The 90-Day Church Insurance Audit

1. Sexual Acts Liability Coverage

Sexual Acts Liability is a stand-alone coverage that responds to allegations of sexual misconduct or harassment involving a staff member, volunteer, or pastor. Some policies fold it into general liability at a small sub-limit; some carve it out as a separate coverage with meaningful limits and a separate defense pool for leaders who are accused but not at fault. The difference at claim time is enormous. A buried sub-limit can be exhausted by defense costs alone in a single matter, leaving your ministry self-funding the settlement and protecting accused-but-innocent leaders out of operating cash.

Georgia angle: O.C.G.A. § 19-7-5 makes virtually every paid and volunteer church worker a mandatory reporter of suspected child abuse. The reporting duty raises both the legal exposure and the documentation burden for any Georgia church with youth, children's, or student ministry programming.

Red flag if you can't answer: "I think we have it" or "I assume it's in there somewhere."

2. Employment Practices Liability

Employment Practices Liability (EPLI) covers wrongful termination, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and failure-to-promote claims brought by employees, former employees, or job applicants. Most standard church general liability policies do not include EPLI by default — it's a separate coverage section or endorsement. The two questions that decide whether the EPLI you have is real or cosmetic: is the limit high enough to absorb a full defense plus settlement, and do defense costs sit outside the limit so they don't erode the money available to actually resolve the claim?

Georgia angle: Georgia is an at-will employment state, but at-will status does not waive federal Title VII, ADA, or ADEA exposure. Any church staffing 15 or more workers is fully in federal employment-discrimination scope regardless of state law.

Red flag if you can't answer: "We treat people right, so we don't need it."

3. Directors & Officers Liability

D&O covers the board personally for decisions made in their governance role: hiring and firing of senior pastors, financial oversight, mission and ministry direction, real-estate decisions, and the supervision of staff and volunteers. A solid D&O coverage section protects current board members, former board members, committee chairs, and the trustees who hold property in the church's name. The trap is policies that name only the church entity, leaving the individual board members exposed personally when a former employee or disgruntled member sues both the church and the board by name.

Georgia angle: Georgia's Nonprofit Corporation Code (O.C.G.A. § 14-3) and the state volunteer-immunity provisions protect uncompensated board members only in a narrow set of circumstances. Anyone receiving even a small stipend, and any decision tied to financial mismanagement or willful conduct, falls outside the immunity floor.

Red flag if you can't answer: "Our board members are volunteers, so they're protected."

4. Combined Ordinance or Law Coverage

When a covered loss damages part of your building, local building codes can force you to rebuild undamaged sections to current code — new sprinklers, new electrical, new ADA access, new structural reinforcement. Ordinance or Law coverage is the section of your policy that pays for the increased construction cost driven by code, the demolition of undamaged portions, and the rebuild of components that weren't damaged but now have to come down to satisfy the inspector. Without it, the gap comes out of your building fund.

Georgia angle: Many Georgia jurisdictions — older neighborhoods of Atlanta, parts of Macon, the historic districts of Savannah and Augusta — trigger code-compliance retrofits at damage thresholds well below 50%. Older Georgia church buildings are the highest-exposure category.

Red flag if you can't answer: "Our property limit will cover the rebuild."

5. Cyber Liability

Cyber Liability for a church covers four distinct things: ransomware response, donor-data breach notification and credit monitoring, social-engineering wire fraud (the "the pastor needs gift cards" email and its more sophisticated cousins), and business interruption when your systems are locked. Many church policies still don't include cyber at all, and most that do include it cap social-engineering loss at $25,000 or less — a number that doesn't survive a single successful wire-fraud event against a mid-size church.

Georgia angle: Georgia's data-breach notification statute (O.C.G.A. § 10-1-912) requires written notice when personally identifiable information is accessed without authorization. Churches holding donor Social Security numbers for charitable contribution receipts, background-check records, or payroll files are squarely in scope.

Red flag if you can't answer: "We don't really have any data worth stealing."

