American, like other insurers who have tried the [motorsports] insurance, ran into a series of hurdles. To attract a pool of clients and spread risk, the policies were priced low — an average of $500 to $750 a year, Ms. Bergan said. The number of claims wasn’t a problem, but the cost of the claims was. “Most of the claims were total losses,” she said.
Ms. Bergan's comment does not reflect the data we collected from a wide range of event organizers as we worked with Lockton Affinity to put the HPDE Insurance Program together over the last year or so. Our conclusion was that, given a set of professionally run educational events, the overall incident rate is very low and the magnitude of the incidents that occur is also relatively small. However, every program is different and American Collector's varied from the HPDE Insurance Program in some key ways.
Sadly, the NY Times article also chose to omit any information about the HPDE Insurance Program that would have balanced the negativity of the industry situation (other than a mention as an insurance supplier in the sidebar), in spite of the reporter having spent time on the phone with our partner at Lockton Affinity, Ryan Staub.
The entire NY Times article can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/automobiles/19INSURE.html
So far, the HPDE Insurance Program has been an unmitigated success with over 250 policies sold since the program launched at the end of July, demonstrating that there is definite demand from the motorsports enthusiast community and that driving school participants are more than willing to pay for peace of mind.
In the end, though, we applaud the NY Times for giving coverage to both a sport and a situation that gets very little attention. Here's to hoping that options like the HPDE Insurance Program keep our industry growing!
You can find additional information about the HPDE Insurance Program, as well as purchase coverage online, here.
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