Have you negotiated your fiduciary liability coverage yet? If not, take two aspirin immediately, because it's not going to be easy or cheap.

For the past two years, companies have been battered by a barrage of class action lawsuits–first from investors, but more recently from retirement plan participants. So it should come as no great surprise to risk managers that it is going to get increasingly harder and more expensive to obtain fiduciary liability coverage.

This type of insurance protects executives who exercise authority, set policy or offer investment advice for defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans. Given that Enron Corp. and many of the recent corporate accounting scandals appear to involve some violation of that trust, it follows suit that the frenetic legal activity on behalf of plan participants would be setting off alarms for both the insurers providing the coverage and the insured.