Insurance counsel for households whose lives are not standard.
The private-client households we serve typically begin around three million dollars in insured property and extend through fine-art collections, watercraft, second and third homes, and personal liability exposures that the standard carrier panel does not contemplate.
The practice is the firm's anchor — Edmund Ashford's first clients in 1932 were estate-owners along the Long Island Sound coastline, and four generations of producers have refined the work since. The Chubb Cornerstone appointment came in 1991. The PURE Cornerstone Partner appointment came in 2008. Vault followed in 2015 and Berkley One in 2018. Each appointment was earned the long way — through years of producing claim-clean books in carrier appetite.
Most engagements begin with an Ashford Review™ — a line-by-line read of the existing program, regardless of who wrote it, regardless of whether we ultimately replace it. We accept that not every prospective client is a fit, and not every existing program needs replacing. We aim to be useful in the conversation regardless.
The work is split between two offices. Greenwich serves Fairfield County, lower Westchester, and eastern Long Island. Newport serves coastal Rhode Island, southeastern Massachusetts, and the Islands. Most clients work with a single producer regardless of office; complex programs are jointly underwritten by Ted Whitcombe III and Margaret Whitcombe-Lockhart.
Property for primary, secondary, and coastal-exposure homes.
Property is the largest line in most private-client programs and the line where the most consequential underwriting decisions get made — replacement-cost basis, hurricane-percentage deductibles, code-upgrade endorsements, scheduled-property forms. We write these programs across Chubb, PURE, AIG Private Client Group, Vault, Berkley One, and Cincinnati Specialty Private Client — selecting carrier per household, not by default.
The Cornerstone Coastal™ program coordinates two- and three-carrier coastal programs so that the household carries synchronized deductibles, hurricane definitions, and renewal effective dates across all properties. The most consequential coverage gaps we surface in property reviews are not from missing endorsements — they are from policies that don't coordinate with each other.
Read about coastal & estate property →Vehicles, vessels, and the lives that come with them.
The household auto program — including teen drivers, vintage daily-drivers, multiple-state titling — is the line that produces the most calls to the firm in any given week. We write it with the same carriers we write the home program with, because coordinating the auto with the personal-umbrella tower is where most household liability programs work or fail.
Marine is a Newport specialty — Helena Burroughs, CPCU, runs that book. Watercraft, sail and power, U.S. and international waters, hurricane haul-out endorsements, charter-out exposures, bareboat. Aviation we handle through a long-standing specialty referral partner; collector vehicles through Chubb Cornerstone or Hagerty depending on use pattern.
Read about auto & marine →Risk advisory for households with trustees, foundations, and complex liability.
A family office is not a household. In liability terms, it is closer to a small enterprise — and the carriers that write its exposures are not the carriers that write its principals' primary homes. The Family Office Advisory practice exists to give the household one broker for the aggregate risk profile: domestic-employment EPLI, foundation D&O, household-staff workers compensation, kidnap-and-ransom for international travel, charter-out exposures, aviation passenger liability, fine-art exhibition transit.
The Steward's Brief™ — the quarterly risk-advisory document the firm delivers to family-office clients — is the product of this practice. It summarizes the year's exposure changes, claim activity, renewal posture, and any policy-language drift the carriers have introduced. Read by trustees and family-office principals; written by partners.
Read about family office advisory →The Ashford Review™
An annual line-by-line audit of an existing insurance program — conducted at a conference table in Greenwich or Newport, by a partner, with the household's existing declaration pages and endorsement schedules in front of us. We read every page. We mark the gaps. We summarize the findings in a written report typically running ten to twenty pages.
Most reviews surface between five and twelve uninsured or under-insured exposures. The most common: fine-art scheduling errors, mismatched windstorm deductibles between primary and coastal homes, personal-umbrella limits that have not kept pace with the household's net worth, and the absence of personal-cyber and identity-restoration coverage on the standard form.
The review is useful even if the household elects not to change brokers. We charge nothing for the work. The output is a written report the household can take to its current agent or another firm.
The carriers we use for private client.
"We do not propose programs we would not buy for ourselves."— Theodore C. Whitcombe III, in conversation with prospective clients