B P A. agm

[moth 0]

go on then someone put us out of our misery how much is membership going up by?

[Mike111 0]

dunno bout membership.. but becuase of it some dropzones are closed this weekend, when it is nice weather!!!!

[NateC 0]

It's going up by £1...

- Nate

[TrickyDicky 0]

The £1 increase is for the BPA part, not Insurance. Insurance is same price this year.

But german jumpers no longer have to pay BPA membership to jump at BPA Dzs. I can see this opening a BIG can of worms.

UK Skydiver for all your UK skydiving needs.

[jurgencamps 0]

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But german jumpers no longer have to pay BPA membership to jump at BPA Dzs. I can see this opening a BIG can of worms.

Why is this opening a BIG can of worms?

J

[Zoter 0]

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dunno bout membership.. but becuase of it some dropzones are closed this weekend, when it is nice weather!!!!

Really ......? how sad .......
http://www.skydivingmovies.com/ver2/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=3254

[Scoop 0]

Haha, nice one Darren. I had the same thinking and headed down to my DZ for what was one of the busiest days in a long time! Nice weather too

[TrickyDicky 0]

Basically it should eventually lead onto all foreign jumpers not needing to take out BPA membership (assuming their 3rd party insurance covers them, which most organisations do) Atm, forcing them to get BPA membership is silly as its just insuring them twice.

You also dont need to be a German citizen to get their membership. This covers you worldwide (incl US and Canada) for just over £1m (BPA insurance only gives you £100k cover abroad, excl USA/canada). It also only costs 70 euros/year (~£50) when we pay £112 for mux less cover.

Now, Im not exactly sure what would happen if everyone took out the German membership? They'd still be covered, so why get BPA membership?


Hopefully all this will give the BPA council a kick up the arse and get some decent insurance and modernise. They didnt seem too pleased to see this go through.

UK Skydiver for all your UK skydiving needs.

[thelem 0]

The German exclusion only applies if you are a german national - as a brit you couldn't take out their insurance instead of the BPA's.

Saying they get much better cover for £50/year compared to £112 isn't really fair. The £112 also includes BPA membership and the magazine, IIRC the insurance component is £63. That price is the same for everybody - the instructors etc don't have to pay an increased rate which is passed on to you either as increased costs or fewer instructors.

I think the worry is that this will increase our costs in two ways: firstly it will reduce the number of BPA members, so the costs of running the organisation will be spread over fewer people. Secondly, a german jumper could claim against a BPA dropzone's insurance, even though they are not contributing to that insurance.

That vote probably will cause the BPA membership to go up next year, but at the end of the day how can we justify forcing German jumpers to take out BPA membership when they come over here when they don't ask us to take out German membership when we go there?

[jakee 1,259]

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But german jumpers no longer have to pay BPA membership to jump at BPA Dzs. I can see this opening a BIG can of worms.

Uhh, I'm not sure if thats right.

As far as I could tell what we ended up voting on was making the BPA commitee work towards renegotiating the insurance to allow Germans to jump at BPA DZ's. Just 'cause we said yes doesn't mean it will happen overnight.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[vt1977 0]

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That vote probably will cause the BPA membership to go up next year, but at the end of the day how can we justify forcing German jumpers to take out BPA membership when they come over here when they don't ask us to take out German membership when we go there?

Personally, I'm glad the vote went as it did and we should extend it to allow any jumper who has valid and adequate 3rd party insurance (cover greater than or equal to BPA membership) to jump at a BPA DZ.

You say that the vote will make BPA membership go up next year. I really don't see why it should for so many reasons:

- We have no claims history involving German jumpers on BPA DZs.
- The fact is that they are insured, so if there is an incident involving them, everything is covered.
- In fact, in the case of an incident involving a British and a German skydiver, the BPA insurers would end up paying LESS than they would for two BPA members because they would only be paying one set of costs.

And finally, we all enjoy trips abroad and being able to skydive on our BPA insurance all over Europe. We can't expect this to continue if we refuse to extend the same courtesy to skydivers from other countries.

A step in the right direction, IMHO.

