3 Essential Things to Protect in Your Church Community

June 16, 2021 - 6 minutes read

One of the best ways to determine what kinds of insurance your church needs is to consider what are the most important things you need to protect

Charity event for children – image from Pixabay

Solid risk management is crucial for protecting your organisation’s assets and preventing property and monetary losses, accidents, injuries, and liability claims.

But even with the best risk practices in place things can still go wrong. This is where insurance comes in as it provides a layer of financial protection for unintended incidents and consequences.

When it comes to church insurance, you need to think in terms of what needs protecting within your organisation. Here are the three main areas to consider.

1. Protection of your property

Loss of or damage to property can come from various causes, including fire, flood, lightning, burglary, theft, vandalism, and terrorism.

Measures for protecting property include:

tight security to prevent unauthorised entry or break-ins
terrorism risk strategies for crowded places
robust fire safety practices, including the seven essential safety measures
development of a storm and flood plan
responsible financial management and cash handling, and
workplace internal controls to prevent fraud and theft.

For insurance cover – your Industrial Special Risk (ISR) policy provides your church with financial protection for property, including buildings, contents, and grounds. As well as the right type of cover to match your risks it’s crucial to get the right level of cover to avoid being under-insured (a common problem in Australia!).

ISR insurance also includes cover for business interruption for loss of revenue if your organisation needed to close for a period of time due to a covered incident.

2. Protection of your people

By “people” we mean congregants or members, visitors, staff, clergy, volunteers, and children – in fact, anyone who visits your premises or engages with your centre.

Risk management measures include:

maintaining safe premises to prevent accidents and injuries such as slips, trips and falls
a safe workplace to reduce the risk of harm to employees and volunteers
Working-With-Children checks and child-safe practices to provide safe environments for kids and to prevent child abuse
safe food handling at events and functions
risk strategies for youth camps, events, and travel, and
setting of boundaries and ethical guidelines when delivering services to clients, such as pastoral care or counselling.

Your CCI insurance package includes a range of coverages for people protection. This includes the following:

General Liability – for claims of third-party injury, harm or loss.
Management Liability – cover in case of allegations of harm by directors, officers or employees.
Professional Indemnity – for claims of harm from your services, such as prayer ministry or counselling sessions.
Event liability cover – for events or youth camps you may need additional short-term cover.
Personal Accident insurance – for volunteers, youth and ministers.

CCI can also arrange business travel cover for domestic and international travel if required.

In addition, Workers’ Compensation insurance is mandatory for all organisations that employ people – our previous post on this topic has more details.

It’s important to note that certain activities may not be covered in a liability policy. This includes extreme sports and some outdoor activities like bungee jumping and white water rafting – see our previous article for more info on this.

3. Protection of your data

This one can often get treated as an afterthought but should never be! By all accounts cybercrime is growing at an unprecedented rate and even the most tech-savvy can get duped.

Data loss and identity theft can result from ransomware and other types of online scams. The consequences can be devastating and may include privacy breaches, financial losses, and reputational damage.

Practical strategies for cyber risks involve regular backups and software updates, setting multi-factor authorisations, tight access controls, anti-virus software and firewalls, and training your staff how to recognise email scams and report them.

You should also seriously consider cyber insurance for financial protection for a range of cyber risks, including extortion, data theft, and privacy and data breach liability.

For more information and further reading

If you would like to learn more about risk management strategies for your church organisation or to discuss your CCI insurance policy, contact our team by phone or email.

Also see our other articles on the following topics:

– Fire safety

– Property security

– Cyber Security

– Safe premises

– Healthy workplaces

– Child and youth safety

Written by Tess