Insurance Program Audit

An insurance program audit plays a pivotal role in any company’s business plans since it identifies exposure to risk and determines the level of protection the company’s policies provide. Performed properly by trained professionals, this type of across-the-board audit takes a holistic approach to examine and assess a business’s operations and uncover any policies that prove to be deficient or duplicative in coverage.

Because of our team’s extensive experience in conducting countless audits, we easily identify when irregularities in operations are benign and when they pose potential harm. With years of experience and a broad well of knowledge, we know where to look for risk, what to look for, and how to remedy any insurance related inadequacies in order to put the right insurance in place.

Our consultancy takes a thorough, but efficient step-by-step approach in carrying out a comprehensive insurance program audit. We study a company’s protocols and operations, ask the right questions of the right people and gain a thorough understanding of the ways in which the business functions. Only by getting to know the company inside and out can we perform our work effectively and efficiently. We evaluate all of the existing policies and all of the available documentation, including the initial underwriting information, carrier quotes, broker proposals and policy binders. We then analyze loss data, including the insurance policies’ loss history, as it corresponds to company operations and locations.

Because the business world, insurance environment, and regulatory framework all evolve over time, risks change and, as a result, companies’ exposures often change and/or expand. In addition, businesses may not have had adequate insurance in the first place. Our consultants identify any gaps in coverage and propose solutions to address and eliminate them. Where warranted, we also recommend resources that can enhance risk management practices and loss-control procedures, policies, and programs.

Insurance Marketing + Maintenance

Like most markets in the service sector, the insurance industry is not static; it can fluctuate in cost and in coverage. Proper marketing and maintenance of insurance policies serve as key components to the success of a business procuring and maintaining competitively priced insurance policies with a wide breadth of coverage. Keeping abreast of the insurance market and focusing on the particulars and nuances of the effective insurance policies will ensure optimal coverage and avoid coverage surprises.

Our team has earned a distinguished reputation for its excellence in insurance marketing and policy maintenance. We take a lead role in purchasing and negotiating clients’ insurance policies, be it putting new policies in place or reviewing and assessing their existing ones. Where warranted, we will spearhead a marketing exercise with multiple insurance brokers competing to ensure our client receives the best product – from pricing to breadth of coverage – in the insurance marketplace.

Insurance Policy Procurement
Our consultants perform an instrumental role in the procurement of all insurance policies and their renewals. Actively involved in this important function, we help gather and analyze underwriting information, present it in a manner most favorable for our clients, discuss marketing strategy with brokers and steer the process through the binding and review of all policies on an annual basis.

Insurance Program Marketing
By overseeing and spearheading insurance policy marketing, we provide guidance and direction to the incumbent broker or lead the broker selection process when, in collaboration with our clients, we determine that their situation warrants competition. We manage the comprehensive marketing process to ensure optimal outcomes in coverage, pricing, and servicing of all existing policies and those to be placed.

Binder Reviews
Our team proficiently reviews and evaluates policy binders to ensure that the policy terms, conditions, and pricing upon which all parties agreed are confirmed. This important, but often underrated process, protects against errors slipping through and potentially resulting in the denial of a claim during the policy period. We pride ourselves in catching and correcting policy mistakes to avoid trouble down the road.

Invoice Verification and Reconciliation
Errors can also appear on invoices. As part of our menu of services, we review every invoice to identify and repair any mistakes to conform to the negotiated and agreed-upon pricing and billing schedule. The reconciliation of bills can often take time, effort and energy – a painstaking endeavor that sidetracks a company’s ability to focus on its core operations, run its business, and boost its bottom line. We help clients avoid that burdensome task and potential consumption of resources.

Loss Control
Our consultants review and analyze insurance carrier loss-control recommendations to determine if those suggested preventative actions are feasible and reasonable. We will also collaborate with clients on compliance and introduce resources to strengthen loss-control procedures.

Cost-Saving Alternatives
We explore alternative resources and techniques to reduce insurance costs, including loss control, claims analysis, flood zone determinations, workers’ compensation retroactive recovery, specialized and industry-specific risk assessment and regulatory guidance.

Analysis + Evaluation

Over our many years in advising clients with their insurance needs, we have reviewed thousands of insurances policies and relish the opportunity to help clients by pouring over every line of policy language during our thorough and comprehensive review of their existing policies. With a detail-oriented, laser-focused approach, our team looks for anything that might be missing or deficient in a policy and then works to enhance it. We scrutinize and analyze everything from the standard property and liability policies to lesser-known and often misunderstood management liability and cyber risk policies. We also conduct contract review, critically examining insurance and indemnity clauses in contracts, and providing industry-specific guidance.

Risk Management and Insurance Coverage Analysis
The members on our team perform comprehensive review of all insurance policies for content, accuracy, and intent of coverage. After identifying any exclusions, restrictions or limitations of coverage, we take the best course of action to address the inadequacies. This helps ensure our clients’ assets and enterprises are adequately covered.

