Environmental insurance for today, and tomorrow
It’s more common than you may think for companies to have environmental liabilities and the remediation costs can be extremely expensive. The majority of standalone property and casualty policies do not insure pollution risk, which means that your environmental insurance policy is the sole means for you to guard against and recover losses caused by environmental issues. Claims cover the release of pollutants and subsequent bodily injury, property damage, cleanup and business interruption.
What does environmental insurance cover?
Following the environmental movement in the 1970s, congress passed a number of landmark bills focusing on conservation, protection, recovery and pollution liability. Environmental liability coverage includes:
- Asbestos
- Lead paint
- Mold exposure and remediation
- Brownfield sites that were used and potentially contaminated by commercial or industrial operations
Environmental protection insurance is available to help a broad range of industries including:
- Car dealerships, gas or service stations and garages
- Contractors
- Dry cleaning and laundry facilities
- HVAC contractors
- Healthcare institutions
- Hotels and other lodgings
- Real estate developers
- Shopping centers
- Utilities
Contact ZRM brokerage to get started today.
Why standard policies exclude pollution
The absolute pollution exclusion in standard GL and property policies is broader than most business owners realize. It doesn’t just apply to chemical plants. A restaurant’s grease trap overflow, a contractor’s fuel spill on a job site, or mold in a commercial building can all trigger the pollution exclusion and leave you without coverage.
Environmental insurance fills these gaps with three main coverage forms: pollution legal liability (for owned or operated sites), contractors pollution liability (for work at third-party sites), and environmental professional liability (for consultants and engineers). Each form responds to different scenarios and different triggers.
For real estate transactions, environmental site assessments often reveal legacy contamination that creates indemnification obligations. We structure environmental insurance to backstop those obligations so buyers and sellers can close transactions without leaving cleanup liability unresolved.