Vicki

[mr2mk1g 10]

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As far as I could tell what we ended up voting on was making the BPA commitee work towards renegotiating the insurance to allow Germans to jump at BPA DZ's. Just 'cause we said yes doesn't mean it will happen overnight.

No - we voted on the proposition put forward on that pink sheet of paper that I bet very few people bothered to read.

The proposition was that all German experienced skydivers should be permitted to jump at any BPA DZ without having to pay for BPA insurance. That proposition was passed. I don't know about overnight... but I'd certainly expect it to be in effect from the start of the new financial year. There's no re-negotiating to come - the proposal was passed as written.

Overall I suspect this move will actually reduce the BPA's insurance exposure. It does mean however that people will be able to use BPA services and potentially sue them for any negligent delivery of those services without having first contributed to the cost of insuring those services. This is a most unusual situation but not exactly directly harmful in itself.

I have no idea if this move will drive insurance up or down - it should certainly be used by the BPA as a negotiation point with insurers to demonstrate a credible reduction in the total insurance liability presented by insuring the BPA... however it does also mean fewer people paying into the pot and thus the potential is that the fixed cost of insurance may increase for the individual independent of movements in the market.

I personally doubt that there are that many people involved however and we're not really talking about that much potential for change either way. Even if the rest of Europe were to ask that the rule be applied to them I simply don't envisage hundreds of Euro skydivers coming to England each year to jump here - the skydiving holiday traffic is all going the other way. The Germans were the exception because of the BPA DZ in Germany.

[jakee 1,259]

I read the proposition - but also remember one of the BPA reps, possibly DH, saying even if we voted for it there wouldn't be enough time to actually do anything about it yet.

Didn't the rep of the insurance company say that as it stands the policy was written so that only BPA members could jump at BPA DZ's? If so then that is something that would have to be changed between the BPA and the insurance Co.

Anyway all I wanted to say was that even though we voted for it it won't be immediate.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Mike111 0]

lucky

[mr2mk1g 10]

Present company excepted, I'm sure - anyone who cares enough about the topic to want to discuss it would I'm sure read the proposal. I just meant I got the feeling that 90% of the room couldn't give a damn and moreover didn't actually grasp what was being asked anyway - evidenced by the fact that the majority of the questions weren't actually anything to do with allowing Germans to jump at BPA DZ's but about how they wanted British BPA members to be insured in the future.

[skytash 0]

Agreed - there was a good question, why can't we have cover like that, however the people present weren't there to answer that question, they were there to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of Ludwig's proposal.

I have to say, I don't understand why there has been such a fuss about this (the discussions have been going on for around 3 years and it was decided the members needed to agree) when all the points vt1977 made are actually more likely to reduce the risk of claims against the BPA.

In Germany independent 3rd party insurance exists for all sorts of things. I remember breaking our neighbour's coffee table lamp as a child and my parent's 3rd party insurance paid for it. I do not have insurance in the UK that would cover the cost of me breaking something in someone else's house. There is therefore likely to be less of an insurance market for this kind of cover in the UK.

Also I think that in Germany skydiver's are classed as pilots, therefore have pilot's insurance. I know that when I went there the local DZ wanted to make me sit the flight legislation exam as all German nationals need that as part of their licence. Once I'd explained I wasn't a German national, all they wanted to see is evidence of my insurance cover which the BPA kindly faxed me.

I don't think the DFV membership includes insurance, although there is the option to buy your insurance through them.

tash

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

[mr2mk1g 10]

Well... the change has the potential to both increase and reduce the BPA's litigation exposure... it all depends on what happens in terms of paterns of jumping. Predicting that is all part of the voodoo in insurance underwriting.

If German jumpers would have jumped at RAPA anyway after purchasing BPA insurance, but are now permitted to use German insurance and so continue to jump at RAPA, the change will reduce the BPA's overall exposure.

If German jumpers would not have been jumping at any BPA DZ but now will as they can do so on their German insurance, this change could potentially increase the overall exposure of the BPA.

I think this increase however, would only offset the more general reduction in exposure if there are a lot of people in this second category. I suspect we're going to see a mix of both of the above scenarios and that overall there's going to be very little change in exposure, (if it was actually possible to measure such a thing). Any change I think will be towards a reduction, at least in the beginning.

