Instructor Insurance

[Ben_3]

I have been a PADI instructor for 10+ years (never s single issue) and dive through a PADI dive shop. Our insurance has been a blanket store policy that was several thousand dollars for as many instructors as you wanted through HUB. There has been many emails from PADI on this, they (PADI) have basically said its now the wild west on where you get your liability insurance from and our store policy is now 10X what it was. BTW this is a Canadian dive operation. I reached out to DAN and to get personal liability instructor insurance it is basically $1000 but not available in Canada. I teach because I enjoy it, I was already loosing money but it was worth it, this was pretty much my final straw to tear up my instructor card and dive for fun only now.

Wondering what other people specifically in Canada are doing as I have been told this is a Canadian insurance issue not a North American problem?

I'v been told there is only BFL that will insure instructors around my area here in Canada. So far their pice is similar to DAN's. We were a few instructors trying to get a groupe policy so we could split the price, kind of what our dive shop did before it closed during covid. I think this is no longer possible. I'm also trying to figurer this issue insurance thing out. The price of insurance and renewal fees might also be the reason I opt out. Man I do enjoy teaching though..

 

[Ben_3]

If there are a reduced amount of instructors because insurance is so expensive will remaining instructors be able to make a better living at it, less supply so more expensive?

I'm not sure about that less instructors... I seem to see a lot of IDC and IE posts en FB. I bet they probably dont talk about all of fees once they finish...

 

[Rick204]

I have been a PADI instructor for 10+ years (never s single issue) and dive through a PADI dive shop. Our insurance has been a blanket store policy that was several thousand dollars for as many instructors as you wanted through HUB. There has been many emails from PADI on this, they (PADI) have basically said its now the wild west on where you get your liability insurance from and our store policy is now 10X what it was. BTW this is a Canadian dive operation. I reached out to DAN and to get personal liability instructor insurance it is basically $1000 but not available in Canada. I teach because I enjoy it, I was already loosing money but it was worth it, this was pretty much my final straw to tear up my instructor card and dive for fun only now.

Wondering what other people specifically in Canada are doing as I have been told this is a Canadian insurance issue not a North American problem?

The problems in the SCUBA insurance market are not restricted to instructor insurance or Canada. I have spent the last 3 months scouring the underwriters for liability coverage for a non-profit SCUBA council to no avail. The problem being that our council does not bring in enough money, through membership and fund raisers, to allow us to pay the 10s of thousands of dollars they feel they need to cover the risk assigned to SCUBA and other underwater activities. So why did the risk evaluation for these activities jump so much in the last couple of years. No one in the inner circle of insurance underwriters is talking about this. In order to reduce the risk category there needs to be an open and honest discussion with both sides of the industry insurance underwriter, instructors and dive shops. There needs to changes implemented that will allow the insurance industry to relax a little bit. For instance no minors allowed, instructor apprenticeship program, etc, etc. The real question is how do we start these discussion….I’m looking to the agencies PADI, BSAC, SSI, …….. to take the lead here. Without change the SCUBA industry will eventually shut down.