Are those firecrackers? Is a car backfiring? Perhaps there's a disturbance of some kind. Today's insureds rarely consider if an active shooter incident can occur on their property. Unfortunately, active shooter or "active assailant" incidents are more prevalent in the United States than ever before. Due to the increasing occurrence of this type of loss, businesses who face this situation may find themselves without coverage for many claims that arise post-event. These uncovered losses can include post-traumatic stress (PTSD) treatment, structural improvements of buildings, post-event security or uncovered workers' compensation claims.

Active assailant occurrences in the United States

For the standardized business owners coverage (BP 00 03 07/13) (BOP) and the commercial general liability (CG 00 01 04/13) (CGL) forms "occurrence" has the same definition meaning "an accident, including continuous or repeated exposure to substantially the same general harmful conditions." These standard commercial policies could leave insureds with large, uncovered losses which would exceed their policy limits and litigation costs which could devastate a small-to-medium sized company.