BY MATTHEW BRODSKY
Reprinted from GO! Magazine - Inflight Magazine of Air Tran Airways, November 2007
Risk management is a hot topic with the nation’s biggest companies. Its practitioners are prime-time players on the ladder, reporting to CEOs and boards. Listen up, small businesses: You could stand to emulate the big boys and implement a risk management system of your own.
According to Rick Vassar, risk consultant and author of Hide Here Comes the Insurance Guy, a risk manager’s work permeates all levels of the organization. Put simply, risk management is knowing what obstacles could derail your business goals, and planning ways to avoid, minimize or just plain survive them. It’s as important for small companies as big ones, says Joy Gänder, owner of an eponymous consulting firm—yet small businesses often don’t give the practice the attention it deserves...
Instead, small businesses tend to relegate the task down into their organization, Gänder says. Or the very top person—the owner—gets stuck with it. The reason? They simply see risk management as insurance, a boring, confusing commodity that’s not worth the cost. “The average business owner can’t stand dealing with property/casualty insurance,” Gänder says.
Keith Pizer, co-owner of a New Jersey-based graphic design firm named 1 Trick Pony, got stuck with the job of buying insurance. He laughs about it now. “You don’t realize how many people you know in insurance until you need it,” he says.
Pizer’s broker helped him to get coverage that matches that of other companies of his size and in his industry. Gänder recommends this sort of comparison shopping for her clients.
She also can take it one step further by factoring in an owner’s risk appetite and balance sheet. If a client has good cash flow and can stomach having more on the line, Gänder might recommend raising deductibles for, say, auto coverage from $100 to $1,000. This increase means a decrease in premium.
But risk management is about more than just insurance. “Risk management is an ongoing process… and it involves a lot of common sense,” Gänder says.
Risk control is all about identifying dangers— called “exposures” in industry parlance—that can threaten business success. Th ink floods, tornadoes, fires. Think lawsuits from disgruntled clients or employees. Think employee injuries. You know your business. What can get in its way?
Figure out ways to eliminate, mitigate and/or finance these exposures. Then implement. Insurance is just one way. Risk control is another. Have a disaster preparedness plan. Review your employee handbook. Back up your servers off -site.
This all might sound complicated and costly, but it’s not. “The biggest misconception is that a risk management program is too expensive,” Vassar says.
Perry Ballard, proprietor of Ballard Safety Consulting, came to his risk-control methods, such as contract disclaimers, in part through his peers and from learning from others’ mistakes. He hasn’t had a disastrous lawsuit or other claim to date. Ballard also got advise from Vassar on how to set up his liability insurance. “You need someone to come in from the outside and look at your exposure,” Ballard says.
Of course, small companies might not be up for hiring a risk consultant. They can trust in their agents to steer them right, or tap into the wealth of risk resources on the internet, including the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, FEMA, the Insurance Information Institute and the Small Business Association.
In the end, all successful small companies get to the point where they have to do something about risk. “As they grow, most small businesses realize that they need to manage their insurance program,”
Vassar says. “Those who make that commitment continue to grow; those who don’t usually remain small or don’t survive at all.”
RISK MANAGEMENT PRACTICES TO REMEMBER
• Take it seriously. Hand the responsibility to an important go-getter. “It’s helpful to elevate risk management and give it more visibility,” consultant Joy Gänder says.
• Know your insurance policy. Compare yours with similar companies. Ensure your coverage is based on replacement costs for damaged items, not book values. Consider coverage for exposures particular to you—i.e. flood coverage near the coast or business interruption for lost income.
• Let your insurer know you. Perry Ballard, a West Virginia business owner, says he shares all his loss-control techniques with insurers. They like that.
• Claims happen, and when they do, deal with them. Consultant Rick Vassar says companies fail to report claims on time or give insurers enough information, which increases insurers’ costs—and they don’t like that.
This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Blog Praises Hide Here Comes the Insurance Guy!
Posted on August 30, 2007
Blogcritics.org reviewer MaryAnna Clemons gave high marks to Rick Vassar's Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy "I would not be surprised to find this book as required reading in future business courses in colleges throughout the U.S...I tend to shy away from self-published work - I'm glad I did not in this case...Hide! Here Comes The Insurance Guy: A Practical Guide to Understanding Business Insurance and Risk Management
By Rick Vassar CPCU ARM
This valuable and practical resource will help risk managers and businesses alike improve and control insurance costs, potentially saving your company millions of dollars.
