was weird.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

And I felt really exposed in that moment. And I was like, yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Again, one of those just to talk about there are policies available out there for it that can be really, really helpful. And part of it is it's peace of mind.

SPEAKER_00 42:09

Do you just get those policies on a trip-by-trip basis, or is that something that's like always out there?

SPEAKER_03 42:14

Um, I more commonly I see it as an annual policy. So think a large manufacturer that has plants or suppliers in lots of different countries or a sales territory that extends beyond just, you know, the U.S. Um, I tend to see those policies on an annual basis, and they really are not very expensive. They'll be rated on the number of trips and the number of employees that are going on these trips, but they can be really helpful. Again, just even having that card to know if I'm in that foreign country and something happens, this is where I call.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

Is that something like even my daughter's going on a mission trips trip in June, they go every year. Is that something people go on to mission trips should also be considering from a personal standpoint?

SPEAKER_03 42:50

Yeah, I I think it can be a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

Um I never would have thought about it until you said that. Like, ooh.

SPEAKER_03 42:56

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you out of the point. Um you can absolutely buy those on a trip-by-trip basis. Okay. Yeah, no doubt about it.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Last year, my daughter went to Puerto Rico and Live 360 called us because they thought she was in an accident. So note Live 360 works across the world. Really, just the driver had slammed on his brakes and her phone went forward really hard, so it wasn't really an accident, but helpful to know that the police were on their way because nobody answered their phones.

SPEAKER_03 43:22

Yeah, yeah, that technology is helpful. It's amazing, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Yeah, it's pretty wild. I'm thankful I didn't have it whenever I was a child, though.

SPEAKER_03 43:30

When we were kids, it was different.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

It was different, different, not dumb.

SPEAKER_03 43:33

Yeah, right. All your dumb things didn't get recorded forever. So probably could take just a moment to talk about work comp, um workers' compensation. So in the state of Ohio, that's controlled by the state. So your independent agent is is likely not helping out or handling that for you. That's another important one. The state takes care of it. If you've got employees that travel to other states regularly, you actually may need to carry a separate work comp policy to be able to handle that, particularly. If they're doing any sort of work, doing an installation on a project. But Ohio's kind of unique. There are a few other states where it comp is handled exclusively by the state. Contractors, I think that's an important one. So let's just imagine you've hired somebody to work for you on a 1099 basis, and you come to me and say, I don't need to, I don't need to take on that exposure because they're a 1099 and they're going to be paid like that and they're separate. Well, if they can't demonstrate that they have insurance, you actually are unfortunately going to need to take on that risk. And so that'll be some of the questions that are asked in the insurance application process. What are the contractors you work with? Do you collect certificates of insurance from them regularly to ensure, yep, they actually have a policy? And am I named on that policy so that if they cause an accident, think a subcontractor on for a builder?

SPEAKER_00 44:51

This is our world that we live in because of working with most contractors, yes, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 44:56

Yeah. So you're a GC and you hire an electrician and they burn the building down. Well, we want to know that they have a policy that we're named on it so that we don't get pulled into that because that wasn't our work. That was them that did that.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 45:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Um, anything else you want to wrap this up for us? Let us know. Like if a business owner is sitting here listening to this and they say, I don't know what to do with all of this information.

SPEAKER_03 45:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

Any encouragement?

unknown 45:20

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 45:21

Next steps?

SPEAKER_03 45:22

Take heart. There is hope. It's a big scary world out there, but you can be assured that big insurance companies like a Traveler's Hartford, a Chubb, or a Westfield, they're not going to put their their money on the line if they don't believe that there is a very low likelihood of something happening. So reach out to me, reach out to somebody on my team, reach out to your own agent. Start to ask the questions. If you're not hearing from people your agent every couple of years, um, yeah. Suggest a meeting to review all of your coverages. Suggest a meeting to discuss what you've got coming up, what's changed, what's um different. You're gonna uncover some things and be ready to make hard decisions. Am I going to spend my money there to insure against that? Am I going to save my money and roll the dice? Are we maybe going to stop doing that just because it doesn't make sense? That happens regularly. I had a client that stopped um transporting uh their patients in their own vehicles because, well, it didn't make sense. It's just too expensive. It's too risky. And the insurance marketplace says uh instead of a thousand dollars per vehicle for that, that's gonna be six thousand dollars a vehicle. Well, if you have a hundred, that's a real number. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:34

Okay. I really appreciate your thought and perspective. You shared us a uh with us a very comprehensive list of the things to consider from a business perspective. You shared a little bit of your insights and experiences, so we really appreciate that. Um tell everybody where they should find you if they wanted to reach out to you because they have questions.

SPEAKER_03 46:53

Yeah, sure. If you Google Whitaker Myers and Seth, I'm sure you'll absolutely find me. Um I try to be around at many chamber events and other networking events around town. Um, my contact information is all out there. I'd love to just begin the conversation. It may not go anywhere, but truly I want to be a help uh and a and a resource for people. Whitaker Whitaker-myers.com. W-h-i t-a-k-e-r-m-y-r-s.com.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

Thank you very much. Of course.

SPEAKER_03 47:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

It was great chatting with you today.

SPEAKER_03 47:22

Enjoyed it. Likewise. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Thanks for tuning into Torch Talk. If today's story sparked something for you, share it with a colleague, community leader, or future change maker. Until next time, stay inspired, stay intentional, and keep your fire burning.