BMABA’s Open Allocation student registrations offer a unique way to effectively ‘self manage’ a pre-set batch of students yourself, without needing any intervention or reconciliation with the association. This presents a huge amount of flexibility for clubs, but it is important you understand how the process works. This tutorial aims to clarify.
What Is Open Allocation Student Cover, and What Insurance Is Inclusive?
Open Allocation is a term we use to describe the way in which this type of student membership is managed by clubs. The underlying insurance is exactly the same as named student insurance.
What Is It, And How's It Different To Named Cover?
In a nutshell, open allocation works much like 'blanket cover' or 'self managed cover' in the sense that we won't ask you for the specifics of each individual student. You can use our portal to record who's covered, or - provided you keep accurate records that in the event of a claim can demonstrate a student was genuinely assigned to cover before an incident - you can self manage allocations at club level, in anyway you see fit.
You're free to assign students to cover, and then 'recycle' that licence for new students should they leave. It's flexible, affordable and works really well for clubs trying to keep admin to a minimum.
Named Student membership is fixed, meaning you need to declare the name and date of birth for each student in advance. Once assigned, there is no way to recycle or re-use that cover if the student leaves. The upside is you can use permanent tools - such as our Lifetime Student Grade Register (LSGR) for named students, but not open allocation students. With open allocation students, we can provide you with access to a fantastic 'on demand' certification tool which is free. Please click here to learn more.
What Insurance is Included?
The insurance is exactly the same as named students. All cover by default includes £1,000,000 Public Liability insurance, with the optional ability to add on Personal Accident cover.
Remember, public liability insurance does not automatically pay out if a student is injured. It is in place to cover the student's liability to the public for injury or damage to property. If you're looking for cover that provides compensation without a party being at fault, you'll need to consider PERSONAL ACCIDENT.
As always, we fully recommend reading through the full policy documents to make sure you understand what you're covered for, and what you're not. No insurance automatically pays out and it's really important you understand the mechanics of cover properly before relying on this. We're always on hand and happy to help if needed.
Personal Accident Opt-Out
We strongly recommend you make personal accident optional, but that you specifically ask students to opt-out if they don't wish to take it with your club. If they do take personal accident cover with you, you must ensure they understand what they're covered for. Show them the personal accident summary sheet. This is super important! You can find out more from here.
Most claims will arise from a loss of income following an injury. If our students need their physical health to earn money, and pay the rent etc, you should ensure they've considered the potential impact of an injury causing time off work before they continue in your club. We have a template article you can use which asks students to consider how any injury might impact their financial circumstances, and asks them to consider approaching standalone insurers who can offer enhanced loss of income cover if it's needed. Asking a student to sign this can help you if you need to defend the exclusion of personal accident.
You can access the template documents in MyBMABA, here.
Pricing & Payment Methods
PAY AS YOU GO
Pay as you go pricing works at £2.90 per student allocation, per year. You're under no obligation to register any block, and you can register one by one with staggered dates, if preferred. This can be done with immediate, automatic registrations via MyBMABA.
BULK / BLOCK PAYMENTS
It's usually more economical to purchase a block of student cover at once, to secure the best 'unit cost' for student cover. You can choose to pay monthly, but there is a small additional cost for doing so. All of our open allocation cover is discounted based on bulk. You'll find the summary pricing below. If you'd like to purchase a block of students, please contact the team via chat or [email protected] and we can have this setup for you immediately.
You can also access this heavily discounted student pricing when registering or renewing as a club.
ADDING ADDITIONAL STUDENTS DURING THE YEAR
You can add to your number of open allocations at any point during the year by jumping onto webchat or dropping us an email, and requesting X more students. These will always be quoted and setup pro-rata unless you tell us otherwise, so the additional allocations will tie in to your club renewal.
It's important you tell the team how many students you currently have, so they know you're on discounted pricing.
If, for example, you have 220 students registered you'll be on the discounted £0.91 per student rate. You can add a further 10 at this discounted rate, but please make sure you remind the team you have bulk pricing assigned or they may automatically use the above pricing instead!
How open allocation works, and how to view and edit records.
When you register a student on ‘open allocation’ terms, the association secures a position on their group cover policy with the insurer and subsequently reserves this for your exclusive use. Each student allocation is assigned a unique reference number (membership number). Depending on how you registered the student(s), they may automatically appear in your portal or you may need to await any orders to process first – the order confirmations should make this clear.
