Insurance

What insurance do you carry? What is the best one?

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Permalink Reply by Carrie Patrick on May 3, 2012 at 10:14am

I would guess that most of the estheticians posting here have ASCP insurance, since the site is run/moderated by us at ASCP. So, obviously I'm biased, but I can tell you a bit about that insurance (and of course if anybody has comments about other insurance companies that they use instead, that's always good to hear too, because we do aim to be the best available and that means staying aware of what people like or don't like about us!)

ASCP's liability insurance costs $259 a year and that provides you with $6 million of coverage, which includes product, general (slip-and-fall), and professional (malpractice) liability. It covers the individual esthetician rather than a named work location so it doesn't matter where you work or how many different places. For the $259 you also get other things besides the insurance, such as the bimonthly magazine, the Successful Business Handbook, a free hosted website with unlimited pages, email address, client forms, client newsletter generator with pre-written articles and other content, business and marketing items, and various discounts with all sorts of companies (cell service, office supplies, scheduling software, hotels, trade shows, all sorts of things). We also do insurance for massage therapists and hairstylists, so if you do either of those things, you can add on coverage for those too, with no additional cost.

Anyway, whatever insurance company you go with, there are a few things that it's a really good idea to check. First of all, there are two possible types of liability insurance: claims-made and occurrence form. You always want to make sure your insurance is the occurrence form type, because it protects you even if somebody waits a couple of years after the incident to make a claim against you. This actually happens quite a lot because lawyers will often wait until the statute of limitations has almost run out.

Then, you also want to make sure that the insurance is single-aggregate instead of shared-aggregate. Single-aggregate means that the whole coverage amount is available to you, e.g. with ASCP's insurance you have $6 million of coverage, and if something really amazingly expensive happens and you end up needing the whole $6 million, it's there. Shared-aggregate means that the coverage amount is shared among you and everybody else who is insured by the company, so if somebody ELSE has a big claim first, it reduces what's available for you that year.

If you have any questions you can always give ASCP a call, we're based in Colorado (800-458-2267) and we won't do a hard sell on you or anything -- always happy to just answer questions about the insurance and how it works.

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Permalink Reply by Kristin Fennema on May 3, 2012 at 10:56pm

Thank you

for that! Good info. I insure with ASCP already and have enjoyed the education and professional support. Hopefully I won't ever actually need to USE it, but after reading your explanation, I know...I'm in good hands.