What Your Insurance Actually Covers

A security guard in downtown St. Louis was told to call the police. A tenant had warned that a former guest was on her way to the building and that she was frightened of her. He never made the call. When the woman arrived he tried to handle it himself, pinned her to the floor, then found his handcuffs were back at the security desk. He let her up. She drew a knife. He ran for bear mace, sprayed her, and when she came at him he ran. The property manager who had told him to call the police was left alone with her and was cut repeatedly across the face. His company's insurer settled for $1 million (£739,200), the full limit of the policy, and the company never instructed a lawyer.

Most protection professionals carry insurance they have never read. They bought a policy because a client asked for a certificate, they file the renewal each year, and they assume the number printed on the front is the number available if something goes wrong. For a large share of the work this industry actually does, it is not. Commercial general liability, the policy nearly everyone carries, typically excludes or sublimits claims arising from assault and battery. Which means the single most likely event to generate a claim against a protection officer, a physical intervention, is the specific thing his main policy is built to leave out.

This piece walks the three policies that matter and what each is genuinely for, the six exclusions that quietly void cover on ordinary working days, what recent claims have actually cost, and why the certificate of insurance you collect from a subcontractor proves far less than you think. It comes with the Coverage Gap Audit, a working spreadsheet that maps the tasks you actually perform against the cover you actually hold and returns a scored exposure position with the two weakest areas named. Not legal or insurance advice. A list of things to check before somebody else checks them for you.