Insurance broker Paul Marshall can count on his phone ringing in the aftermath of a school shooting.
Since the Feb. 14 shooting at a Florida high school, where 17 people were killed and more than a dozen injured, seven South Florida school districts have bought $3 million worth of "active shooter" coverage that Marshall's Ohio-based employer, the McGowan Companies, began selling in 2016.
"Every day we get a phone call from another school district," Marshall said.
The insurance, which is backed by XL Catlin covers expenses tied to shootings in places such as office buildings and concert halls, and is increasingly gaining traction with schools. It pays up to $250,000 per shooting victim, for death and serious injuries, such as blindness or total disability, with additional medical coverage depending on how much insurance a district buys.
There is no detailed survey of insurance coverage at U.S. schools, but insurers say it is only within about the past year that more schools have been seeking "active shooter" and "active assailant" policies.
School districts often find that their general liability policies fall short on coverage for the cascade of bills that follow a violent incident like the mass shooting last month in Parkland, Florida, insurers and school administrators say.
The costs can include victim lawsuits, building repairs, legal fees, medical expenses and trauma counseling, as well as media consultants, accountants to handle charitable contributions, and even reconstruction of buildings where bloodshed occurred.
"This is a very sort of unique and specific issue that we are facing" Chris Parker, who heads a unit at Beazley PLC that writes policies for political violence, terrorism and other risks, said about coverage for U.S. schools. "The trend that we're seeing in terms of the amount of interest we have in this (active shooter) product - the amount of enquiries, the amount of policies being bound is just on the increase all the time."
On Tuesday, a student who shot and critically wounded two fellow students at a Maryland high school died after exchanging gunfire with a campus security officer.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the February shooting, is covered under a general liability policy through its local school district, which does not spell out whether shootings are covered, a spokeswoman said.