Early in the New Year is when most COPA members
are looking for aviation insurance. The good news is that our program continues
to provide value to our members as evidenced by the activity at Marsh Insurance,
where the COPA Program is administered.
Almost all COPA Members would like to get their policies and insurance
certificates faster, but it seems that many members are rushing through
completing the forms. Marsh is receiving many forms which are incomplete or
incorrect. This means that they have to contact the member and sort out the
problems before coverage can commence. In many cases it takes several attempts
to get in touch with the member. This creates more work for the Marsh staff and
slows everyone down in getting their coverage.
Here are the most common problems encountered so far this year: The major
culprit is the new Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA) “I accept” or “I decline”
box which has not been completed in two thirds of the cases. This has occurred
in spite of the warning on the Application Form which states “This Application
will be rejected if one of the following two boxes is not checked.”
The next most common item is that the applicable Sales Tax has either not been
included or was miscalculated. Other common problems include (1) the payment not
being included (2) an invalid credit card number (3) improper aircraft details
or (4) improper coverage details. These all require that the COPA member be
either telephoned back or their application returned to them for completion.
COPA Members are urged to take the time to read all of the instructions and
complete the forms correctly. Information on all of the options, including the
TRIA coverage, is located in the insurance booklet. A few extra minutes taken on
completing the form correctly will save many hours of Marsh staff time in
sorting out the errors, frees up the Marsh telephone lines for questions
regarding special circumstances, gets you flying sooner and helps COPA keep
insurance costs down.