David McGregor Insurance

Review: In 2013, we asked Strategic insurance to review our Workmans Comp (WC) and General Liability (GL) insurance policies. These policies are written based on payroll amounts. Strategic Insurance claimed they could lower our premiums by thousands of dollars. We made the decision to hire Strategic to write our insurance policies. They misrepresented payroll to their underwriter to give us a low entry rate. The low rate triggered an audit, which resulted in paying over $30,000 for the 2013-2014 term. The 2014-2015 term should have been corrected due to this astronomical audit. We were shocked to find that a second audit on our 2014-2015 policy resulted in an audit of $38,173 and additional premium of over $30,000. At this point we hired a forensic insurance agent to look into this matter. There can only be a slight disparity in GL payroll for the HVAC class compared to what is used on an insureds WC policy. However, they were written at very different amounts. Our GL policy was written with an HVAC payroll of $472,000 while our WC policy was issued with an HVAC payroll of just $89,900. We believe that [redacted] incorrectly issued the 14-15 policy. This appeared to be a sizable error on the part of [redacted] and it seems to us that SIP didnt notice the mistake either. I think you must know that receiving a surprise audit balance of what was initially $38,173 would cause a great deal of trauma. Yet, SIP pressed for payment very quickly on this as well as additional amended premiums. This strikes us as quite unfair knowing that we could not possibly be responsible for the understatement of payroll. They clearly knew that [redacted] Coolings HVAC payroll was much higher than $89,900 as it was using a $472,000 figure on the GL policy. There was ample knowledge about this workers comp payroll error back in April-May of 2014 due to the audit. Yet this was not addressed until June of 2015 when another audit was completed.Desired Settlement: We are seeking a significant premium concession from [redacted] and Strategic. We would need a substantial payout term to address the remaining balance. A resolution of the 14-15 term must be achieved as well as the 15-16 policy which we will be audited again with additional unanticipated premiums added to the policy; which could ultimately bankrupt a small business. We also want SIP and [redacted] to take responsibility for the grievous error in the writing of our policies.