In today’s complex, ever-changing business environment, protecting capital assets is a corporate priority as never before. Natural and manmade disasters of every possible type can threaten your business’s property and, consequently, its market share and bottom line.

At the same time, the growing number of threats to businesses are leading insurance companies to change the way they define and cover various losses — and the terms by which payouts to claims are made. As a result, companies in all industries are seeking new ways of protecting their businesses.

Should the unexpected occur, quickly and completely recovering damages that result from that loss can be crucial to your company’s ability to maintain operations. Pre-loss planning coupled with aggressive claim management and post-loss analysis is crucial to a company’s overall claims methodology.

What Will You Say When They Ask What Happened?
When considering how best to protect and manage their capital assets and recover when a loss does occur, executives need to be asking themselves the following questions:

• Do I have an adequate claims procedure in place to quickly and accurately manage the claims process, should a loss occur?
• How would I quickly recover from a catastrophic loss? Do I have a plan in place?
• Do I know of all the emerging trends that could pose new risks to my property?

• Pre-loss planning: Establishing detailed loss procedures between clients and their insurers helps facilitate the actual claims process, should a claim need to be filed. This includes working with both to identify the experts, including accounting and engineering firms, that will be used during the claims process.
• Claims management: Our consultants are qualified to assist in preparing and documenting your claim to ensure the most favorable recovery within the terms of your policy. We can help resolve disputes, help support complex global claims written through Marsh’s international offices and affiliates, and provide claim consulting services for captives, alternative risk transfer programs, and self-insured retention programs.
• Catastrophe response plan: Marsh has a detailed response methodology to mobilize our claims staff before and during a catastrophe so that we can provide immediate, on the ground assistance to clients during the critical first days following a catastrophic loss.
• Emerging trends: We identify new trends in the insurance industry and determine how they will affect recovery. Recent coverage issues have included Y2K, terrorism in general, and the impact of September 11, 2001. Our claims staff helps develop strategies to respond to emerging claims issues.
• Loss management plan: After a loss and before substantive meetings with the insurer, we help clients develop detailed loss management plans. The objective is to identify the scope of the damages under the relevant parts of the insurance policy.
• Post-event debrief: After a loss, we can conduct a debrief regarding the event, as well as examine the response and recovery efforts to enhance your response to future events.