What exactly do I mean when I say, going Beyond Insurance? Could it be a new cliche? I hope not. There’s enough cliches out there to last a lifetime. The concept of going beyond insurance refers to looking at all possible risks within your business.
But before we continue on this road to insurance zen, let’s understand what a risk is. According to my trusty dictionary, risk as it pertains to insurance is “the hazard or chance of loss. The degree of probability to such a loss”. People like to separate insurance-related risks from non-insurance-related risks. Yet, most risks found in the business place can relate back to insurance.
For instance, if an employee is terminated, or simply put on furlough, as we saw during the height of the pandemic, the employee may feel that they were unjustly terminated or furloughed. Ok, you say, that is an HR issue, which it is. You could also run the risk of a costly lawsuit to your company. That’s where Employers Practices Liability kicks in, if you are covered. The pandemic has caused a myriad of lawsuits, one of the more interesting ones, to me at least, has been stockholders suing their Board of Directors for not having the foresight to plan for such a catastrophic event, thereby, causing stock values to drop. I don’t know if anyone, even psychics, would have been able to foresee this risk back in 2019. But this is what Directors and Officers liability is for. One more example, for the road. Another risk that went ballistic in 2020 was cybersecurity. The country is shutting down, and your employees need to keep on working. So, what to do? Let them work from home… For the bigger companies that was not an issue. They simply told their IT people to prepare secure laptops to send home with their employees and that was that. Business as usual. So, what happened to the smaller companies, the ones who could barely keep their doors open, much less give their employees a secured laptop to take home. The employee was now faced with having to log into their company’s files with the same computers that they used to log into their favorite purchasing website. It was a hackers field-day, actually, field-year. Well, for this risk there is Cyber Liability insurance.
Enough with the examples, let’s get to the point… When an agent goes beyond insurance they dig deep into every aspect of the prospect’s company. The CEO, CFO and employees are interviewed to find out where the obvious or not so obvious risks lie. One of the questions asked each individual interviewed is; what are your greatest concerns about your company? In other words, what makes the CEO or CFO lose sleep at night. Why is this question so important? Well, a “Go Beyond Insurance” agent, in doing the right digging, may discover a solution to a risk which neither executive were aware of or may have thought to look for. And why would we ask an employee the same question? After all, they are just employees, what do they know. Yet, studies have found that the average employee has a much keener eye for what may or may not be happening in the company than the executives. And most employees are very much vested in the success of the company where they are employed.
Once the information has been gathered, the agent will, again, sit with the CEO or CFO and go over the findings. These findings are accompanied by recommendations on how to mitigate each risk. Mitigating the risk, for a small to medium sized company could mean bringing in an IT or HR consultant. It could also mean outsourcing their accounting or payroll, or placing/replacing insurance products that will better serve their needs. Or, all of the above.
So, if your current agent is not a “Go Beyond Insurance” agent, you may want to begin looking for other alternatives.