A less favorable change may come later if other EU countries with international third party insurance cover ask for similar recognition - and who could blame them, or refuse for that matter? This is the floodgates argument which was touched on slightly.

We might then see enough non BPA insured people jumping at BPA centers (each time presenting a risk to the BPA insurance but not paying anything into the pot to account for the increased premium that risk will entail) to offset the reduction in exposure represented by the fact that those who would have jumped anyway on BPA temporary insurance are now no longer a risk and policy concern as they are covered by a foreign policy.

That's the point that premiums will go up... assuming the insurers know what they're on about of course... and assuming they don't simply use this change as an excuse anyway.

(Note I base the above on the assumption that an individual jumper is more of a risk to the BPA insurance policy than an instructor, rigger, DZO or Ops Manual etc. I suspect this is correct given the fact that we have been told the biggest impact on our policies has been jumper on jumper claims... but I can't be sure as I've not seen any figures).

[sweep 0]

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The fact is that they are insured, so if there is an incident involving them, everything is covered.

That's like saying that the best travel insurance policy for a skydiving holiday is the cheapest one. In fact that's not the case because insurance in any area is not a question of whether or not you are covered : what's vastly more important is what you are covered for.

There are substantial differences between the things that are covered under people's individual German insurance policies and the things that are covered under the BPA's group policy.

The fact of the matter is that the BPA's insurers consistently advised us that to allow non-BPA members to jump at BPA centres would result in some uninsured risks in areas where the BPA was liable.

While there may be no claims history involving German jumpers on BPA DZs yet, it could potentially only take one claim to seriously damage the BPAs financial stability, and therefore our ability to parachute in the UK.

It really disappoints me that there are apparently so many on the BPA membership who are prepared to completely ignore the advice of our brokers (who are after all experts on the subject).

It's hardly surprising that council members didn't look too happy about the motion passing (as stated in another post) considering that they actually seem to understand that with insurance and liability such a big issue these days it is perhaps not prudent to ignore the advice you pay your insurers and lawyers to give you out of some notion that they are just out to screw you.

The sad thing is that its now also around the time that BPA members start jumping up and down about the funds held in the BPA's reserves and suggesting we should dole them out to 4-way teams : I wonder now that they have asked us to expose ourselves to uninsured liabilities whether they will think it might perhaps be worth having some money in the bank for our day in court.

Sweep

----
Yay! I'm now a 200 jump wonder.... Still a know-it-all tho..

[skykittykat 0]

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The sad thing is that its now also around the time that BPA members start jumping up and down about the funds held in the BPA's reserves and suggesting we should dole them out to 4-way teams :

I wasn't there are the AGM, but I was wondering after Sweep's post about funding for 4-way teams, how much funding was going to the Artistic teams?

I asked for funding for Artistic teams to be taken into consideration in the BPA meeting immediately after the World Cup 2005 seeing as the one and only team who had represented the UK in Artistic events had paid their own way over the past 4 years did not get any funding whatsoever.

The UK rep for the World Cup cancelled at the last minute and the UK was the 4th largest country to have registered for the World Cup with 3 Open 4-way teams, 1 Women's team and 1 Freestyle team and they didn't even have a rep. Also, the "team" t-shirts sent to the UK competitors only featured 4-way formation skydiving.

This was not indicative of the whole British skydiving team representing the UK.

Eloy is now my home dz and from speaking to all the locals, the event organisers, the manifestors, etc, they all remembered 2 teams from the UK - the 4-way team 4-Motion and the Women's Freestyle team - Tumbleweed - because of their friendliness, their spirit for the sport and their absolute enjoyment of competing in a World Cup.

Liz

[vt1977 0]

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Quote

The fact is that they are insured, so if there is an incident involving them, everything is covered.

That's like saying that the best travel insurance policy for a skydiving holiday is the cheapest one. In fact that's not the case because insurance in any area is not a question of whether or not you are covered : what's vastly more important is what you are covered for.

There are substantial differences between the things that are covered under people's individual German insurance policies and the things that are covered under the BPA's group policy.

