Specializations
Individual Trustee Liability
Woodruff Sawyer has dedicated specialists who understand trust structures and the services you provide--this is critical to ensuring you’re properly covered.
Protect Your Personal Risk as a Professional Trustee
Did you know that when you serve as a trustee, you are serving personally? Although you may also be serving in a professional capacity as a lawyer, CPA, business associate or even a private trust company, trustees are subject to fiduciary standards—the highest duty under the law—and are personally liable.
The nuances and confusion surrounding this role and its risks prevent many from getting the personal coverage they need. Woodruff Sawyer helps you identify gaps in coverage, exclusions that should be deleted, or places where professional services may be defined inaccurately. Our specially designed insurance program protects you where you need it.
Coverage for Trustees
Why Trustee Liability Insurance is Important
Did you know?
- Trustee liability risk isn't covered in personal insurance.
- Your employers’ insurance may not cover you when you’re serving as a trustee. If they do, the deductible is upwards of $1 million and may not indemnify you for the deductible.
- The definition of “trustee” in your employer’s policy may not be broad enough to cover all of your responsibilities as a trustee.
- Trust assets can’t always be used to indemnify a trustee in the event of a claim.
- If you’re serving as a committee member, director or officer of a private trust company or member of an LLC, you may have the same liability as an individual trustee.
We’ve created an insurance program specifically geared to protect trustees, and our application process makes getting coverage easy.
Insights
Learn About the Risks Trustees Face
There are often misconceptions around the role of a trustee. Watch these 1-minute videos on the risks associated with serving as trustee and the nuances of insurance coverage to protect you:
- Trustees: Your Personal Assets Are At Risk
- What is Trustee Liability Insurance
- Risks Trustees Face
- If a Trust Identifies You
- Is Trustee Insurance Expensive?
Choose Woodruff Sawyer
Trustee Liability Insurance: What’s Covered
We provide coverage for Trustees administering assets of over $5 million that includes:
- Liability limits up to $5 million
- Cyber liability
- Blanket coverage for trusts
- Claims-made and -reported liability
- Broad definition of trustee duties
- Advancement of defense costs, including intentional misconduct and gross negligence until final adjudication of allegations
- Emotional distress
- No failure to effect or maintain insurance exclusion
- Prior acts coverage available
- 80/20 Hammer Clause
- Worldwide coverage
- SPV coverage available
- Employee theft available
- General liability on claims-made basis
We invite you to apply for trustee liability coverage using our underwriter-approved process.
Insights
Private Trust Companies and How Trustee Liability Insurance Applies
A private trust company is organized either as an LLC or a corporation to provide trust services exclusively for one family’s assets. More specifically, the private trust company serves as trustee for individual trusts.
Private trust companies can be regulated (supervised) or unregulated. A board or managers of the company in turn delegates trustee responsibilities to committees. Committees manage the fiduciary activities and decisions regarding investments, distributions, and administration.
Woodruff Sawyer’s Individual Trustee Liability coverage is a broad policy covering LLC members, committee members, and directors and officers of the private trust company for their service as trustees. Apply now.
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Why You Need Trustee Liability Insurance
5 minutes
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My experience in the fiduciary industry is that trustees have a panoply of risk--some recognized; others, less obvious. Woodruff Sawyer demonstrates a level of subject matter expertise and advisory acumen that adds great value to clients managing and mitigating fiduciary risks [and] who place the client at the center of all they do!
Dave Caffaro, Strategic Advisory Consulting Group
Our Expertise
