Member Benefit - New Third Party Contract Guidelines White Paper Released

Recorded at URMIA Annual Conference Seattle, members of the task force who worked on revising the Third Party Contract Guidelines White Paper share the process and highlight changes to the valuable resource. Host Jenny Whittington walks through the history of the white paper with guests Gary Langsdale, editor of this version, Stacie Kroll of Gallagher, a supporting contributor and URMIA members Mike Gansor and Pam Rypkema to uncover some new features and revised content.

Show Notes [member login required]

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Transcript

Show Notes
Third Party Contract Guidelines White Paper [member login required]

Guests
Mike Gansor, DRM, CPCU, ARM, AAI, AU, AFSB, LUTCF
(Retired) Risk Manager

 Gary W. Langsdale, DRM, ARM
Education Manager, URMIA

 Pam Rypkema, CPCU, ARM
Risk Manager, Marymount University

 Stacie Kroll
Executive Director, Higher Education Practice, Gallagher

Host
Jenny Whittington, CAE
URMIA's Executive Director

Transcript

Jenny: Hello everyone. This is Jenny Whittington. Welcome to URMIA matters. We are broadcasting live from URMIA’s 52nd annual conference in Seattle. And I have a great group of members around me. We are going to be talking about the insurance and indemnification in third-party contracts, paper that we've recently revised.

So I'm going to turn it over now to Mike Gansor. Who is one of my favorite members. He was a parliamentarian for URMIA for years, and we miss him. And he's getting [00:00:30] honored tomorrow too, with the Emeritus status. So I'm going to turn it over to you, Mike, to tell us a little bit about the history of this white paper.

Mike: Thank you, Jenny. Um, you know, I was telling Gary I, myself and I I've been with it from the beginning, but I don't actually remember the genesis Of the paper, another, what brought it about what made us decide we wanted to do it? I do know that, uh, I work closely with, uh, John McLaughlin with Gallagher and, uh, he had a couple of experts that gave us the, uh, subject matter verification.

I served as kind of a developer of the hierarchy, if you will, or the structure, what things we wanted to touch upon. And then we have to Gallagher for the expertise to make sure that what we were providing to the membership was in fact, accurate and valid and my objective and the earliest state with it, and we were pretty good. I think probably every three years, I felt like it was well to, to refresh this document. And we did that. Uh, I, think. COVID hit an, I I think he got kind of sidetracked, but it might now be at four or five years, but we, in each time we've looked for, modernization of it, keeping it as current as we can, whether it's the latest addition to the certificate of insurance or the latest, uh, court application or the latest, endorsement, just to make sure that what we were giving the membership wasn't outdated.

So that's kind of the history of the document and, uh, it evolves again here. Now with this latest.

Jenny: Mike's being incredibly modest. He's spent so much time working on this paper over the last, uh, few decades, I would say. Um, so we, we are thrilled that you're with us and thank you for that history. Um, why don't we turn it over to Gary now and talk about a little bit more about the, this version.

Gary: Okay. Thank you, Jenny. So in this version, Um, we've continued to rely on Mike and we've continued to rely on our affiliate partner, Gallagher to bring us the latest and greatest. And we've also included help from Pam Jeffreys at the University of Tennessee System and Pam Rypkema from, um, the Marymount University to help us and Pam is also with us on this podcast, What we've done in addition to updating the information on it. We've also tried to simplify it a little bit. The prior versions had been kind of sectionalized or siloed so that there was material that was repeated, like insurance certificates and that sort of thing in this version, what we've done is we have Um, taken and we've streamlined it. So it's a little shorter document. Um, and that's helpful to our members because it's a slog to get through because it is such a complicated, topic. There is so much information in this document that we have tried to streamline it just a little bit. Um, and so I'm going to talk to Stacy who's team at Gallagher helped to bring a lot of new material, new information, new thought, um, and updated, exhibits to this.

Stacie: Yeah. And we're, um, we're very thankful to be continued to be involved in this project. It's definitely a heavily, heavily utilized a desk, guide myself using it pretty heavily, um, in my time before joining Gallagher and certainly always appreciated, the content. So we had a huge team at Gallagher. Take a look at this Um, our team at Gallagher consisted of, of John McLaughlin, who was one of the original authors of this and I'm very happy that we've passed the torch there, um, to myself. And we've had some of our subject matter experts like Maggie MacIntyre and Kelly Meyer and John Farley. We all took a close look at the content. We took a look at the forms to make sure that we're offering you the most up to date, uh, additional insured endorsements, as well as accord forms, uh, and making sure that we're all, current with 2021 insurance technical stuff.

