The unique risk exposures of educational institutions create a host of challenges. They are required to protect the financial viability of their institution (including its endowment), assure the efficacy of its educational processes, and protect the school’s reputation, its staff, and its students. Educational institutions must also ensure compliance with regulatory demands and requirements while balancing the costs and benefits of any risk retention or transfer decisions considered.

Insurance purchasing decisions are often made in the absence of adequate information allowing buyers to compare their decisions with appropriate benchmarks. While comparisons to peer institutions do not necessarily lead to optimal decisions, they can provide a framework of what choices peer institutions and colleagues are making. Created in collaboration with Assurex Global, Unison Risk Advisors is pleased to offer our third-annual benchmarking reports for both higher education and independent K-12 institutions.

Key Highlight: Independent K-12

Cyber extortion has dominated the headlines for the past few years. All schools, no matter the size, need to implement certain risk protocols to qualify for coverage. These include, but are not limited to: multi-factor authentication (MFA), endpoint detection and response, employee training, encrypted backups and more.

Cyber insurance protects against a wide array of technology, privacy and data security risks. Cyber liability policies may provide first-party or third-party coverage. Most often, policies provide a combination of the two. Our data shows that 75 percent of independent day schools surveyed purchase a $1 million cyber liability limit. Twenty-five percent of schools in the survey are purchasing a $2 million limit or greater.

You can request the full report for independent K-12 schools here.

Key Highlight: Higher Education

Educators’ legal liability (ELL) insurance is designed to cover a broad range of non-bodily injury/non-property damage liability claims made against the board members, administrators, employees, and staff members of higher education institutions. Educators’ legal liability insurance is a hybrid of traditional directors and officers (D&O), employment-related practices liability (EPL), and errors and omissions (E&O) coverages.

Thirty-seven percent of the 4-year colleges in our survey purchase less than $5 million of educators’ legal liability coverage. Thirty-six percent purchase $11 million or more, with 20 percent purchasing educators’ legal liability limits of at least $25 million.

Some universities and colleges that chose to purchase smaller limits of ELL coverage may be relying on the excess liability coverage being extended to sit over the ELL policy.

You can request the full report for higher education here.

Learn More

Our 2022 Education Benchmark report includes a host of data for several key lines of coverage. Request the full reports today and reach out to a Unison Risk Advisors partner with any questions on our findings.