TULIP – Special Event Coverage Everyone Needs on Campus!

Join guest host Craig McAllister and guest Tracy Paladino, as they bring you information about TULIP- Tenants' and Users' Liability Insurance Policy that provides special event liability coverage. It is used by institutions that permit "third parties" to use their facilities for events on campus. Learn what is covered, what’s not, and why TULIP is a great choice to have for special events on campus!

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Transcript

Show Notes
URMIA Member Directory [member login required]
URMIA TULIP Insurance
URMIA Camps Insurance

Guests
Tracy Paladino, CISR, CLCS, CIC, CRM- Client Service Supervisor, Gallagher

Guest Host
Craig McAllister CPCU, ARM, AIC, AIS, Assistant Vice President, Risk Management, University of Miami

Transcript

Jenny Whittington: Hey there. Thanks for tuning in to URMIA Matters, a podcast about higher education, risk management, and insurance. Let's get to it.

Craig McAllister: Hello, I'm Craig McAllister, your host for today's episode of URMIA Matters. I'm the AVP of Risk Manager for the University of Miami and also President Elect of URMIA. Our topic today is the URMIA Tenant Users' Liability Insurance Program, or TULIP.

With me today is Tracy Palladino from Gallagher, who is the program manager for the URMIA TULIP. Hello, Tracy, and welcome to URMIA Matters. I would ask you provide some background on your role at Gallagher.

Tracy Paladino: Great. Good afternoon. Thank you for having me. I am a client service supervisor in the Denver office for Gallagher.

Have been with Gallagher for 15 years, all in the public entity and higher ed niche, working with public and private institutions across the board and. Working with URMIA on the TULIP program since we got this new platform running back in 2010, 2011. So quite a long history here with TULIP.

Craig McAllister: Thanks Tracy. I'm sure our listeners can't wait to hear more about the TULIP. Can you please provide a detailed overview of what a TULIP is?

Tracy Paladino: So, as Craig kind of mentioned at the top, TULIP stands for Tenant User Liability Insurance Program. What that does is provide third parties who are really looking to use your facilities. They are not part of your organization. Their operations are not part of your operations. It's just a true third party coming in, renting space in your facilities, and they need to provide insurance not only covering their own event. But again, to provide coverage for the institution for general liability.

We also have property damage included in the program. We also have an umbrella policy included in the program so that if you need to buy higher limit, spend the programs base, million dollars per occurrence. There are those options. We also have a few add on features in the program that you could cover vendors, concessionaires, performers, for your events.

Typically, we say those do need to be trading under your entity's business. If it's a, for example, if you're having a wedding and you're hiring the caterer, the caterer should have their own insurance, and you wouldn't typically add them on as a vendor to your coverage, but that is an option within the TULIP.

So, we're providing a million dollars of general liability coverage as well as a million dollars of property damage, which protects the institution's property from claims that could happen during an event that's not part of their operation.

Craig McAllister: Great. That's pretty broad there. What type of events is this designed to cover and what type of events is it not designed to cover?

Tracy Paladino: Sure. So, there's a wide variety and we do have extensive lists on the website, the TULIP websites, so maybe too many dimension today, but the typical things we see running through the TULIP program. We do a lot of meetings. We actually do a lot of weddings too. Lots of people like to get married on their college campuses.

We can also do what we call higher hazard things, so anything from birthday parties and baby showers all the way up to some sporting events. The caveat with sporting events, the TULIP program does not provide participant legal, so while you can use the TULIP to rent the facilities, if this is something where you're looking to cover your participants for injury or that type of thing, this isn't the avenue for TULIP or for that kind of coverage.

And we do have, URMIA has the CAMPS program, which would provide a little bit more from a participant legal and more geared towards sporting events. So that might be something to consider. And then from a situation where we don't provide coverage for things we can't cover, water events, things like inflatables, those bounce houses, those types of things, we aren't able to provide coverage for fraternities or sororities. Things like gun shows, big animal shows, those types of things are not things included in the TULIP. So, it's really designed more for your straightforward facility usage, types of events, conferences, different social events, receptions, those types of things would all be things contemplated within the TULIP program.

