Matthew Kern
Senior Vice President, Environmental Practice
Pollution losses are growing in frequency and severity. Widespread public concern over human environmental impact, climate change, and natural resources damage are driving much of this activity. Virtually every industry can expect increased compliance obligations from environmental regulators, as well as greater exposure to toxic tort lawsuits, business continuity issues, and reputational risk. Pollution legal liability (PLL) insurance provides coverage for these environmental risks that typically are not covered by traditional property and casualty policies.
Environmental losses can arise from pollution incidents that occur during day-to-day operations at a site, or historic pollution that is present at a site, but has not yet triggered a claim. In addition, new technologies, as well as business practices centered around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, may create unforeseen site pollution exposure. Typically, traditional property and casualty insurance programs either completely exclude coverage for these exposures or cover them on a very limited basis.
PLL insurance can remove these gaps, offering coverage for items such as:
PLL insurance can also facilitate stock and asset transactions where historic pollution exposure might otherwise present significant obstacles to closing. While known pollution conditions are typically not insurable under PLL programs, certain carriers are willing to consider limited coverage for these conditions that all transactional parties can accept. PLL insurance can also be used in tandem with reps and warranties insurance, as well as alternative risk transfer mechanisms such as remediation cost cap and environmental liability buyout.
Marsh’s Environmental Practice has specialists who are well versed in helping identify your environmental exposures and working with the environmental insurance market to write PLL insurance to cover them. We also work closely with our property, casualty, and transactional risk teams to identify gaps in environmental coverage that can be addressed with PLL insurance.
As an industry leader in providing environmental placement and claims solutions, our team handles more than 500 claims annually and has advocated on more than 2,500 claims in the past five years. Among our 40 dedicated environmental colleagues, nearly half have received Risk & Insurance’s Power Broker award, a designation given to risk management professionals based on demonstrated excellence in solving insurance-related issues, per client testimonial.
Senior Vice President, Environmental Practice