Bulk Discounts Now Available - Quick Turnaround...contact us @ info@vassargroup.com
Blogcritics.org reviewer MaryAnna Clemons gave high marks to Rick Vassar's Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy "I would not be surprised to find this book as required reading in future business courses in colleges throughout the U.S...I tend to shy away from self-published work - I'm glad I did not in this case...Hide! Here Comes The Insurance Guy: A Practical Guide to Understanding Business Insurance and Risk Management
By Rick Vassar CPCU ARM
This valuable and practical resource will help risk managers and businesses alike improve and control insurance costs, potentially saving your company millions of dollars.
Bulk Discounts Now Available - Quick Turnaround...contact us @ info@vassargroup.com
Hide Here Comes the Insurance Guy "is a job well done"
"Part two of the book is worth the cover price alone..."
by MaryAnna Clemons
Rick Vassar has found a niche subject (business risk insurance) that was lacking in coverage, so he wrote the book on it. And he did a great job doing it. The book, Hide, Here Comes the Insurance Guy; A Practical Guide to Understanding Business Insurance and Risk Management, is a job well done...
We all have to buy insurance for our cars, our homes, even our lives. But business insurance is a totally different animal. If you run a business, you have to have insurance. It's that simple.
Rick spells out what that insurance is, why you need it and why you'll be sorry if you don't have it. He has demystified more than a few insurance terms, opened up the world of risk (and the risk is all yours without insurance) and given compelling case scenarios to show what can happen without insurance.
If I had to pick on something to critique, I'd say that some of his headlines don't seem to match his later words, for example "Why people hate insurance" is the headline and then the anecdote that follows is about algebra. I would argue that people hate insurance because they pay and pay and pay and pay, and then finally, they submit a claim and they get hassled and hassled and hassled, until they finally settle for less than they should be getting from an insurance company. To me, that's why people hate insurance.
I think, though, that Rick was tying Algebra — the subject everyone thinks they'll never need --- into insurance, because at some point in life you'll need both. That is a pretty picky critique on my part, because nothing is perfect.
Back to the good stuff, I really like the way Rick has broken it down for you on the ins and outs of the insurance game. For one, he tells you to get more than one quote - at first that seems like common sense, but when was the last time you got a quote?
I had to think about it and for my car insurance, it's been at least four years. How would I know if I'm getting the best rate if I haven't bothered to shop around in four years? Nice reminder to me.
The same applies for business insurance and going through a broker. The broker is in business for himself or his company, not you. You are the payee and if you aren't paying, they don't make money, which is just part of the reason your insurance rates tend to go up every year, instead of down.
The book breaks down the claims process, defines your risk criteria, gives you the difference between self-insurance and no-insurance (personal alternative risk financing), brokers, lawyers and more.
When you are done reading this book you are going to understand:
The language of insurance
The insurance players who want your money
How to develop a sound insurance strategy
How to invest your time and efforts regarding insurance
And whether you are properly insured or not
Part two of the book is worth the cover price alone: Insurance 101. In this section Rick breaks down the different insurance policies, from cars to homes to worker's compensation: what is covered, what isn't, what you can expect from your insurance, time periods, and more.
Worker's Compensation 101: worker's compensation is mandatory in all states, but Rick explains that small businesses, based on the number of employees, can file for exemptions. He then goes on to explain why you may not want to do that. After all, even if you have two employees, if both of those employees get hurt, you aren't covered (let the lawsuits begin). Even if you think that your cousin Fred would never sue you, or that he won't get hurt because he's super-athletic, think again. Accidents (and fraud) do happen, even with friends and family.
Rick's enduring message through the whole book (174 pages, including Index) is to protect yourself and your business with insurance, while protecting your pocketbook from the insurance man. It's a great book and I'm glad I have it on my business reference shelf.
Since the book is published by iUniverse, I'll take moment to point out that it's very well edited. The book has a great binding that I've been bending, pulling and adjusting on and it's stuck together wonderfully. I would not be surprised to find this book as required reading in future business courses in colleges throughout the U.S. and for new insurance agents to give to their clients (smart marketing in action: educate the customer). The layout is professional and easy on the eyes.
