“All insurance is the same – a towing policy is the same as a repo policy”

This is completely false. Endorsements are what change a general liability policy and what makes a building contractors policy different from a towing policy which is completely different from a repossession policy. In fact, a certain (“brunette in white” – that you often see on TV) carrier who has a strong presence in the towing industry cancels those policies when they find out more than 25% of the insured’s business is repossession.

Properly written endorsements by insurance providers and programs with extensive and proven repossession experience ensure that your agents and accounts are properly INSURED. All certificates and coverages are not the same.

Recovery Specialist Insurance Group has been providing repossession insurance to repossessors exclusively for over 30 years. Our pricing remains stable, allowing us to stand the test of time through hard and soft markets giving repossessors a safe harbor from the volatile markets.

Our experience in the industry gives us the knowledge we need to work with our carriers to transform a generic general liability policy into something that provides repossessors and lenders with the proper coverage needed for repossession exposures. A poorly written endorsement can give coverage on one page and promptly take it away on the next. Would your staff know how to review a policy to see if this is true in the policies you’re accepting?

Again, completely false. A bond is not a promise written on a frilly piece of certificate style paper. It is a legal insurance contract between the insurance carrier and the insured. Like any other insurance policy, the bond should be evidenced on a certificate of insurance, and the financial stability of the carrier providing coverage should be able to be verified through a source like AM Best. If a self insured bond has been accepted by your institution in the past, at minimum, you should be requesting financial statements of the company to be certain they have the funds set aside sufficient to meet the promised limits.

When reviewing a bond designed to cover more than one entity, like an association bond generally does, you’ll also want to be certain that the insurance policy defines the insured as a repossession company or companies with a schedule of insured. Otherwise what you may be accepting is a properly written bond to cover the employees of the association or group … but it may not be covering the repossession agencies that are a part of that group.

Policies that only carry $50,000 in on-hook / garagekeepers coverage may have been acceptable at some point years ago when vehicle values were lower, but when you’re at a stoplight, look around and think about how many of the vehicles around you cost more than $50,000.

And when you’re thinking about the cost of vehicles, don’t forget items like trucks, tractor trailers, heavy equipment, boats and motor homes that are often the first to be repossessed in a struggling economy. If you’re accepting lower garagekeepers limits, those lower limits could easily be exhausted after a single claim involving one of these more costly items, leaving the repossessor with reduced limits and coverage for your accounts.

One other factor to consider is the number of vehicles stored on a lot if an incident were to occur that would damage or destroy all the vehicles like a flood, hurricane or even a property fire. If any of these instances were to destroy all the vehicles on a repossessors lot or contained within their storage building and the repossessor had lower limits, there is a strong potential for the repossessor to be underinsured, resulting in greater losses for you.