My understanding is that the DFV policy for the average experience jumper with no ratings (the one costing €59 per annum) provides perfectly adequate insurance. As we were told, Germans are insured such that they and not their association ae responsible for their actions.

If there is an accident involving - say - a collision between a German skydiver and a British skydiver, the German's insurance would pay up. In the case of a German dropping something on an expensive car/plane/building, their insurance would pay up.

The only possible area that I can see where the BPA could conceivably face a claim is if an experienced German jumper brought a claim against an instructor. How likely is it that an experienced jumper would have reason to bring a claim against an instructor???

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The fact of the matter is that the BPA's insurers consistently advised us that to allow non-BPA members to jump at BPA centres would result in some uninsured risks in areas where the BPA was liable.

I hate to be a cynic here... if I were the BPA's insurers, I would also be keen to ensure that the policy remained with them, on their terms! The fact that everywhere else in the world gets by on considerably cheaper insurance says to me that we are getting horribly ripped off somewhere.

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While there may be no claims history involving German jumpers on BPA DZs yet, it could potentially only take one claim to seriously damage the BPAs financial stability, and therefore our ability to parachute in the UK.

Can you give me a scenario in which this might occur? Genuine question... I can't see one.

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It really disappoints me that there are apparently so many on the BPA membership who are prepared to completely ignore the advice of our brokers (who are after all experts on the subject).

And who are also taking our money year on year.

It realy disappoints me (and I think most BPA members) that we pay through the nose for insurance which is considerably more expensive and provides less cover than any other country I know of and BPA Council don't appear pro-active (maybe they are, but if this is the case they are keeping terribly quiet about it!) in looking into the option of obtaining our insurance elsewhere in Europe or re-structuring in some way...

Are you aware that in Spain, for example, their annual dues are LESS than ours, provide a high level of cover throughout Europe (possibly also US, but can't quite remember) and also pays for private healthcare if you are injured in a skydiving accident in Spain. The Swedish have a similar deal.

By comparison what do we get? For more money per year we get a decent level of cover in the UK, a pointless level of cover abroad and no chance of anything like private healthcare in case of an accident.

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It's hardly surprising that council members didn't look too happy about the motion passing (as stated in another post) considering that they actually seem to understand that with insurance and liability such a big issue these days it is perhaps not prudent to ignore the advice you pay your insurers and lawyers to give you out of some notion that they are just out to screw you.

I might have a lot more sympathy with Council members once insurance options and structures from all over Europe had been considered. Everything from using a Spanish/Swedish/German company, to adopting a system whereby instructors pay more for the increased risk of litigation they face (and frankly - as an aside - why shouldn't they pay more? I don't get paid £35 per jump at the weekends. If you're making money, you should be prepared to pay more insurance), every possibel option should be investigated and presented to the membership. Perhaps followed by a consultation period and a vote on what is best for us, the whole membership.

I get really fed up with the numer of people on Council with a financial interest in the sport. Many hold ratings, so of course they're not interested in paying any more when the rest of us can subsidise them!

I'm not saying that there is an easy answer, or that I have it, but I would like to see all of these options investigated rather than just a blanket "our insurers and Council know best" when I see us paying more and getting less for our money than anyone else in Europe!

Rant over!

Vicki

[skytash 0]

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The sad thing is that its now also around the time that BPA members start jumping up and down about the funds held in the BPA's reserves and suggesting we should dole them out to 4-way teams : I wonder now that they have asked us to expose ourselves to uninsured liabilities whether they will think it might perhaps be worth having some money in the bank for our day in court.

If you do hear someone jumping up and down about the reserves, you can explain the purpose of the reserves and the fact that we KNOW we may need them for that purpose. The intention is for them only to be touched is funding from UK Sport reduces. We have been told by UK Sport that due to the Olympics in London in 2012, they will be reducing their funding for non-Olympic sports - eg us. Continuing current operations and activities during that period could well need those reserves in the same way as uninsured liabilities may need those reserves.