Uh, we also participated in taking a look at the formatting as Gary had mentioned. Uh, and one of the significant things we did actually with our cyber team is take a look at how we contract with, uh, technology service providers. And we've added a decent amount of content around that. We've reorganized the technology products and services section, uh, to include, uh, insurance requirements when contracting with third-party vendors that are going to be dealing with your, your electronic information technology or your data. Uh, and we feel really good about some of the content that we've offered there, particularly in this market when we're super aware of, cyber attacks and kind of what's going on there. So we feel like we've offered some good protections, for higher ed institutions and some good guidance. So Very thankful for, uh, participating in this. And, um, and I know Pam has done some really good work on this as well, so, uh, I'm gonna pass it off to Pam to share some of her thoughts.

Pam: So I, I believe that it, that is me. The project was somewhat confusing because we had two Pam’s from two different institutions involved with this. but it was really was interesting and a pleasure to work with the team on this. the cyber addition and the streamlining is much appreciated.  I'm sure. One of the, one of the issues that I think, that I would maybe suggest other, um, additional work on beyond this contracts are more than third-party, um, relationships and requirements. Um, and I'm fairly new to Marymount, but Marymount is similar to my former institution, um, Gallaudet and. The contracts area is very important and so much of the claim work is done before the claim. How you pick your partners, how you screen and vet them, um, the exceptions that you make both to the insurance requirements and also the terms that are in your contract. So, so this is an, this is an issue I think that is rich in risk. Uh, but it's also an issue Um, that's rich in, um, opportunities to reach out to the various departments within your institution and talk about risk management and talk about the value that you bring, um, to the institution, um, and hopefully, bring value to the operations of the institution, streamlining operations, making us more safe.

Because at the end of the day, if there's no claim being deliberate and managing these, um, these risk issues, you become a lot more efficient. And the collaboration with the outside vendor or collaborator, um, is just a lot more productive and fun. So I wish I were in Seattle with all of you and I hope everyone has a wonderful, wonderful conference.

Various: Thank you Pam.

Gary: One of the other things that I wanted to mention about this version of the white paper is that for the first time it is interactive. So you can click on, uh, in the table of contents on appendix 3A and get directly to, um, that piece. So it's in the library, in the URMIA library, um, under URMIA white papers. If you search by topic, uh, by folder. And, you can click on any item in the, in the  table of contents and it will take you to that section so that you don't have to go through all 75 pages, um, to get to what you're looking for. If there's one topic that you're particularly interested in, if you're dealing with technology services today, or you're dealing with construction contracts tomorrow, you can, or short-term leases, you can go to each of these sections and pick out what will be helpful to you in that section.

But, but we have also then put in Common terms, um, in one place. So for example, throughout the document, in every section, it references, the language that you need for additional insured. And so instead of having that language repeated throughout the document, that's on, I'm not gonna tell you what page it is, cause I don't have it memorized anymore. But you can go to that page and find good language for that. There is one insurance certificate, which is generic. Um, that's been filled out so that you can see what kind of an insurance certificate oughta look like from a third-party vendor. Um, so there, there are improvements like that, that make this white paper even better than the last five versions.

Mike: So that's really good because I relied on the Adobe search for a word type thing. And that wasn't always a, uh, a great way to get to the topic you were looking to research. So I didn't know that that's great information.

Gary: So, and so, um, and also in the white paper, in the, uh, in the library, there are actually two versions, one, it has a heightened graphic resolution so that you can print it. and have it have, uh, even more crisp, printing, and graphics and the other is the online version, which it has all these searchable features in it.

Jenny: From URMIA’s behalf, I mean, thanks to you all.

It's been a labor of love. I know for a long time, Mike Gansor was such a great, uh, member now, a retiree member now in a Emeritus, um, that he has led URMIA through this time and time again, I've often said that this is the most popular item in our library, and it's really exciting. Um, so we really appreciate you all taking your time to get this done for us.

I mean, it's a really important document to our members. So thank you on behalf of URMIA. Thank you, Pam. And, um, I, we haven't mentioned let's mention Pam Jeffreys.

Gary: Yeah. Pam, Pam Jeffreys at the University of Tennessee system also contributed a lot. And if, uh, our members know Pam. They know that she has a very extensive contracts website within her office, which is publicly available.

Um, so that after you look at this piece, you can, if you want a specific example of how a member has applied this, you can use the University of Tennessee. Systems risk management office. Um, and I'm not going to tell you how to get there on the web, but, but if you search for it, you'll find it. Um, and she has a, a detailed contracting section and she contributed, she was just not able to be with us, uh, for this morning's podcasts.

So thank you, Pam Jeffreys as well.

Jenny: Well, I think that's going to be a wrap for URMIA matters this time. Again, thank you to you all for being a part of our podcast. Thanks.

Pam: You're welcome. Pleasure to be here.