With pandemic lockdown restrictions slowly easing, demand for active shooter insurance policies has surged – and for tragic reasons, experts suggest.
According to Tarique Nageer, terrorism placement advisory leader at Marsh, client inquiries for mass shooting insurance have risen 50% year-over-year in the past six weeks. Nageer also told Reuters that demand has been particularly strong from the healthcare sector, despite fatal and mass shootings in US hospitals being comparatively rare.
The trend has also been confirmed by Canopius head of crisis management Tim Davies, who commented that hospitals could trigger potentially impulsive behavior.
“Those are places where you could see people who are disgruntled that members of their family might have died and didn’t get a vaccine or weren’t treated properly,” Davies told Reuters, adding that such concerns have led to an approximate 25% to 50% hike in active shooter insurance prices compared to last year for healthcare firms.
Apart from hospitals, brokers have also listed retail establishments, schools, universities, restaurants and places of worship as other noteworthy clients for active shooter policies. Those organizations have purchased cover of between $1 million and as much as $75 million.
Citing data from the non-profit research group Gun Violence Archive, Reuters said that the US has witnessed 200 mass shootings in the first 132 days of this year.