As an avid book reader and buyer, I tend to shy away from self-published work - I'm glad I did not in this case. It's a well done book that hands you information to make your life easier.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/08/22/185635.php
MaryAnna Clemons is a freelance journalist based out of Colorado Springs, Colo., with three children, five horses, five cats, five dogs and one husband. Writing about removing chemicals from our daily lives, the dangers of aspartame and vaccines, as well as book reviews, she is continually trying to cram as much writing into her day as she can. More information can be found @ www.maryannaclemons.com.
by MaryAnna Clemons
Rick Vassar has found a niche subject (business risk insurance) that was lacking in coverage, so he wrote the book on it. And he did a great job doing it. The book, Hide, Here Comes the Insurance Guy; A Practical Guide to Understanding Business Insurance and Risk Management, is a job well done...
We all have to buy insurance for our cars, our homes, even our lives. But business insurance is a totally different animal. If you run a business, you have to have insurance. It's that simple.
Rick spells out what that insurance is, why you need it and why you'll be sorry if you don't have it. He has demystified more than a few insurance terms, opened up the world of risk (and the risk is all yours without insurance) and given compelling case scenarios to show what can happen without insurance.
If I had to pick on something to critique, I'd say that some of his headlines don't seem to match his later words, for example "Why people hate insurance" is the headline and then the anecdote that follows is about algebra. I would argue that people hate insurance because they pay and pay and pay and pay, and then finally, they submit a claim and they get hassled and hassled and hassled, until they finally settle for less than they should be getting from an insurance company. To me, that's why people hate insurance.
I think, though, that Rick was tying Algebra — the subject everyone thinks they'll never need --- into insurance, because at some point in life you'll need both. That is a pretty picky critique on my part, because nothing is perfect.
Back to the good stuff, I really like the way Rick has broken it down for you on the ins and outs of the insurance game. For one, he tells you to get more than one quote - at first that seems like common sense, but when was the last time you got a quote?
I had to think about it and for my car insurance, it's been at least four years. How would I know if I'm getting the best rate if I haven't bothered to shop around in four years? Nice reminder to me.
The same applies for business insurance and going through a broker. The broker is in business for himself or his company, not you. You are the payee and if you aren't paying, they don't make money, which is just part of the reason your insurance rates tend to go up every year, instead of down.
The book breaks down the claims process, defines your risk criteria, gives you the difference between self-insurance and no-insurance (personal alternative risk financing), brokers, lawyers and more.
When you are done reading this book you are going to understand:
The language of insurance
The insurance players who want your money
How to develop a sound insurance strategy
How to invest your time and efforts regarding insurance
And whether you are properly insured or not
Part two of the book is worth the cover price alone: Insurance 101. In this section Rick breaks down the different insurance policies, from cars to homes to worker's compensation: what is covered, what isn't, what you can expect from your insurance, time periods, and more.
Worker's Compensation 101: worker's compensation is mandatory in all states, but Rick explains that small businesses, based on the number of employees, can file for exemptions. He then goes on to explain why you may not want to do that. After all, even if you have two employees, if both of those employees get hurt, you aren't covered (let the lawsuits begin). Even if you think that your cousin Fred would never sue you, or that he won't get hurt because he's super-athletic, think again. Accidents (and fraud) do happen, even with friends and family.
Rick's enduring message through the whole book (174 pages, including Index) is to protect yourself and your business with insurance, while protecting your pocketbook from the insurance man. It's a great book and I'm glad I have it on my business reference shelf.
Since the book is published by iUniverse, I'll take moment to point out that it's very well edited. The book has a great binding that I've been bending, pulling and adjusting on and it's stuck together wonderfully. I would not be surprised to find this book as required reading in future business courses in colleges throughout the U.S. and for new insurance agents to give to their clients (smart marketing in action: educate the customer). The layout is professional and easy on the eyes.
As an avid book reader and buyer, I tend to shy away from self-published work - I'm glad I did not in this case. It's a well done book that hands you information to make your life easier.
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2007/08/22/185635.php
MaryAnna Clemons is a freelance journalist based out of Colorado Springs, Colo., with three children, five horses, five cats, five dogs and one husband. Writing about removing chemicals from our daily lives, the dangers of aspartame and vaccines, as well as book reviews, she is continually trying to cram as much writing into her day as she can. More information can be found @ www.maryannaclemons.com.
