Insurance

The brokers used by the PAGB arrange for various types of insurance at competitive rates negotiated for us all by the PAGB. These include:

Club All Risks

This provides cover for equipment owned by, or loaned to your club as well as the prints and transparencies in your club’s possession. There are 3 sections of cover under the policy, which are:

• Section A – Club Property (equipment owned by the club)
• Section B – Third Party Property (equipment loaned to the club)
• Section C – Prints & Transparencies

There is a minimum premium of £42 for each section of cover required, which is inclusive of the 5% Government Insurance Premium Tax. Cover does include accidental damage, but will not cover any damage due to everyday wear and tear, or replacement bulbs. This policy will provide cover for the equipment whilst at your club meeting place, at an exhibition/presentation, at a club member’s home for storage or club purposes (no cover provided if the member is using the equipment for their own purposes) or in transit to or from theses places.

Members All Risks

This policy provides cover for equipment owned by club members and will cover equipment whilst anywhere in the United Kingdom and worldwide with a maximum period of 30 days cover in any one year. As with the Club All Risks policy, accidental damage is included and everyday wear and tear is excluded. This policy would be in the club’s name, but would note the separate members names and limits of indemnity as proof of the cover provided by the policy.

Public Liability

This policy covers the club for damage to third party property (excluding property owned by the Club, or loaned to them) or injury to a third party, where it can be shown that the club/club member has acted negligently e.g. faulty equipment has been used and caused a fire. The policy does not cover deliberate acts, which would be a criminal offence and therefore be uninsurable. This policy is provided by the Federation that the club belongs to and is arranged by the federation representative.

Fire and Theft

This policy is designed to provide Buildings cover for clubs that own their own meeting place. The cover is equivalent to that provided under the buildings section of a household policy and includes cover for Fire, Lightning, Flood, Breakage of Glass and Subsidence, Heave and Landslip.

If you want to discuss insurance, Eric Saul, our Treasurer, will be pleased to help. His telephone number is 01462 711772 and, incidentally, neither he nor the Federation, receive any commission or bonus payment as incentives! Otherwise, you can speak directly with Robert Barden of Darwin Clayton (UK) Ltd, who deals with Federation Insurance – telephone 01892 511144.

Further to the discussion that took place at our own Annual General Meeting in March, we are pleased to advise you that the PAGB AGM on 17^th April, the Federations supported the PAGB suggestion that Trustee Indemnity Insurance is now necessary to cover Federation and Club Committee Members. Accordingly the policy that has been negotiated over some months with the PAGB Brokers, Darwin Clayton, will be put in place from 1^st September 2010 when most camera club seasons start. This will cover the Photographic Alliance, its Federations and affiliated Clubs (about 1000 in all) for a fixed premium in the region of £6000. The premium will be recovered by addition to the PAGB Annual Subscription payable in January - and should be in the region of an extra £6 for each and every club. If the average club has 10 committee members, this represents a premium of just 60p per committee member per year - an extremely reasonable price to pay for their security whilst working for their membership. This type of insurance would normally cost a single club anything up to £250 per annum.

TRUSTEE INSURANCE - WHAT IT IS AND WHY YOU NEED IT

Public Liability Insurance covers the club and its members against injury to a third party, or damage to the property of a third party. For example, if a member trips over a wire or cable, no matter how well protected, and the visiting lecturer's digital projector and laptop crash to the floor. Or it could cover payment for injury compensation if the visiting lecturer trips over the cable and breaks a leg.

Trustee Insurance Members of any club committee may be liable to pay for a claim made for many things covered under this policy. Legally, every committee member is a Trustee of the club and if any committee member is responsible for a wrongful act - either doing something he or she should not do, or failing to carry out an action that he or she should have carried out, then each and every committee member is liable to pay out on any claim resulting. The PAGB feels that his type of cover has become necessary because, in recent years, we have heard reports of claims being made in quite ordinary clubs. We do not know of any photographic club where this has happened but we do know there have been threats or implied threats causing distress and worry even in our own Federation. Whilst claims are not very common, when they do occur they can involve many thousands of pounds.

This Trustee Indemnity Policy is designed to protect all Committee members including the PAGB Executive Committee, your Federation Management Committee and your Club Committee. Full details of the policy cover have been made available to Federations. Frankly it is a legal document difficult for a lay person to understand but Royal Sun Alliance have reported claims under this type of policy for Racial Discrimination, Misuse of Trust (Club) funds, Slander, Defamation, Loss of Documents, Loss of Property, Breach of Authority and Dishonesty of a Trustee. Of course, we all think it unlikely that this could happen in our clubs but the risk is potentially catastrophic for club trustees.

This Policy excludes losses that are uninsurable under the law such as taxes, penalties and fines. The maximum sum payable in the event of a claim is £100,000 per club and the Insurers will pay a maximum of £2,000,000 in any one year.

The Northern Counties PF have produced a paper circulated to their member clubs and we are indebted to them for their assistance. It included these possible examples:

1.  A club member in all innocence publishes an item on a club website or newsletter that is later subject of a libel claim, then the responsibility for settling any damages would fall not on him but equally on each and every committee member. 
2. The club needs a Treasurer and accepts the offer of fairly new member to take up the post. As is quite normal no check is made on that person's honesty. The volunteer Treasurer then absconds with the club funds - any club member could sue the committee for negligence. (We have seen reports that this has actually happened to a club in the UK)
3. A sailing club had been unable to finance vital maintenance of a wharf or pier and, as a result, substantial loss was caused to a third party. The actual damage costs were covered by PLI but the club found themselves subject to a claim for consequential loss, such that the individual members of the sailing club committee might each be bankrupted. (From newspaper reports).