We’re Introducing Free Local-Lockdown Instructor Insurance Extensions
We are the first in the martial arts industry to set up many initiatives during Covid, including this free extension to cover.
We know for many clubs the prospects of renewing membership and – crucially – insurance, is a difficult judgement call at the moment.
Whilst it now seems very unlikely we will see another national lockdown on the scale first seen in March of this year, we are seeing more and more ‘rolling lockdowns’ or local lockdowns, as they’re becoming known. As part of our industry leading Coronavirus Response we’re extending the support we’re offering clubs by provisioning free extensions to membership and insurances for the duration of local lockdowns.
What does this actually mean?
All of our memberships with insurance are provided on an annual basis for individual instructors, or a monthly/annual basis for larger clubs. Whilst the insurance is still active throughout a local lockdown should you wish to teach online or in any other permitted way, we will extend your membership by the same period of time you are not able to instruct ‘properly’. This means if you’re prohibited by local lockdown rules – similar to those seen in Leicester last month – and you’re not able to teach outdoors or indoors, we’ll extend your membership and insurance by that period of time.
Can you give me an example of how this works?
Sure. Let’s imagine you take out membership with insurance on October 1st and then on 1st November your area is put onto a local lockdown. Let’s imagine that the lockdown endures for two months during which you can’t teach indoors or outdoors. Throughout this time you are still insured with us for any online instruction you deliver, and you can continue to access our award winning range of qualifications, courses, online content, resources, tools and digital services to make sure you make the most of any downtime. Crucially, we will then extend your membership and instructor insurance when your local lockdown eases by the period of time you have lost to the measures.
All you need to do is complete a quick online claim form. Our team will review and then confirm. In the above example, your membership would be extended by a straight forward two month period, meaning rather than 01/11/2020 – 01/11/2021 your insurance would become 01/11/2020 – 01/01/2022.
No charge whatsoever to you. On renewal in 2022 (in the above example) you simply renew for a new annual term with the shifted renewal date. There’s no extra costs, no obligation to renew and no impact on any renewal fees.
Why are you doing this and who is funding it?
We’re funding this in house. As always, we have absolutely no external help (financial or otherwise) from Sport England, DCMS or UK Government. We’re taking the financial hit ourselves because we think it’s critically important clubs can renew or re-register with the clarity and assurance that should they be forced to shut, they won’t lose crucial funds and/or time on their membership and insurance with us. We will only begin providing this service from 1st September 2020 onward and it is not retrospectively applicable, given the huge range of other provisions already in place but reaching a conclusion.
Does this cover student licenses as well?
By default it won’t. We’re covering the much more expensive side of insurance, which is the instructor insurance provisions because this is the key provision needed to teach legally. Student insurance is comparatively inexpensive at between £0.89 – £5 per student, per year depending on the level of membership and cover. For this reason, and to ensure we can continue to fund this for as long as possible, we’re provisioning this to cover just instructors and teaching staff for the time being.