When allocations are available, head to the instructor portal and click ‘Open Allocations Students‘ from the menu tab. This will present a list of all currently available students. You can update, edit or re-assign records by simply clicking into the record (from the left hand ‘student identifier’ tab), editing freely and then saving any changes.
In the above screenshot example, you can see the pencil icon used to edit allocations, as well as the eyeball tool to simply view.
MAJOR FEATURE
Remember, you don’t have to use our portal to reconcile student data. You can keep on top of allocations at club level using our own software or even a spreadsheet, should you wish. If you do, the onus is on you to demonstrate in the event of a claim – should the insurer ask for it – that cover was in place at the time.
If you keep to your student capacity then this should be easy to demonstrate (i.e: you have 200 covers, and 200 students). The unique student identifier shown can be used to keep track of unique allocations, should you need to.
Use of the BMABA club management platform is completely compliant, if you'd prefer to record student information in a more functional way instead.
Registering more than 20 students at once?
Contact us for bespoke discounted pricing. As the number of students increases, the price decreases based on scale of purchase. Please jump onto chat and let us know how many students you plan to register, so we can quote accordingly.
If your club has more than 200 open allocation students please request access to our standalone instructor portal, which will make viewing, allocating and managing students faster.
What you can and can’t do.
Open allocation cover makes it easy and flexible to manage student insurance (often referred to as ‘member to member’) yourself at club level. Here’s the do’s and don’ts;
You CAN choose not to use the instructor portal system and may instead manage allocations yourself at club level, without ever updating our systems. If you do so, you must be able to prove in the event of a claim that you assigned a valid allocation to a student prior to any incident occurring. The unique student identifier is an excellent way of tracking this.
You CAN assign a student to cover and then un-assign and re-assign subsequent students to the same allocation at any point, 24/7, throughout the period of cover without notifying us.
You DON’T need to tell us who you’ve assigned cover to, nor when you make any changes to allocations and/or cover. If you use the instructor portal to track students, this is reflected our end in ‘realtime’.
You CAN make and issue your own club licence slips and membership certificates, and you DON’T need to brand them with any of our logos or wording.
You CAN use our branded template licence slips and membership certificates (see below) if you would prefer.
You CAN state that a student is ‘registered and insured’ with BMABA per the policy wording the moment you assign them to cover.
You CAN NOT produce any documentation that may appear to show a permanent named student membership record.
You CAN NOT ask our office to produce any documentation to you to demonstrate a student allocation. This produces huge workloads on our team which undermines the low cost-price of open allocation students and you will be charged for this. The exception is a proof of cover note, which shows you have effected open allocation student cover. This isn't individual. Please see the last paragraph for more information.
You CAN NOT produce membership certificates or licence slips that are designed to appear that BMABA have specifically created the document or confirmed cover above the open allocation standard wording. This includes using our logo without any marks such as ‘registered with’ or ‘associated to’ etc.
You CAN NOT ‘double park’ students – providing one allocation to more than one student at a time.
Template documents & how to manage issuance at club level.
You don’t have to use our template documents and you are free to create your own, or to issue no paperwork to students whatsoever. If you do wish to present a professional image for students/parents and wish to make use of either a licence slip and/or membership certificate branded heavily to match the BMABA named student documents, we have produced a professional certificate and licence slip which you may wish to adopt.
These are free of charge and you may use them freely to demonstrate allocation to cover for any students within your club.
If you'd prefer, you can download a blank template membership certificate and licence slip, which you can then in-fill at club level as required. You'll be required to enter your name and email to get through to download this file;
Proof Of Cover
You can use the above link to generate proof of registration and assignment to cover if a student requests it from you. If you need instead a document that shows all available allocations on your account, to show that you genuinely do have the right to assign cover and licencing, please ask us via web chat for a copy of an ‘open allocation cover note’. This can be provided free of charge.
Claims
As is the case with all insurances, you must promptly report any injuries to persons, or damage to property, that may be likely to lead to a claim. If you're in any doubt, please report it without delay. Any incident that requires an accident log-book entry should absolutely be reported to us. Do not admit liability, and if contacted by a solicitor, refer them to BMABA.