Pre-Loss Workshops: Reducing large losses
01/11/2021
Horizon scanning and planning play a key role in the short and long term health of businesses of all sizes. Whilst some losses are inevitable, such as those incurred from Covid-19 last year, there are ways for businesses, brokers and insurers to collaborate to minimise the risk of large losses.
Pre-Loss Workshops, also known as Large Loss Scenario Planning (LLSP), provide an opportunity for Insurers, brokers and customers to work collaboratively to build a strong understanding of the customers’ business and associated needs.
Pre-Loss Workshops
There are some clear benefits to Pre-Loss Workshops, the first of which is that it allows for personalisation of coverage and detailed understanding in order to best meet the needs of a business in a large loss situation.
Secondly, these workshops enables your customers to have a deeper understanding of internal and external capabilities and how their virtual team works together in a catastrophic situation. This helps ensure that there are clear roles, responsibilities and a practical understanding of how the insurance program works in practice.
Modular Framework
It is important that, during LLSP, objectives are set by the customer, broker and insurer in order for there to be a framework for learning.
For businesses, there are three clear objectives that should be met:
- To allow the workshop design to reflect their individual business requirements and needs
- To facilitate a ‘programmed’ approach with multiple workshops and development of a detailed understanding of a range of loss-related factors
- Enable the insurer to deliver a differentiated claims service on large losses that ensure early decisions on liability and fast interim payments.
Where the above objectives are set, it will aide the following benefits being reached to ensure that the workshops are successful:
- Detailed understanding of policy response and coverage
- Development of collaborative relationships with internal and external teams to obtain greater certainty around roles and responsibilities (in the event of a loss)
- Increased confidence in an insurers understanding of the insured business, which will result in a faster and more effective claims response.
The structure of these workshops is important in order to achieve the maximum possible knowledge of the loss, the potential effects and the initial response to the loss. Below are some proposed modules, and the objective that they would hope to help achieve:
1. Business continuity
- Understanding in detail and practice your Business Continuity Plans
- Understanding your customers priorities and when and how these vary
- Identify where, when and how you will seek assistance from an insurer
2. Policy Wording
- Provide you with a detailed understanding of the practical application of individual elements of your policy cover
- Enable your understanding of the intent of policy wording/cover
- Ensure appropriate clauses/cover are in place
3. Initial response to loss
- Agree process of loss notification
- Understand and agree your priorities when a specific loss occurs
4. Specific loss response
- Provide you with detail on Zurich’s ‘Project Managed’ approach to the notified loss
- Provide you with an understanding of the ‘tools’ to be used (& benefits) to ‘project manage’ the loss
5. Assessing financial impact
- Understand the potential financial impact of a loss (to you or a related third party)
- Provide you with an understanding of process to establish quantum for insurance purposes
For more information on any of the topics discussed above, or how Zurich can help with setting up Pre-Loss Workshops with you and your customers, speak to your usual Zurich contact.
