Our security is contracted. Are we still exposed?

Partly, and less than with in-house staff. A plaintiff will typically name both the venue and the security firm, so what matters is whether the firm carries real assault and battery coverage, whether you are an additional insured on it, and what the written agreement says about indemnity. Get the certificate, check the assault and battery sublimit specifically rather than the general liability limit, and keep the agreement somewhere you can find it.

Should we take the security off to save money?

Almost never. If the venue needs a door team it needs one, and an incident that a trained door would have prevented costs far more than the rating did. The saving is in running the door well and being able to prove it, not in removing it.

So can you actually place a venue like mine?

Usually, yes, and the ones we cannot place quickly are almost always the ones where the submission arrived as a declarations page and a renewal date. This class is placed on operating detail: the floor plan, the hours you actually keep as opposed to the ones your license permits, the revenue split, the training records, the written policies, and an explanation attached to every claim. Venues that look identical on an application place very differently once that detail is in front of an underwriter who writes the class.

The entrance of a late-night bar from inside, a velvet rope on stanchions and a host podium, a lit doorway onto a dark wet street beyond

Does employing door staff make my insurance cheaper or dearer?

Usually dearer, which surprises most operators. Security tells an underwriter you have a crowd that needs managing, and it introduces your own employees as potential defendants in an assault claim. None of that argues for removing it. It argues for written policies and records that show the door is run properly.

Call/Text(626) 344-2158

Rope out. Clicker zeroed. Door team briefed.The claim is usually about how somebody was removed.

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Tell us the situation.

One licensed human replies the same business day — not five agents, not an auto-responder. If the policy you have is already the right one, we will tell you.

We use this to quote and service your insurance, and we do not sell it or pass it to lead networks. Privacy policy.

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Send us what you have. We’ll tell you if it’s right.

Your current policy paperwork, a renewal notice, or nothing at all. A licensed agent reads it and replies the same business day.

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What this means for you

It signals the crowd. Underwriters read a door team as a statement about who is coming in and what happens when they do. A quiet neighborhood bar does not need one, so a venue that has one is telling them something about itself before anyone reads a word of the application.
Your own staff become defendants. An ejection that goes wrong is an assault and battery claim against your business, brought by your customer, arising from your employee. This is precisely the coverage most often sublimited well below the policy limit, so it is worth reading that number first.
In-house versus contracted changes the answer. A contracted firm carrying its own coverage, naming you as additional insured, with a written agreement, shifts part of the exposure. In-house staff on your payroll do not shift any of it. Which you use is a real underwriting fact rather than an administrative detail.
If you contract, get the certificate and read it. A security firm whose own assault and battery coverage is excluded or sublimited to nothing is not transferring the risk you think you transferred. No gap turns up on venue accounts more often.
Written policies are the lever. Use of force, refusal of service, ejection procedure, incident logging, camera retention, training records. These are what move an underwriter, and they cost time rather than money.
Log every incident, including the ones that went fine. An incident log showing thirty refusals and two ejections handled by the book is evidence of a well-run door. No log at all leaves the underwriter to imagine what your door is like.

Go deeper on any of these

Need this handled?

Reading about it and having it handled are different jobs, and the second one is ours. We place the accounts other brokers decline — claims history, a cancellation, an unusual operation, a business nobody wants to underwrite twice — and we will tell you when the policy you already have is the right one. Tell us the situation and a licensed human replies the same business day.