Craig McAllister: Okay, so the fraternity that wants to have a floating bounce house would not be able to get coverage for this program?

Tracy Paladino: Unfortunately, no. We would not be able to provide that coverage.

Craig McAllister: That's a good idea. I agree.

Tracy Paladino: Little too risky for us.

Craig McAllister: So, what are the procedures for applying for coverage? How would a someone who wants to rent a facility go about getting the coverage in place?

Tracy Paladino: So, they would visit our website, which is TULIP, There's no www, just tulip.ajgrms.com. And once you're on the website, there's two buttons. You can either, there's a tab that says, quick quote at the top of the screen, or there's a button that says, get a quote for your event. Either way, that will take users into the quoting system. And from there, there are some prompts that allow users to select. One- you'll select the state where the institution is. And then from there, a new dropdown will come up with a list of institutions who are registered and members of URMIA participating in the program. And then from there, a third dropdown might appear, depending on how the institution has set up, how they wanna route certificates within their own campus, those types of things.

The TULIP program covers all owned property of the institution. So, if you are looking at that third dropdown that might say different venues on campus, if that specific venue you are holding your event in isn't listed, you would just select the main code for that institution as it doesn't necessarily have to be listed for coverage to apply. They may have just listed their more popular locations or where they might have. Event location managers who would need to be copied on certificates. So, it's really just an admin feature for the institutions themselves. It doesn't preclude coverage to the tenant user. And once they found their location, the website really kind of prompts you through the quote process.

You answer some questions, you enter the information about dates and the type of event, and the system will provide you a quote. If you do decide that you wanna proceed with that quote, you'll pay for everything right there on the website, and then within a few moments, the system will email you your certificate. It also provides a copy to the institution based on the contacts they've listed when they registered for the program. However, we do say if you're working with an event manager or someone on campus for your event, we recommend that you go ahead and forward that certificate to them just to make sure it got to the right place.

Craig McAllister: So, our member campus is to participate in this, they need to register their campus with the TULIP program, correct?

Tracy Paladino: Yes. So, if you go to the same website, there's a tab that says about URMIA and about halfway down that page, there's a big link that says Subscribe to TULIP. And institutions who haven't maybe already registered can go there and they fill out a quick form online, and then that sends a notice to our team, and we'll go in and make sure everybody is a member of URMIA and then approve them. Once that approval goes through its immediate access onto the website and tenant users can begin using that information right away for getting quotes, those types of things. It also provides access to the institution manager who registered to the admin side of the site where you can flesh out locations, you can add other users, but we're also, we have a team here dedicated to working with the TULIP program, and so if you need a little additional assistance, we're always here to help take care of those tasks as well.

Craig McAllister: Well, great. Sounds easy to register for this and to get users of your campus, uh, enrolled real quickly. Are there any misconceptions or problems with using a tool up? Is there something that people may expect at times that isn't part of this?

Tracy Paladino: So probably the thing that is most often asked about. Is coverage for sexual abuse and molestation. That was a part of the program with a very small sub limit of $50,000 per incident for a number of years. Unfortunately, our current carrier could no longer provide that coverage beginning in January of 2022. That is something we are working towards trying to replace in the future and maybe bring that feature back. Unfortunately, that is no longer part of the program, and so I think a lot of people, it's, you know, some understand that some don't.

There's also always been the question of a million dollars. A lot of institutions will require a million dollars, and that's something that we've never been able to provide for that type of coverage, and so I think there's been some confusion over the years. Now, there is a difference between the TULIP program and the URMIA CAMPS program.

The CAMPS program can include abuse up to a million dollars, and so depending on whether or not the type of activity qualifies for what the CAMPS program can include. That is an option for abuse and molestation at the higher limits for users.

