My Business is Digitizing, Why Not My Risk Management Too?

When I started in my current role 15 years ago, I learned very quickly that data was critical to understanding your own exposures as well as having favorable outcomes with the insurance markets. I transitioned from insurance underwriting to risk management just before Hurricane Katrina, Rita and Wilma (aka KRW) upended not only the lives of many people but the insurance industry as a whole. Data, and particularly secondary modifiers for modeling, became king. 

However, a continuing point of frustration is how little the renewal process for property risks (and generally all lines of coverage) has changed over the last 15 years. Does this sound familiar - an enormous undertaking annually to collect property information from disparate reports and asset managers dodging your emails? Being limited to the cells on a spreadsheet for the information used by underwriters to price your risk? Meanwhile vast amounts of new data is available for risk managers and underwriters that go beyond what the industry’s current approach can capture. 

Working with Archipelago, we were able to bring our data to life: the proactive stewardship of our properties, our risk data governance, the rigor of our roof management and maintenance programs, our retrofit program and strategy of “newer, bigger, and better.” Insurers were ever more confident in our data using evidence links to source documents.

But digitizing my risk is more than differentiating my insurance placements. That’s important, but my main motivation is to drive more proactive risk management within the business. Our company is very focused on digital transformation, so why should our Risk Management be any different? Risk Management can be so much more than insurance, and creating insight from our own data to add value across our property lifecycle, and to our tenants as well, can create significant new value for all our stakeholders.