6. Pastoral Counseling Liability

Pastoral Counseling coverage responds to claims arising out of spiritual counseling, marriage counseling, grief counseling, and the gray zone where pastoral care touches mental-health territory. The coverage is usually a separate section or endorsement, and the limit is almost always set lower than the main general-liability limit. The exposure is highest at churches where a pastor counsels members through divorce, addiction, or suicidality without a written referral protocol to licensed clinicians.

Georgia angle: Georgia recognizes clergy-penitent privilege under O.C.G.A. § 24-5-502, which protects confidential pastoral communications from being compelled in court. The privilege does not, however, immunize a pastor from civil liability when counseling crosses into formal mental-health advice or fails to refer in a suicidal-ideation case.

Red flag if you can't answer: "Our pastor isn't a licensed counselor, so we're fine."

11. Renewal package pre-built

A Day-90 agent has already pulled your declarations page, your loss runs, your updated property valuation, and your current exposure schedule (payroll, attendance, vehicles, programs), and assembled them into a renewal package — before the carrier emails the renewal worksheet. The package goes out to your incumbent carrier and to two or three alternate ministry carriers at the same time, so the renewal is a real market test rather than a take-it-or-leave-it offer. If your agent is waiting for the carrier worksheet to start, the renewal is being run on the carrier's schedule, not yours.

Red flag if you can't answer: "We'll see what the carrier sends us."

12. 5-year loss-ratio review

Your loss ratio is the most important number in your renewal that nobody talks about: it's the total dollars the carrier has paid in claims divided by the total dollars your church has paid in premium over a multi-year window. Underwriters use it to price your renewal. A serious ministry agent pulls your five-year loss ratio in writing, walks you through what it says, and pre-empts underwriting concerns with context — a single large claim that was a one-time event, a multi-year run of clean experience, a remediation step the church has already taken. If you've never seen your loss ratio, your agent is leaving the renewal narrative entirely in the underwriter's hands.

Red flag if you can't answer: "What's a loss ratio?"

13. In-person or video walk-through

Insurance underwriters price what they can see. A ministry agent who has walked your property — sanctuary, education wing, kitchen, parking lot, playground, off-site storage, any rental tenant space — in the last twelve months can answer underwriter questions with specifics. Video walk-throughs count, especially for outlying campuses, but a written record of the walk-through is the minimum. Without it, your renewal is being underwritten from a desk in another state based on a worksheet your bookkeeper filled out.

Red flag if you can't answer: "Our agent comes by every few years."

14. Claims advocate identified

When you have a claim, your first call should not be to the carrier's 1-800 number — it should be to a named human at your agency who advocates for you inside the carrier process. That person tracks your claim, escalates when adjusters go quiet, and pushes back when reservations of rights letters arrive. Without a named claims advocate, you're a file number to a regional claims office and your renewal pricing is shaped by how that adjuster classifies your claim, with nobody at your agency double-checking the classification.

Red flag if you can't answer: "We call the claims line on the policy."

19. Renewal timeline transparency

A ministry agent running the Day-90 framework gives you a written renewal calendar with named milestones: a Day-90 kickoff and exposure update, a Day-60 carrier submission, a Day-30 proposal delivery, a Day-7 final binding decision and certificate-of-insurance issuance. The calendar belongs to the church, not just the agent — the executive pastor, the finance committee chair, and the senior pastor should each have a copy, and the dates should be on the board's calendar. Without a written calendar, the renewal runs on the carrier's clock and your church finds out the new premium the week before it has to pay it.

Red flag if you can't answer: "We just hear from our agent when it's time."

20. Proposal format and timing

The renewal proposal you receive from your agent should be a written, side-by-side comparison: current policy versus renewal options, line by line, with coverage limits, deductibles, exclusions, premium, and a plain-English summary of every change. It should land in your hands at least 14 days before the policy expires, in a format that a non-insurance person can read in 20 minutes. A one-page email saying "your renewal premium is $X, please sign here" is not a proposal — it's a bill. Above $5K in premium, the proposal is the artifact that lets the board exercise actual fiduciary oversight on the largest annual operating-expense line that isn't payroll.

Red flag if you can't answer: "We usually get the renewal a few days before it expires."