Ruminations: Who Knew? 'Active Shooter Insurance'!

"The number of mass shooting events depends upon how you define them. Regardless, there is no question that they are increasing in frequency and impact."
"In the 50 years before the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting, there were just 25 public mass shootings in which four or more people were killed. Since then, the number of such shootings has risen dramatically, and many of the deadliest shootings have occurred within the past few years.^"
^"Of the 220 incidents that occurred from 2000 to 2016, nearly half (107) took place in an education, retail, or government/military setting."
American Bar Association

"Active shooter attacks differ from acts of terrorism, which typically target specific buildings or locations and trigger coverage from traditional terrorism policies that require property damage for coverage to apply."
"The standard terrorism policy also requires that the motive be ideological, political or religious in nature, unlike active shooter attacks, for which the motive may be personal or unclear."

"The costs following an active shooter attack can be substantial, and some insureds do not realize that their policies do not cover active shooting incidents. They may believe that this type of attack falls under terrorism coverage but it does not."
A.M. Best Co. Inc. special report

File Photo AFP

Hospitals in the United States are beginning to turn their attention back to a constant which had been suppressed during the time of the medical community taking the brunt of the SARS-CoV-2 virus delivering COVID-19 patients in serious distress to emergency or intensive care units, and as the ICUs are being freed up with fewer seriously ill COVID patients while the massive vaccination effort is now well in hand, expectations turn to victims of mass shootings swamping hospital emergency centers.

During the year of intensive COVID-linked shutdowns and hospital admissions there was a notable lull in the usual epidemic of mass shootings in the United States. 2020, in fact, turned out to be the least deadly in a decade for mass shootings, according to a Reuters report. Then came spring, with COVID vaccinations proceeding apace, and suddenly the realization that a resurgence in mass shootings has materialized.

Cue insurance policies' protection against the high costs associated with mass shootings. It appears evident now that 2021 is heading to the upward slope of a return to mass shootings and with it an upward curve in the demand for protection with those events in mind. Enquiries for active shooter policies -- thus named by the insurance industry -- rose 50 percent year after year in the six weeks just passed.

Policies for active shooter insurance cover victim lawsuits, building repairs, legal fees, medical expenses and trauma counselling, and it all adds up -- enormously. Retail establishments, schools, universities, restaurants and places of worship are among the clients that insurance brokers recognize, buying coverage whose value ranges from $1 million up to $75 million. Increasingly, now, hospitals have joined their ranks.

Fatal shootings in American hospitals remain rare and any that might occur classified as mass shootings have traditionally come in as one-in-a-decade events. Now, however, according to Tarique Nageer, Terrorism Placement Advisory Leader at the world's larges insurance broker Marsh, the demand from the health-care sector has been especially intense.

Vegas shooting a lesson in crisis management for health care workers

The 2017 shooting spree during the Route 91 Harvest country music festival in Las Vegas provided some hard-learned lessons for health care organizations in preparing for and managing the response to mass casualty incidents.

Hospitals generally are open to the public and emergency wards where patients with COVID-19 get treatment along with those suffering injuries and other serious illnesses are treated, have experienced some fairly unsettling responses from families to news that their family member succumbed to the illness they were admitted to hospital for treatment for, but would not now be returning home, as expected, fully recovered.

"Those are places where you could see people who are disgruntled that members of their family might have died and didn't get a vaccine or weren't treated properly", recounted Tim Davies, head of crisis management at Canoplus, a Lloyd's of London global specialty insurer. When an unexpected outcome triggers an emotionally volatile response, anything can happen, and hospitals feel they need good insurance coverage for those 'anything can happen' times.

These common concerns leading to the rush for coverage have had a predictable result, with a 25 percent to 50 percent increase in premiums for health=care firms, over the year before. Active shooter policy rates doubled for some clients, according to the head of political violence cover at Optio insurer. According to a report by the Gun Violence Archive, there were 200 mass shooting events in the first 132 days of 2021.

Any event involving the shooting of four or more people other than the assailant is considered by the research group as a mass shooting. Demand is up by 20 percent with the reopening of U.S. offices bringing both employees and violence back to the workplace. People stressed by pandemic-induced concerns, economic insecurities and enforced isolation, returning to the workplace, according to the R3 Continuum, crisis management consultancy that helps deal with the aftermath of 800 shootings a year.