Although your client may believe that since “I’ve never had a claim for a pollution incident or claim, I see no value in pollution insurance,” that is far from reality.  As your client’s trusted insurance adviser, your reply should be:

1. Environmental claims are catastrophic type claims – low frequency, high severity.  Therefore, they don’t happen every day (check out the New Day blog for some great claims examples).  As a matter of fact, such claims may only occur once in the life cycle of an organization, but when it does, it can be extremely costly, considering the damages may have to be proven with innovative science.
2. If you find yourself in the middle of a pollution claim, you’ll realize the cost to defend such claim is substantial. Even if you successfully defend the claim and win, the organization could be facing hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, in defending their position.  When you weigh the cost of the policy versus the cost of merely defending the claim, that may be value enough to make the decision to buy.