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Board approves insurance renewal with deductible buy-down and requests higher cyber quotes
Summary
After an MMA insurance presentation, the board moved to renew property and liability coverage, agreed to buy down the wind/hail deductible to a $75,000 per-occurrence level and asked staff to obtain additional cyber liability pricing above the $1 million baseline.
The Wahoo Public Schools board heard a renewal proposal from the district's insurance presenter and approved a package that included changing the wind/hail deductible structure and obtaining further cyber coverage pricing.
Dan, the insurance representative who presented renewal options, told the board the district's overall premium had declined slightly from about $269,728 last year to roughly $264,033 this year, producing a modest savings. "So we're seeing about a 20% reduction there" in a component of the package, Dan said of the market movement in workers' compensation and related lines.
The board focused on two connected choices: whether to buy down a large per-occurrence wind/hail deductible (the carrier's standard structure would treat very large-loss deductibles as a percent of total insured value) and what dollar limit to secure for cyber liability. Dan offered options for cyber limits at $1 million (current) and the ability to run quotes at $2 million or $3 million or higher.
Board members debated risk tolerance and reserve needs. One board member noted, "If we had a catastrophic loss, we had better have $1,200,000 tucked away ready to write a check unless we're going to buy down our deductible," and recommended weighing available cash against the cost of buy-downs. The insurer estimated that buying down the combined wind/hail deductible to $75,000 would reduce the district's exposure in a large-loss event and the board accepted that tradeoff.
A motion was made to approve the renewal with a deductible buy-down to $75,000 and to authorize staff to obtain supplemental quotes for higher cyber limits; the motion was seconded and carried. Board members asked staff to return with exact figures for cyber limits above $1 million before any amendment to the approved renewal.
The board also asked for additional data on cyber remediation costs in the education sector and for the district's IT vendor to confirm current exposures for software and payroll systems.
The action included a governance caveat: the cyber portion would proceed subject to staff's ability to present a higher-limit quote before binding the policy changes beyond the currently purchased limits.
