Top tips for crisis management insurance
The world is an unpredictable place, where a crisis can emerge rapidly and threaten business, employees or customers. While you can’t always prevent a crisis, you can prepare for one.
Broker Buzz asked Michael Lincoln, National Underwriting Manager, Liberty International Underwriters, to provide his top tips for crisis management insurance.
1. Don’t assume you’re already covered
Companies with General Liability Insurance shouldn’t assume those policies will cover crisis situations like product recall, product contamination, extortion or kidnap. Specialist insurance can cover a broad range of insured events and protect companies from many of those costs – traditional General Liability policies may not cover and can exclude these types of situations.
2. Check your cover
Policy wordings differ in the market, each with their own structure and variations. Some of these differences can, however, impact what coverage is available at the time of claim. Understanding the cover and wordings will allow companies to fully assess and evaluate their needs before a crisis ensues.
3. Experience is everything
When using an experienced crisis management professional, policies may be written to meet the needs and exposures of the client. Crisis Management policies can be sold to a broad range of clients and a one-size-fits-all approach can often leave events uncovered. This is where underwriting experience provides the ability to offer appropriate and meaningful solutions and options, which also helps clients and brokers to know they are considering all relevant exposures.
4. Crisis Response & Pre-incident Measures
In the event of an incident, what is the experience of the crisis team you rely on? Do they have a wide range of expertise? Do they use multiple specialists? A common shortcoming of Crisis Management Panels is a lack of Accidental Contamination expertise – this is the most common type of Crisis Management claim, but some insurers have no (or very limited) consultants with specialised knowledge and actual ‘factory floor’ experience – a major shortfall in responding to these type of incidents.
Response is important – prevention is even better. Any Crisis Panel should have a broad range of experience from small to large clients, and be able to provide flexible solutions to different clients in formulating and effecting pre-incident plans and training.
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