We manage more than a quarter billion dollars of premiums for a diverse range of clients around the globe.
I read an interesting article in this month’s Claims Management magazine about claim letter templates. The article was fairly lengthy and discussed how to improve and organize templates to add to claims efficiency (for the carrier). Makes sense, right? Well, maybe…
Cyber Insurance providers’ policies need to be tailored and adapted to the particular risks of the insured. The market can be sculpted to meet the specific risks your particular company faces every day. Cyber risks are becoming more and more apparent, with weekly headlines of major corporations coming under attack. You can no longer sit on the sidelines and hope you are covered when it comes to cyber liability issues.
It seems like everyone is talking about Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) these days, but the question has become: what is anyone doing to further understand how ERM can provide the strategic value that everyone is writing about? One initiative that we at The ALS Group kicked off last Friday is our bi-monthly ERM Work Group meeting where our entire team (and occasionally guests) meet to discuss how ERM is being conveyed to senior level executives through organizations like RIMS and CFO magazine to name a few.
Earlier this year I wrote about the movement toward companies adopting a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy. Many times this is driven by the effort to reduce costs to the company. There are, however, many pitfalls to this strategy if the framework supporting the BYOD policy is not well thought out. The February edition of RIMS magazine captures these risks and issues quite effectively. While smart phones are the obvious subject of this, we can’t forget the myriad of other communication devices (tablets) that these risks can apply to.
There is no doubt business is going global. With more workers traveling abroad and spending extended times in foreign locations the risks for both traveler and company increase. In addition, travel abroad exposes staff to potentially serious financial risk from personal illness (i.e. sickness not related to a WC injury) and, in certain countries, kidnap and ransom, terrorism and war risks. Many of these exposures are not adequately covered under your standard Worker’s Compensation (WC) and Benefit policies. Prudence dictates the time to address these issues is before the traveler has left on their trip and not when the phone rings at 3:00 in the morning.
New York City construction activity has seen a re-birth with the city accounting for nearly half of the country’s commercial construction activity. A major part of that is the World Trade Center construction but there are other major projects being undertaken such as the renovation of Madison Square Garden and the 10 and 20 year capital construction programs of Columbia University and NYU.
To begin the year of 2013, more and more businesses are looking for new ways to increase their company’s profit margins and management of risk, and align the two. One of the best ways this is often achieved is by using ERM to continually assess not only what type of risks are out there that can be insured, but also how those risks can be managed through the operational and strategic environment that your company implements.
When a policyholder files a claim with their insurer, they expect defense and protection. The expectation goes as far as thinking that the insurer (or insurer’s counsel) actually has the policyholder’s best interest (and only the policyholder’s interest) at heart. With the issuance of a Reservation of Rights letter (ROR) that is not always the case.
Employers today are constantly being faced with choices and the challenges those choices play. One of the more recent challenges is whether to allow employees to use their own smart phones to support the corporate email and functionality. On the surface, this seems like a great idea for employers as it will lower operating costs. Not so fast…According to a PWC survey “less than half of the 9300 C-suite executives surveyed have a security strategy to address personal devices in the workplace, despite the fact that 88% of employees use a mobile device for personal and work purposes”
The Risk and Insurance Management Society has been discussing the benefits of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) for over 10 years now. In addition, they have developed the discipline of Strategic Risk Management (SRM) within the courses and material they publish. To them, ERM seeks to dial down the volatility in the operations of any organization, while SRM is meant to evaluate whether the company’s business strategy on risk is appropriate and provides long term sustainability of the company’s profits. Thus, if implemented correctly, ERM allows SRM to take a critical and impartial view on the way the company does business and mitigates risk.