Hide! Here Comes Rick Vassar! Finally, An Insurance Primer for Small Business
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy
(Sterling, VA) Rick Vassar is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill insurance person. Rick Vassar does not sell insurance. He buys insurance. He is a risk manager. He’s refreshing and totally committed to making people trust him in spite of his chosen profession!
His new book, Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy, educates and entertains with energy and enthusiasm, and it’s a must-read for anyone who owns or operates a business.
This is a truly unique concept – an authoritative explanation of business insurance and practical cost-saving risk management strategies from the business perspective.
With a no holds barred and no prisoners taken approach, he takes the mystery out of the most mind-numbing insurance questions that plague everyone who’s ever sat down with an insurance policy and tried to make sense out of the minefield of questions that have to be answered.
“We all need insurance,” he says “but let’s face it – most of us can’t understand a single word insurance people are saying.”
With humor and a bit of spunk, you can go to Vassar for the answers!
In any organization, not managing your insurance program can cost a company thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy is a guide to business insurance written by a businessman.
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy also provides valuable strategies for interacting with the insurance industry from an insurance professional who has operated on the business-buyer end of the process. Here are some of the most effective tactics you’ll ever find in the areas of business insurance and risk management demystified by a businessman who has actually achieved real cost savings for himself and his clients.
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy provides insight into an aspect of business life that few people readily understand. This wonderful little book can show you how to protect your company from losses and save lots of money in the process.
Now available in the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) bookstore!!
Hide! Here Come the Insurance Guy – A Practical Guide to Understanding Business Insurance and Risk Management
(Sterling, VA) Rick Vassar is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill insurance person. Rick Vassar does not sell insurance. He buys insurance. He is a risk manager. He’s refreshing and totally committed to making people trust him in spite of his chosen profession!
His new book, Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy, educates and entertains with energy and enthusiasm, and it’s a must-read for anyone who owns or operates a business.
This is a truly unique concept – an authoritative explanation of business insurance and practical cost-saving risk management strategies from the business perspective.
With a no holds barred and no prisoners taken approach, he takes the mystery out of the most mind-numbing insurance questions that plague everyone who’s ever sat down with an insurance policy and tried to make sense out of the minefield of questions that have to be answered.
“We all need insurance,” he says “but let’s face it – most of us can’t understand a single word insurance people are saying.”
With humor and a bit of spunk, you can go to Vassar for the answers!
In any organization, not managing your insurance program can cost a company thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy is a guide to business insurance written by a businessman.
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy also provides valuable strategies for interacting with the insurance industry from an insurance professional who has operated on the business-buyer end of the process. Here are some of the most effective tactics you’ll ever find in the areas of business insurance and risk management demystified by a businessman who has actually achieved real cost savings for himself and his clients.
Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy provides insight into an aspect of business life that few people readily understand. This wonderful little book can show you how to protect your company from losses and save lots of money in the process.
Now available in the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) bookstore!!
Hide! Here Come the Insurance Guy – A Practical Guide to Understanding Business Insurance and Risk Management
Helping Management Understand and Appreciate the Value of Risk Management
Excerpted from the June 14, 2007 RIMS New York RIMS Seminar - Helping Management Understand and Appreciate the Value of Risk Management...
First off, before I explain to you who I am, I want to tell you what I am not:
1. I am not the insurance ‘answer man’. I do not profess to know all things about insurance, so I will not be fielding questions about retrocessionaire reinsurance contracts or loss to premium ratios. Although I do know of such things, it is not my area of expertise.
2. I am not the insurance industry. Although I have worked alongside the insurance industry for over 20 years, I have never held a position in nor received any compensation from the insurance industry or related industry
I AM A RISK MANAGER.
I work on the business side of the table, and although I am associated by, well, the entire world as an insurance guy, I do not sell insurance.
Currently, I am the Vice President of Risk Management for Valcourt Building Services in Arlington, VA and I also have a risk management consulting firm – The Vassar Group, LLC located in Sterling, VA.
How many risk managers do we have here today?
Any brokers?
Brokers, for some reason, love me. Whenever a broker finds out I’m a risk manager, they seem to a person to hang on every word I say. Brokers like to take me out to ballgames, dinner, and for some reason, brokers seem to think I am the greatest thing to come along in years.
Okay, of all the risk managers here, did any of you when you were a kid dream of growing up and becoming anything other than a risk manager?