The other question that probably comes up most often is about liquor liability. So, the program co includes what we call host liquor liability. So, if you have an open bar at an event where you've just got folks come in and you're providing the alcohol and they're not paying for it- that's included in the base program for that million dollars, The moment a guest has to pay for their alcohol, so whether it's a cash bar at a wedding or if it's a charity event and you had to buy a ticket to attend that event. The carrier looks at that as selling alcohol, and that triggers an exclusion in the base policy. And so, you have to buy back that liquor liability coverage that is all laid out on the website, and it is the option to buy that back. And so, we do answer a lot of questions though about liquor liability, so I would add that in as the other piece that we get the most questions about.

Craig McAllister: Sure. And those are, are certainly two of the more hot topics that we always have to address. Are there any changes to the program coming up or, or you did talk about some of the benefits there. Updates to the website.

Tracy Paladino: There are. So, we are in the midst of completing a new look for the website. The functionality that users have come to know will still be the same. Uh, the process will be really virtually the same as what they have come to know, but the look will be different. The prompts will be the way they look on the screen will be just a little bit different. But there is a new branding to the website that's about to be rolled out, and I would say we are probably gonna be live on that new website within the next two weeks.

We are finishing up some final testing and working out the last few little bugs, but that new website will be up. Same website address, same kind of process that you'll go through as you do today. It'll just have a new look. So, we're very excited about that, and that will also lead us in that platform too. Some potential changes in the future that would allow us to do things like add-ons or changes to events that people have placed that would increase their cost, that type of thing. Those changes that we haven't been able to do in the past, that's a future change. That's gonna be coming hopefully sometime in 2023, but we don't have that piece nailed down just yet.

The other piece of what's going on is, due to the changes with the carrier that we experienced this year, we have been exploring the marketplace to try and find a new carrier that could possibly replace the program and add back in some of that coverage for sexual abuse and molestation that we had lost in 2022. We're very close. We're in negotiations with a market and we hope to have more news about that really soon. I know a lot of institutions are getting questions for folks who would like to have their events purchased for 2023, and we are in working on that so we can get those dates opened up on the website.

So, I would say by mid-November you should be able to purchase new events in 2023 and we'll be rolling out what changes are coming with the new possible carrier.

Craig McAllister: Well, that's great. I'm looking forward to the updates on that, and certainly being able to get coverage sooner into the new year than later will be great. One of the things that that people ask is what's the value in the TULIP, you know, we can buy the coverage or or hold, have people purchase the coverage, but can you share some claims scenarios with us to, to help show the value of the program?

Tracy Paladino: The thing, probably the two areas that we see from a claims and, and luckily, we, we've not had a lot of experience with claims in this program over the years, but there's kind of two areas that come into play.

One, when you have third parties coming onto your campus who really aren't involved in your operations, if someone were to slip and fall or have an injury at an event that was not your institution's own event, you wouldn't want to have to pay out that claim necessarily. So, the TULIP program provides protection to the institution and the tenant user themselves who could get named in a suit from an injury that may have happened. It'll help defend the institution and preserve their own program, as well as provide coverage potentially based on the facts of the claim for the guests at the event themselves. The other piece of it is that property damage piece that we provide within the program.

There are times where things can get a little wild and crazy during events and there's potential damage to the institution's owned property. And while most institutions will have property coverage, you don't necessarily wanna have to put in a claim to cover that property damage when it wasn't your event, and it's the negligence of someone else. And so, this program can help kind of fill in that piece up to a million dollars for any damage that could have happened due to those third-party events.

Craig McAllister: Well, thanks Tracy. This has been very informative and I'm sure we'll help our members when they're looking to transfer the risk involved with the use of their facilities. Really appreciate your time today and thank you to our listeners. This is the end of another episode of URMIA Matters. Thanks, Tracy. Thank you. And that's a wrap.

Jenny Whittington: Thank you for listening in with us on this episode. For those of you who attended the conference, a reminder that the recordings for more than 30 sessions are available. If you miss the real time conference and would like to access the recordings, please let us know so we can get you retro register. That really is a thing- retro registered. Please just send a note to urmia@urmia.org. Thanks everyone and have a great week.