Directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance is insurance coverage intended to protect individuals from personal losses if they are sued as a result of serving as a director or an officer of a business or other type of organization. Directors and officers of for-profit, publicly-held corporations and not-for-profits corporations face a number of legal liability exposures.

This course is designed to give a moderately experienced insurance person a detailed look at the key provisions contained within a corporate directors and officers (D&O) liability insurance policy and how they function within various claims scenarios. The manner in which a D&O policy’s limits, retentions, and coinsurance provisions apply is considered next, followed by a look at the policy’s most important conditions. The course reviews the exclusions section of the policy and the claims-made coverage trigger provisions. 

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: 

• distinguish among a corporate D&O liability policy’s three major insuring agreements
• identify the “covered damages” and “covered losses” definitions and recognize how they first define and then limit the scope of coverage the policy provides
• recognize the extent to which D&O policies provide EPL coverage and how endorsements to the forms can further expand upon the extent of such coverage
• identify and recognize the impact of the critical policy conditions found within D&O forms, including: severability, cancellation, subrogation, other insurance, arbitration, presumptive indemnification provisions, and priority of payments provisions
• identify the major exclusions found within D&O policies, distinguishing between the different versions of the same exclusion, and recognizing the rationale for each of these exclusions
• recognize how excess D&O liability policies are structured to interact with primary D&O coverage and how the major policy provisions function in a claim situation
• identify the unique exposures of privately held organizations and how the coverage features within the policies differ from those contained in the forms designed to cover corporate/for-profit firms