Most business owners are at least passingly familiar with the concept of an insurance audit. Many insurance policies are priced based on some factor that cannot be determined with certainty until after the policy term has expired. Workers compensation insurance is based on payroll, many general liability policies are based on either payroll or gross sales. For this reason, in order to determine a price for these kinds of policies, the insurance buyer must make an estimate for that unknown amount of sales or payroll. The rating basis, either payroll or sales, is then audited at the end of the policy term and if the estimated payroll was higher than the actual payroll, the business owner will be due a refund, if the estimated amount was too low, then the business owner will owe an additional amount to the insurance company. This is all pretty straight forward and most experienced business people are familiar with this process.
Enter the one way audit. Depending on your perspective, this is either a way to protect the insurance companies from unpaid audits, or it is a nasty scheme to take advantage of business owners by using their familiarity with the audit process against them. Maybe you will come down somewhere in between these extremes when you judge the one way audit technique; I for one think it is much the latter.
So what is this one way audit technique? Simply put, policies with one way audit features have special wording in them that states that if the audit results in an additional amount due to the insurance company, then the customer must pay this amount. However, should the audit reveal that there is a refund due the business, then the estimated amount paid in advance will be deemed to be a minimum earned premium, thus no refund will be due to the insured. What? How is this a fair way to treat your clients? Asking them to estimate their gross sales, then keeping the money if they over estimate and charging them for the shortage if they underestimate is one sided and disingenuous in my opinion. But I can accept this procedure if it is spelled out in large, colorful print on the top page of the policy and perhaps attaching a brochure that explains how this is different from every other insurance audit that the client will have ever seen.
Liquor liability insurance policies are particularly vulnerable to the one way audit clause. Many of them sneak this wording into their policy and usually bury it deep in the policy language. I have never seen a one way audit based policy that attempted to bring this nasty clause to the buyer’s attention on the front page of the policy. With more states like South Carolina and Rhode Island now making the purchase of liquor liability insurance policies mandatory, more and more business owners will be trapped by this sneaky clause and will lose money that they expected to have refunded to them at the end of the policy term.
So how do you protect yourself from the one way audit? First of all, you must know how to recognize it when you have this clause in your policy. Your insurance agent should be able to help you with that. Secondly, when setting up a policy with a one way audit feature, you should under estimate the gross sales for the policy period. I would advise using 75% or so of what you think your sales will be when you make your initial estimate to the insurance company. Remember, any amount that you over estimate will not be returned to you at the end of the policy term. Now this under estimate will now mean that you will probably face an additional premium due at the end of your policy term. If this will create a cash flow problem for you then, then I suggest that you plan for that in advance and put that money in a safe place to pay the audit at the end of the policy term.
For help and advice with your liquor liability insurance needs, and with your other insurance policy needs, please feel free to call us, toll free, at 877-687-7557, or visit us on the web at www.clinardinsurance.com. For more information about South Carolina liquor liability insurance, please visit us at www.SCLiquorInsurance.com.