You remember- You’re sitting at your desk in kindergarten and the teacher asks you what you want to be when you grow up. One kid says doctor, the next astronaut, the next a mommy… and then it’s your turn and you say “risk manager”.
Never mind that no companies had risk managers back in 1963 when I was in kindergarten. I would get the same reaction in 2007 that I would have in 1963-
“What does a risk manager do?”
After about 30 seconds into the explanation, their eyes start to glaze over as I explain probability versus possibility, activities versus results, risk financing, etc. It really doesn’t matter what you tell them, they always come away with the same conclusion:
Rick sells insurance.
These days, I just tell people that I buy insurance and leave it at that. If they ask any follow up questions, they do so at their own peril.
I have a brother-in-law, and for the past 20 plus years, I have explained to him what I do for a living. He has read the book, the articles and he is a pretty intelligent guy.
Every time I see him, he introduces me as Rick Vassar – he sells insurance.
Is there anyone here who chose another career both other than risk management?
I think I can safely say that for most risk managers, they do not choose risk management as a profession – it chooses them.
I am going to make a bold statement right here and now. Although risk management seems to be a thankless ill-defined profession at times, to me it is one of the greatest jobs in the world.
If I forget to tell you why, remind me at the end.
For me, it happened way back in 1986. No cell phones, no Internet. MY company had a fax machine but no one else did, so there was no one to fax stuff to.
I was working for a small local car rental company running an even smaller suburban rental location. I had just come off a bad experience at one of the national car rental chains, and I was pretty burnt out.
In November of that year, my boss took me out to lunch and offered me a position of district manager. I would continue as office manager and oversee the operations at another three branches. The promotion included a $50 per week raise that about doubled my salary.
There a catch, he said. You also have to handle the claims for the company as well.
No way, I told him. I hate claims. I hate insurance. I will never do that job.
He offered me another $25 per week as well as a percentage of the subrogation claims I collected on.
When do I start?...
Less than a week later, I got a call from one of the branch managers that an employee had tapped a little old lady in a parking lot, and there was damage to her bumper. I got the report, called the lady. She sent me three estimates, the lower being $221.23. I put in a check request, typed up a release that I found in a file cabinet (using a typewriter and those little white-out strips). It was pretty ugly, but I figured it would do the trick.
A few days later, accounting called and told me the check was ready. I drove over to the accounting department, walked into the controller’s office. She lit up a cigarette, reached back in an accordion folder, and pulled out an envelope.
After she took another pull off of her cigarette (because we didn’t have cell phones, computers or fax machines back then, they let us smoke in the office), she uttered those seven words that would forever change my professional life:
‘You know we have insurance to cover this?’
“Really”
Yup, just turn it over to the insurance company and they will handle it.
“Really”
And that, ladies and gentlemen completed my training as a risk manager for almost ten years.
In the next three years, the company grew from an 800 car fleet and eight offices to a company with a fleet of over 2,000 vehicles and 25 offices. In April of 1989, I was named Director of Risk Management for the largest independently owned car rental franchise in the world.
Although I held this lofty title, I did little more than handle the claims side of the business, and my boss handled the renewals and policy end. In May of 1992, 30 days prior to renewal of the insurance program, it was announced that my boss was leaving the company, and that I would be assuming his duties on the policy end.
NOW I had a problem…
As long as I was just doing claims, I only had to know a little more than everyone else in the company.
It reminds me of the time Diane and I were cutting through Central Park one day a few years back.
It was a beautiful spring day, when out of nowhere, a big black bear came out of the woods and started to chase us. It turns out the bear had escaped from the Bronx Zoo and had hooked over to the Cross Bronx Expressway to West Street, unseen by anyone until it saw us.
Diane and I started to run as fast as we could when I looked over at her and said,
“Hey, Diane, we can’t outrun a black bear.”
“I don’t have to outrun the bear” she said; “I just have to outrun you.”
Well, that’s the way the past six years had gone – I knew a little more than anyone else in my organization, but now it was a whole different ballgame.
I was dealing with insurance industry folks and they figured out that I knew almost nothing about insurance and risk management in about… oh 30 seconds.
I got through the renewal and a friend sent me a little book called Insurance in a Nutshell. Unfortunately, it was written in a language I did not understand- the language of insurance, and I was incapable at that time of cracking the code.
