Chartis Opens Insurance Training Courses to Financial Advisors

The financial crisis might be abating, but advisors are still fielding questions from clients about how they should insure their collectibles against irreparable damage and their assets against liability suits.

So the private client group division of Chartis, a New York City-based insurance provider has created more continuing education credit courses to help financial planners to high-net-worth families deal with the issues as they arise. Advisors can also get CFP continuing education credits for their efforts. More than 20 complimentary courses are included in the enhancements, under titles like Wildland and Urban Interface Fire Exposures and Mitigation, and Beauty and Bling: Preserving the Value of Jewelry Collections.

The private client group Chartis has opened up its target audience to include financial planners, marking the first time that the private client group at Chartis has included financial planners in its course offerings. Attorneys and accountants are also able to take those courses now, too.

Apparently, demand from various financial advisory professionals drove Chartis to make the changes, according to Jerry Hourihan, a senior vice president and national sales manager for the private client group division at Chartis.

“The insurance market is dominated by mass market players and others whose primary target is Middle America,” Hourihan said in a phone conversation Wednesday morning. “There are clients who have truly unique needs that are not being met by the mass market players. By educating the advisors put them in a better position to take care of their clients.”

One of the new courses is named Trust, Estate and Insurance Planning for Art Collections. Hourihan recounts a situation that seemed a scene out of a Blake Edwards movie, minus Inspector Clouseau. A fine art painting hanging in a wealthy family’s French country house became dislodged. It fell on an antique bureau, tripped a rare collectible knife, which fell on the floor and sliced a fine antique woven carpet. The whole scene destroyed collectible property valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“Personal property is expected to be insured, but in many cases it is not,” Hourihan said about the French property situation and similar ones. Clients often assume, wrongly, that valuables inside their homes will be covered under broad homeowner insurance policies. Underinsuring valuable collections violates one of Chartis “Ten Common Insurance Mistakes,” an information sheet that it makes available to advisors and clients.

This story has been reprinted with permission from Financial Planning.