Management Liability Analysis
In our extensive experience, we have noticed that the policies intended to cover management liability exposures are often overlooked and deficient. As part of our holistic approach to protect a company’s operations and means of approach to risk transfer, we analyze these particular exposures and ensure the policies addressing them are sufficiently broad and competitive.

Cyber Risk Analysis
As cyber risks continue to evolve, becoming increasingly complex and playing an ever-expanding role in company operations, we stay abreast of the cyber liability insurance market to ascertain our clients receive the right cyber insurance knowledge, expertise, and breadth of coverage. Given the seemingly endless accidental or neglect-induced risks, as well as the nefarious cyber hazards constantly generated by bad actors in virtually every corner of the world, we strive to put together the optimal cyber insurance policy specifically tailored for each client’s unique exposures. We pride ourselves on keeping up-to-date on new coverage models and negotiating the breadth of coverage necessary to safeguard against all cyber hazards.

Contractual Risk Assessment
Because of our well-honed skills at effectively drafting and negotiating contracts with lenders, partners, investors, service providers, vendors, or any third-party, we serve as a valuable resource to our clients assisting them with the insurance and indemnity clauses in their contracts. We understand and apply the accurate terminology and appropriate insurance requirements to properly transfer risk and liability to third parties when appropriate. We’re also adept at using the language most suitable to trigger coverage within each party’s policies.

Vendor Insurance and Compliance Management
Our team assists in setting up protocols and procedures to review vendor insurance documents to ensure compliance with existing contracts and to rectify any noncompliance when it does occur.

Lender Risk Management

Lending institutions encounter risks every day. While exposure comes with the job, it can still create stressful situations for them and their clients. Our consultancy fully understands what lenders experience and serves as a vital resource to them, as we provide reassurance and aid them to help their borrowers. Many lenders lack the necessary in-house expertise to design and monitor the insurance requirements that borrowers must maintain to protect the assets under review. With extensive knowledge in the financial services industry, we walk lenders through every step of the way to ensure they are fully protected.

Draft Insurance Requirements
To best evaluate the specific lending arrangement, we bring our vast document review skills and experience to bear in closely examining and analyzing the nature and exposure of the assets under review. We can then draft the necessary insurance requirements that will sufficiently protect the lending institution from potential insurable risks.

Coverage Analysis and Guidance
Our team takes a broad and integrated approach in the services we deliver. We analyze a borrower’s existing or proposed insurance structure and program, provide guidance on their effectiveness and adequacy, and discuss potential modifications.

Policy Audits
We dig in and undertake a comprehensive review of existing insurance policies and/or policies to be placed. This enables us to identify limitations and exclusions of coverage and craft the best solutions to adequately address them.

Certificates of Insurance Review
By reviewing and monitoring issuance of certificates of insurance, we help lenders ascertain that the coverage their borrowers have in place is sufficient and worded correctly, as stipulated in loan covenants. We advise on how to address noncompliance and help draft the proper corrective language.

Loan Coverage Compliance
We work with our lending institution clients to ensure their borrower’s policies comply with insurance requirements and all coverage is inclusive of terms, limits, and conditions.

Training + Support

Our team understands the ever-growing demands placed on in-house risk management departments in the fast-paced corporate environment and we assist in relieving such pressures. We talk with and offer counsel to many of these professionals on a regular basis to stay abreast of the new developments to their very busy work lives and discover the type of extra help they need on their insurance matters. Consequently, our consultants provide training and support to these professionals and any others assigned to manage a company’s insurance program.

Creating Customized Checklists
Checklists help many of us stay on track. We tailor these support tools as needed to address coverage, compliance, or other insurance-related matters. Each company has its own particular needs and objectives, and we strive to tailor the checklists we generate for each particular client.

Drafting Contract Templates
We also study and analyze the contract needs of our clients and create customized templates for them to use. By doing so, our clients can focus their attention and expend their energy on all other content, rather than exerting time and energy on our specialty – the insurance format and content of their contracts.

Certificate of Insurance Compliance Program
Insurance compliance can sometimes challenge even the most organized corporate department, particularly when working with those outside of the company’s domain. We draft a certificate of insurance program and train our clients on how to use it to ensure insurance compliance of vendors and other third parties.

Claims Handling Assistance
Knowing how, when, and to whom to file insurance claims is paramount to asset recovery. We help navigate companies through the sometimes complicated and byzantine claims handling process to ensure claims are developed and effectively submitted to the right insurance carrier(s) and applied to all potentially relevant policies. Our team also reviews and helps translate the jargon that often fills the page or screen of carrier claims correspondence. We take it one step further and help our clients respond to reservation-of-rights letters and declinations of coverage. Additionally, we manage the engagement and performance of public adjusters, insurance coverage counsel, and other claim advocates. 

Guidance on Day-to-Day Insurance-Related Matters
When it comes to insurance matters, issues seem to manifest all the time. We are there for our clients and help them handle all insurance-related matters as they arise. Companies rely on our expertise to avoid getting bogged down on matters and minutia they are not familiar with, nor need to know about, in order that they concentrate on the daily operations of serving their own customers and clients, and ensuring their businesses thrive.