NSO stands for Nursing Service Organization. They’ve been around since 1976 and provide professional liability insurance to over 500,000 nurses worldwide. Policies are underwritten by CNA, a much bigger insurance company that focuses on business insurance for manufacturing, construction, manufacturing, technology, financial institutions and healthcare. You may also find information referring to Affinity Insurance Services or American Casualty Company. All of these are subsidiaries of CNA.
- Pros & Cons:
- Products Offered: 40/100
- Financial Strength: 80/100
- Consumer Satisfaction: 70/100
- Customer Complaints: 90/100
- Digital Experience: 90/100
Pros and Cons of Nursing Service Organization (NSO)
| Pros | Cons |
| – Extremely easy online quoting – Good customer reviews – Affordable coverage – Student discounts | – Coverage is only available to nurses – Coverage is limited to $1 million per incident/$6 million annual aggregate |
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Products Offered by Nursing Service Organization (NSO)
NSO offers malpractice insurance (also known as professional liability insurance) to nurses and student nurses. They also offer:
- Life insurance
- Health and dental insurance
- Disability income insurance
- Real estate benefits
Malpractice insurance features:
- Liability coverage: up to $1 million dollars per claim
- Sexual misconduct: up to $25,000
- Defense attorney provided
- 24/7 coverage
- Coverage wherever you go, wherever you practice
- License protection: up to $25,000
- Medical payments: up to $25,000 per person or $100,000 annual aggregate
- Assault coverage: up to $25,000
- First aid expenses: up to $10,000
- Deposition Representation: up to $10,000 annual aggregate
For a Registered Nurse living in Maine, we got this quote (this is for occurrence based insurance, which is more thorough than claims-made insurance)
Life insurance: NSO also offers some group term life insurance, which is available with no medical exam. It’s underwritten by New York Life.
For Level term insurance (not available in every state), you choose the state you live in, your age, and whether or not you smoke, and it gives you options. For a 34-year old non-smoking nurse living in Alabama, you have these choices:
- $5.42 per month, $50,000 death benefit, 10 year term
- $10.83 per month, $100,000 benefit, 10 year term
- $16.25 per month, $150,000 death benefit, 10 year term
- $21.67 per month, $200,000 death benefit, 10 year term
- $6.58 per month, $50,000 death benefit, 20 year term
- $13.17 per month, $100,000 death benefit, 20 year term
- $19.75 per month, $150,000 death benefit, 20 year term
- $26.33 per month, $200,000 death benefit, 20 year term
For Group term insurance you can choose your monthly premium, anywhere from $3.00 a month to $30.00 a month. You select your premium and the online quote tells you how much term life insurance this will buy you. We selected $18.00 a month and were told $300,000 worth of group term life insurance could be had for that price.
They also can refer you to Liberty Mutual if you want home and auto insurance, supposedly with a 12% discount, thanks to NSO.
If you’re wondering what this “real estate benefit” is, so were we. NSO pairs with a group of real estate agents, and in exchange for choosing an agent in their network, you get a rebate. There’s only one complaint about this on the BBB website, and it seems to be from someone who does not understand how income taxes work. There’s not a lot of information about this online, and we’ve never seen another insurance company offer anything like it, but it sounds good.
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Financial Strength Rating of Nursing Service Organization (NSO)
NSO’s parent company, CNA earns an A, or excellent rating for financial strength from A.M. Best. You want your insurance company to have the resources available to pay claims, and it seems that NSO has those resources.
Customer Satisfaction Rating of Nursing Service Organization (NSO)
NSO does not appear on any of J.D. Power’s insurance rankings. They don’t appear on the BBB’s website, either, but their parent company, Affinity Insurance Services does. There are 24 complaints in the last three years, and four reviews, three one-star reviews and one four-star reviews. On a website called Resellerratings, NSO got a 4.75 score (out of five). Many people praise how fast and easy the process was, and they have over 10,000 reviews singing their praises.
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Consumer Complaints Rating of Nursing Service Organization (NSO)
You can find the complaint index for NSO under the American Casualty Company. The median average index across all companies on the NAIC website is 1.0. American Casualty Company gets a ratio of .22 which means they have much fewer complaints than you would expect.
Digital Experience Rating of Nursing Service Organization (NSO)
It is extremely easy to get a quote for malpractice insurance from NSO. All you have to do is select your state, whether you a professional or a student nurse, what your major field of study is, and whether you are employed full-time, part-time, or self-employed and you get a quote in less than a minute.
There’s also a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions—44 of them. They address some of the many questions nurses may have, and if your particular question isn’t listed, there’s a phone number you can call.
The website is very informative for nurses, and there are hundreds of articles on the website that you can reference—about Covid 19, how health care is changing, etc. You can even earn continuous education (CE) credit through the NSO learning center.
Getting a quote for term life insurance is also easy—getting a quote for dental or health insurance is more complicated, but we would expect that.
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Last Thoughts
If you’re a nurse and you’re looking for professional liability insurance, NSO is a great choice. They have a very easy online quoting system, good reviews from nurses, and an easy-to-use website. Shop around, but a quote from NSO is worth your time.