An insurance agent’s errors and omissions (E&O) insurance policy is professional liability coverage designed to pay for defense costs and damage awards when insurance producers are found legally liable for professional mistakes or failures to act. Having professional liability coverage in place provides a measure of security for most insurance producers. However, understanding what behaviors and actions tend to give rise to E&O claims, and knowing how to sidestep those behaviors and actions, is a far more proactive way of attaining security and avoiding E&O claims.

The purpose of this course is to help insurance producers understand their exposure to errors and omissions (E&O) claims and to provide practical guidelines for avoiding such claims. The course discusses E&O exposures, why producers need insurance protection for those exposures, and how the coverage works. It explains the liabilities producers face from both actionable conduct and negligent inaction, the roles producers undertake in various client relationships, and the legal and ethical obligations producers assume in each type of producer-client relationship. 

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

• identify and understand the types of E&O exposures that exist and how an E&O policy responds (or does not respond) to those exposures
• understand how E&O insurance protects producers
• be familiar with major policy definitions, provisions, and exclusions
• possess a solid knowledge of the types of actionable conduct and negligent inaction that may give rise to E&O claims
• be aware of the various roles producers undertake in client relationships based on the type of insurance license
• recognize that each of the various roles a producer undertakes requires specific legal and ethical obligations
• evaluate a situation and determine if it involves behavior typically encountered in E&O claims
  
• recognize and utilize available tools for avoiding E&O claims
• know what to do in the event you are threatened with an E&O claim