Primary Insurance Verification: What is it and why is it Important?

You have likely heard that one of the best ways to reduce your athletic insurance costs is to make sure that all your athletes have valid and collectable primary insurance. The question is, how can you tell if an athletes' primary insurance is valid BEFORE an injury occurs?

Similar to how a medical provider checks your insurance coverage prior to an appointment, there are services in the marketplace today that will conduct this same level of insurance verification, on all your student athletes using a digital inquiry to the insurance carriers. While these services do have some challenges, they can be very beneficial when governing your student athletes' primary insurance plans throughout the year, and can ultimately reduce the time spent on athletic insurance in general.

The process is simple;

• Input your athletes' primary insurance information into an excel spreadsheet provided to you by the verification company. (This can often be automated by a download from your injury tracking software.)
• Send the data to the primary insurance verification company.
• Verifications are fairly instant so expect completed results back within 24-48 hours.
• The information that you receive back will be sorted and color coded so you can easily decipher the results. You will be able to tell whose insurance is active, inactive or encountered some type of error.

The best use of this data is to approach the athletes with inactive coverage and request that they obtain a valid policy. You can repeat this process monthly, or at whatever frequency you would like, to ensure your athletes have coverage throughout the year.

While there have been a few imitators, the premier primary insurance verification service for collegiate athletic departments is Coverage Backer ™. This service is available, for free, to colleges and universities that purchase their secondary athletic insurance through Dissinger Reed. It is also available for a low cost, to non-clients. However, it makes sense to take full advantage of the free offering and partner with Dissinger Reed on your secondary insurance as they are the  leading specialty athletic insurance broker in the marketplace.

Have you ever found yourself dealing with an injured athlete only to find out that his/her primary insurance has lapsed? What was the impact on your secondary insurance plan? Did your subsequent premiums increase? While you'll never be able to prevent injuries, you can take an active approach to managing your primary insurance requirement and verify that all  athletes have valid coverage in place prior to participation. Catching one lapse in insurance prior to a severe injury could save your program upwards of $50,000!

For more information on the Dissinger Reed Coverage Backer™ program, please contact us at college@dissingerreed.com or click here to connect.