If anyone wants to dole out money to any team from the reserves, I would hope it would have to go to next year's AGM in the way this one did.

tash

Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is a special occasion. Avril Sloe

[ludwigschmude 0]

Hi everybody,

to get this one straight :

Only german nationals, living in Germany more than 6 months per year are covered when going abroad with this insurance. It is not valid if you as a ... national take it out and expect it to cover you anyway outside Germany.
This is like the american insurance, when you go to the States you can to take the USPA one out for the time there, but it is no good to you in any other country in the world. And the same with the BPA - HSBC insurance, if you as a foreigner want to claim on it in say France, thats what they will tell you, a fact most people seam to ignore. Only if you are a british passport holder you are covered outside the UK for up to 100.000 british pounds / 160.000 Euros. Whereas we as german nationals are covered worldwide for up to 1.000.000 Euros.
Worldwide, that does include the UK.

As an german instructor I pay about 40 Euro on top, and as a parachute rigger the same amount.

Any questions ? I am happy to answer,

Please excuse my english,

Ludwig Schmude
Chairman Paderborn Parachute Club Germany
Instructor
Parachute Rigger
Delegate to the German Parachute Club
about 2800 jumps since 1982


.... your mind is like a parachute,

it works much better when its open ....

[Dazzle 0]

The problem with comparing the costs of the insurance with other countries and complaining that it is so high is that our insurers are losing money year on year. Last years presentation showed that. Until they can make a profit on the business we're not a good prospect and noone else will be after us.

That means either the premiums go up or the payouts go down (or the costs of running the insurance go down) Other countries may well be able to offer more for less if they are not paying out as much. It only takes a couple of large claims to stick costs up substantially.

Whilst I do think it's fair that instructors riggers etc pay more as they are earning from the sport how much extra revenue would be made is questionable. It might also lead to an increase in the running costs negating the extra premium.

I do think that it is right to allow foreign jumpers to jump here though. It is ridiculous that we're are the only (?) country to insist on membership being taken out.

Also although we've not been a destination for foreign jumpers before the tunnels might alter that somewhat. There are a few dropzones near the tunnels and they might well attract more business from teams coming to train.

[mr2mk1g 10]

I agree with you in that I don't see any uninsured risks presented by this change. Any risks will be covered by either the BPA policy or the German policy. I cannot foresee an instance which would fall into any lacuna between the policies (although admittedly without both policies in front of me I cannot exactly be absolutely sure... but I would be really surprised if there were any gap in coverage).

There are however a number of areas which could expose the BPA to litigation arising out of a German jumping at a BPA DZ. Instructors, as you point out, are one area but probably a less significant risk than those posed by others. Such instances could be BPA rigger negligence; BPA packer negligence; BPA jumpmaster negligence or even an accusation of negligent drafting of the BPA ops manual.

Negligence on the part of the DZ itself is also easily possible, (simply the negligent handling of an incident could be an example), and there is a huge potential for harm were DZ staff to fail to adhere to established practices across the whole spectrum of DZ operations. This is without worrying about such things as plane maintenance schedules or piloting errors.

We must all remember that a claimant doesn't have to be successful in court to cost the insurance policy money. The moment they even start talking about bringing a claim the BPA has to start paying someone to write letters and read statements etc. Those people don't come cheap, even if they win out in the end for the BPA.

Now all of this represents risk to the policy and increased risk means increased premiums. Up until the inception of this change, the premium these risks brought with them was paid for by the charges paid by German jumpers. That money has now gone but the risk hasn't.

On the flip side however, the much more serious risks involved with jumper on jumper claims as well as all the significant risks associated with insuring the jumper themselves against claims by whuffos have also gone. This will mean a significant reduction in risk.

As I post above, these increases and decreases in risk will hopefully even themselves out at least, if not actually lead to a slight reduction in exposure overall.

I litigate things like this daily and most of my fees are paid for by third party insurance policies; it's part of my job to worry about exactly this sort of thing. I personally don't think we've endangered the BPA insurance pot greatly... at least I hope we haven't.

And at the end of the day I feel it was the "right thing to do" - to extend the same courtesy to our German friends that we ask of them.

[bob.dino 0]

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I do think that it is right to allow foreign jumpers to jump here though. It is ridiculous that we're are the only (?) country to insist on membership being taken out.

Australia requires membership too, though I think that's because by law to jump in Australia you must be a member of a CASA (~= CAA, FAA) approved organisation.