At St. Paul, EPL is a core coverage.

Employment practices liability insurance forms a "sizable" portion of St. Paul Travelers business. "It's something that we have been offering for quite some time--it's a core coverage," said Carrie Brodzinski, vice president, executive liability, St. Paul Travelers Bond.

St. Paul Travelers offers EPLI with its bond products in connection with its nonprofit form, its private directors and officers form, and as a stand-alone policy. The insurer also offers it in a product called The Wrap, a package policy for all executive liability coverages for private companies.

With the coverage comes access to a risk management tool designed for small or mid-sized private companies. "It's designed to help you long before you get that lawsuit," Brodzinski said. "It gives you online access to a wide array of tools to help manage your exposure to employment-related risk."

Officials for companies that haven't updated policies and procedures in some time can go to the insurer's Web site and take a self audit on how, for example, they are handling sexual harassment complaints. They then can gauge how their procedures stack up against current law. If updating is needed, they can access a sample sexual harassment policy online. "You will do that a lot more often if you can access it for free than if you have to call your lawyer and pay for it every time," Brodzinski said.

St. Paul Travelers also offers a toll-free hotline. Employers considering firing an employee can call the hotline and speak with an attorney. "They're not going to be able to give you advice about a particular employee's situation, but they can tell you the steps you need to think about and some of the issues involved with terminating an employee," Brodzinski said. "They can try to set you in the right direction, so that as you take that major action, you'll be doing so on an informed basis to try to avoid that lawsuit coming up in the future."