The Attorneys on Retainer Association has launched a risk retention group providing complete liability coverage for firearms self-defense-related matters to its members.

The Attorneys For Freedom Risk Retention Group (AFF-RRG), Inc has been formed in Montana and speaking on the Global Captive Podcast, the Association’s president Marc Victor explained why the RRG came about.

Victor said his firm, Attorneys for Freedom Law Firm, and the Association needed to explore an insurance solution when a number of states started to question if the legal defense product that was being to provided to members was, in fact, insurance.

“While I knew this could be an issue, we put in our contract that if this is considered insurance or unethical in any way, or violates the law in any way, it is just not available in that state,” Victor said on the podcast.

“So I had to go out and learn about insurance law and… my insurance lawyer introduced me to this great company called Hylant.

“They sized up the problem and we were probably marching down the wrong track at the beginning because we were looking at a fronted carrier, which might be great for some people and what they wanted to do.

“But our programme is unique and we have issues with attorney-client privilege and part of the reason people wanted our programme is they don’t want some insurance adjuster making decisions about things. So, we had to write our own policy.”

Anne Marie Towle, CEO of global risk and captive solutions at Hylant, worked with Victor and his firm on the structuring and formation, and Hylant is now the manager of AFF-RRG.

“When we were looking at the different types of options and a fronted programme, that’s when I stepped back and I said, you know what, I think we can really do this as a risk retention group,” she said.

“You’re going to be able to carve out the fronting and not have to rely on an external carrier. You’ll be able to manuscript the policy to your liking and the terms and conditions that are applicable for this organisation because it’s very unique as he described.

“It gives you that beauty of writing in all 50 states here, which is fantastic.”

Victor added that the traditional market’s attitude towards firearms and self-defense matters has required the need to explore more bespoke, self-insurance structures.

“These traditional insurers always have criminal acts exclusions and intentional acts exclusions, and if you’re going to assert self-defense, what you are asserting is ‘I acted intentionally, this wasn’t an accident, I intentionally pulled the trigger’.

“So if you’re dealing with an insurance company that has an intentional acts exclusion or a criminal acts exclusion, they could deny coverage in all cases.

“People aren’t comfortable with these other programmes, but with the nature of what we did, not only do we not have a criminal acts exclusion, we specifically say criminal acts are not excluded so long as they can in good faith reasonably assert self-defense as a defense to that charge.”