Once treated as a peripheral add-on within general liability (GL) policies, abuse coverage has become one of the most disruptive and rapidly evolving forces in the casualty marketplace.
Driven by revival statutes, longer reporting windows, and mounting verdicts, insurers are now confronting decades-old claims that were never priced, modelled, or actively underwritten. This has led to a structural shift in coverage, where abuse and molestation risk is being carved out of occurrence-based GL programs and relocated into specialized, claims-made monoline coverage.
According to Seth Brickman (pictured), of Business Risk Partners (BRP), the change is reshaping underwriting strategy, reinsurance dynamics, and institutional risk management among insureds. He sees monoline abuse liability as becoming a lasting feature of the insurance landscape.
“As more and more states become aware of what’s going on, the #MeToo movement, coupled with social media… brings everything forward,” Brickman said. “It’s not swept under the carpet like it was 20 or 30 years ago. As awareness grows that more robust coverage is available for this, the monoline product will remain a fixture.”
Brickman, who oversees BRP’s abuse liability program, alongside its management liability and financial institutions lines, traces the inflection point back nearly a decade. “We got into this space in 2016,” he told Insurance Business, “right around the time public awareness really shifted with #MeToo and high-profile cases like Weinstein.”
That cultural reckoning coincided with a legislative one. State revival statutes – laws that temporarily reopen expired statutes of limitation – have allowed survivors to bring claims decades after alleged abuse occurred. For insurers writing occurrence-based GL policies, that retroactive exposure has proven destabilizing.
“GL abuse coverage used to be a throw-in for a few hundred dollars,” Brickman said. “It wasn’t meaningfully underwritten. Then revival statutes hit, and carriers started seeing large claims tied to policies they never expected to respond.”
Recent litigation underscores the point. The Archdiocese of New York’s lawsuit against Chubb, seeking coverage under GL policies dating back to the 1940s, illustrates how far back insurers may be forced to look when occurrence triggers apply.
“It’s open-ended tail exposure,” Brickman noted. “And that’s giving carriers real concern.”
Reinsurers have played a decisive role in accelerating the move to monoline coverage. As headline verdicts climb and abuse-related losses accumulate, reinsurance renewals have become increasingly restrictive.
“At every renewal, it’s getting tougher. Reinsurers want to protect their portfolios,” Brickman said. He cited the cumulative impact of high-profile cases such as Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky, who were convicted in major sexual abuse scandals in American sports involving the abuse of hundreds of victims.
That shift has forced primary carriers to sublimit or exclude abuse coverage altogether, often reducing limits from $10 million down to $1 million or $5 million, while pushing insureds into the excess and surplus lines (E&S) monoline market to rebuild towers.
Many insurance buyers, Brickman noted, are only now realizing how much value that former “free” coverage actually carried.
Claims-made monoline abuse policies solve a problem that GL cannot: uncertainty about historical controls.
“With occurrence coverage, you don’t know what safeguards were in place 20, 30, 40 years ago,” Brickman said. “With monoline claims-made coverage, we underwrite to what they have today.”
That structure allows carriers to apply retroactive data and push for more robust risk controls. Monoline policies typically come bundled with robust risk management services, such as training, policy development, and prevention protocols, that help insureds reduce future incidents.
“Abuse is kind of the new asbestos, and carriers are left wondering what severity exposure still lurks in their portfolios,” Brickman said. “But with the proper internal controls and today’s policy structure, the more current exposure can be protected against the standalone market.”
While education remains a relatively strong class, other sectors present challenges. Religious institutions, nonprofits serving vulnerable populations, and student transportation risks face tighter scrutiny.
Underwriting expectations have also intensified. Background checks, sex offender registry screenings, mandated reporter training, behavioral interviewing, cameras, GPS tracking, and documented supervision protocols are now baseline requirements. And of course, standalone policies now come with some of these services packed in to assist the insured in reducing these types of losses.
“(Underwriters are) looking for contrition and remediation,” especially when prior claims exist, said Brickman. “Anybody can hire a bad actor because they’ve never done anything in the past or never been caught in the past. So, you want to know how it was addressed and how they’ve done their best to make sure that won’t happen going forward.
“What you don’t want to see is a whole bunch of claims, because that means that there’s a problem that they’re not addressing.”
Regulatory and contractual requirements are already cementing demand for monoline abuse coverage. School districts and government entities in states such as California, Washington, DC, and Massachusetts increasingly mandate sexual misconduct liability coverage, even for vendors with minimal on-site exposure.
According to Brickman, limit requirements can be substantial, often $1 million/$3 million or higher, regardless of contract size.
Despite the opportunity, reputational risk continues to deter some carriers. Still, Brickman expects capacity to grow, following a familiar trajectory.
“This looks like EPL or cyber in their early days,” he said. “It starts in its infancy with a few carriers offering the coverage and continues to grow… other carriers won’t be able to ignore it and will dedicate some resources to it.”
BRP’s upcoming partnership with Coaction reflects that evolution, with broader coverage features aimed at differentiating in a maturing market.
As abuse liability becomes increasingly segmented, Brickman also believes wholesale brokers will play a central role.
“This is highly specialized,” he said. “Wholesalers understand the triggers, the claims-made nuances, and how to build towers. That expertise is critical right now.”
Learn more about BRP’s SML coverage here.
This article was produced in partnership with Business Risk Partners.
