Bellingham Underwriters, Inc

Dear Ms [redacted],
I received your letter of complaint in the mail today to some dissatisfaction.   To my knowledge this is the first compliant we have received in 19 years of business.   We do regret that any of our customers find themselves unhappy with our performance but...

regretfully our business operations are restricted both by law and contract.
I reviewed the file for Mr [redacted] and will respond in two parts.   With respect to sending a notice of cancellation (NOC) for losses Mr [redacted] is partly correct.  Insurance law requires that we send a NOC on all state and Federal Motor Carrier filings at least 30 days prior to the expiration of coverage if there is a possibility that we will not be offering renewal.  On the first of December 2015 I sent a letter to the insureds Agent (Wilson- Heirgood in Eugene) advising them that we would be sending out the notice of cancellation in part because of the insured loss history (four claims on a single vehicle in the past two years) and in part because we had also just been notified that the insured was going to completely change operations.   He was considering changing from local/regional transport of building materials on a Gooseneck trailer behind a PU truck, to purchasing an Extra Heavy Truck Tractor and transporting irregular route long haul across the country.   Shifting from an estimated 50,000 miles a year to an estimated 120,000 or more.   With the sum of the two issues combined I wanted to have the ability to review the risk prior to offering a renewal.   I did however, explain this to Wilson-Heirgood and asked that they send in the renewal application prior to the expiration of the policy so that I might consider the risk based on their new operations for a potential renewal.   As of this date, I have not received a renewal application from the agent and assumed the agent and insured had simply elected to seek another carrier that specializes in Long Haul trucking.   That is not our niche and the agent has other insurance markets who may be better placed for what the insured would now be doing.
So in summary of the first complaint we did send out an NOC as required by law.   The notice was triggered by the insured having four claim events in two years ( note that on average we see owner operator accounts incurring a single claims for every 8-10 truck years for all types of claims, so this pattern was very high) which generated $11,222 in loss on $13,229 in billed premium for an 85% loss ratio as well as because of a major shift in the policyholders operations not contemplated when we wrote the risk.   However, we did ask the agent to send a renewal application so we could consider offering a renewal.   It is unlikely we would have done so considering the change in operations, but at the time of our request the nature of those operations where still uncertain.
The second part of the complaint is that we denied his request for an endorsement adding General Liability coverage to the policy for a single trip over just a couple days.   This statement is absolutely correct.   If the insured asked us to add General Liability coverage for the term of his policy we would have been happy to do so.   However, General Liability is not a coverage that can be added and deleted for short periods of time because of the nature of the attachment of loss.   Included in General Liability is coverage for Personal Injury, Contractual liability, Products and Completed operations and other extensions that do not have clear and distinct loss triggers.   If a suit was brought against him in one of these areas from events that occurred outside of the period we insured we could still be brought in for defense and indemnity.   Without going into lengthy legal discussions the reasons are based in what is called the continuous trigger theory in GL cases.   For this reason we do not ever issue a short term General Liability policy.   I would be very surprised if Mr [redacted] could find any insurance carrier willing to issue GL coverage for only a few days
As an Underwriting firm it is our duty to make coverage decisions within specifically granted levels of authority given by the Insurance Companies we represent and within all state and federal regulations.   In our role of Underwriting Manager we do not enter into direct communications with policyholders and rely on the insureds agent to relay any discussions we have with them to the policyholder.   We explained to the agent the reasons for the decisions we made but regret that either the agent did not adequately explain our responses to the insured or the insured did not see them as adequate.   For this we are truly sorry.
We have not attached any supporting documentation in the form of copies of letters and correspondence as they would be considered proprietary personal information which we presume you know we do not have the right to share.   If you have any questions or would like to discuss this issue further please do not hesitate to call.  
Sincerely,
Kenneth R[redacted]
President

[redacted]Documents redacted by the Revdex.com[redacted]