So I continued along, learning what I could when I could, trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else.
In 1996, I took the ARM courses, completing all three and receiving my Associate in Risk Management designation in December. By this time the company had grown to a fleet of over 4,500 vehicles and 40 locations in a 250 mile radius around Washington, DC.
The ARM helped to fill in the blanks and gray areas of the insurance and risk management process.
In 2001, after 15 years with one this one company, which grew to a fleet of over 6,000 vehicles and 45 locations, the company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization due to the hit we took from the 911 attacks. Although it was a reorganization attempt, it was fairly obvious that the company would not survive.
In 2003, after a year and a half of unemployment and a series of other non-risk management jobs, I hooked up with Valcourt Building Services, where I am today.
This brings me to 2007 and the subject of Enterprise Risk Management.
There has been an increased emphasis these days on Enterprise Risk Management, which attempts to systematize risk management at all levels of an organization.
It is my feeling that, for risk management to be effective there has to be a top down commitment to risk management that flows through and incorporates the efforts of all levels of the company to be effective. ERM is another way of saying the same thing in a more formalized manner.
Now, I have been blessed to work in organizations that put a pretty high priority on safety and the prevention of accidents, injuries and illness. Still, in the business world, production is king, and often times, operations, sales and other interests in your organization can work against your best efforts to reduce your overall cost of risk.
As a risk manager, I hold no direct authority over anyone in my company, yet I am still tasked with the responsibility of lowering insurance costs and keeping them down.
If a risk manager is to be successful, he or she must be able to communicate with all levels of the organization in language they understand.
I call this speaking well in the boardroom and talking good in the backroom.
For example, if you are talking to the board or a group of executives, this is the time to wheel out all the bells and whistles, charts and graphs, five year plans, financial models, etc, etc, etc…
Most risk managers, though, answer to the CFO or Treasury officer, and it is most important to speak in their language if you want your message to be heard.
The language of the CFO is numbers.
Plain and simple.
I have found that it less important what the numbers are and more important that the numbers add up. If the numbers do not add up, there is no point in going on.
Stay away from conceptuals when dealing with the CFO unless you have numbers to back it up.
One time I told him that the problem that he thought horizontally and I thought vertically, since my spreadsheets went top to bottom and his went left to right.
You should’ve seen the look I got.
How about operations?
Well, if you try to give operations numbers and use insurance-speak to communicate, you will get shut down every time.
First of all, operations does not want to hear about strategies that they perceive will slow down the production process. Second, the only numbers that count in their world are production numbers. Your numbers are meaningless to them.
I try to communicate with operations management by speaking in terms of net versus gross, meaning not the amount of money they bring in, but the amount of money that stays once all the bills are paid.
When dealing with on line employees, it is important to emphasize safety and the need to keep the employee safe.
But don’t leave it with the greater good scenario. Employees know this is a business, so it is the risk manager’s job to convince employees that not only does safety make good economic sense, it also serves to protect the employee, and that can only be a good thing.
What about sales?
Most sale people I know and work know why our contracts call for certain amounts of coverage and contract language. They just don’t understand why THEIR customers need that coverage?
If you the risk manager are able to communicate the need to your sales team, they will in turn be able to communicate these needs to the customer, so there won’t be confusion or misunderstandings later, after the contract is signed.
And finally, the customer…
I used to umpire baseball at the high school and college level. If I was able to get through the whole game and not be noticed, I knew I did a good job.
It’s the same with you the risk manager. The company I work for does a lot of property management work in occupied buildings, and most companies have unique limit requirements and certificate language.
Some language is for lack of a better word, funky. If you call the customer, the person requesting the language is working off a checklist, and they have no idea why the requirements are what they are.
If you try to kick it upstairs, you will find that the supervisor doesn’t know why either.
The point is, it’s difficult to argue for limits or language with people who have no idea what the language means. It’s best to try to see if you can overcome the objective language or limits from your end.
If you can’t, see if you can determine what your organization can live with.
For example, the big coverage du jour a few years ago was waiver of subrogation. Someone put out an article in a trade magazine that property managers had to have this included in all their contracts. So it became a requirement.
In 2003, our company had waiver of subrogation added by endorsement on work comp on an as requested basis. The problem was that the insurance company did not know how to charge for it.
At renewal for 2004, we asked that waiver of subrogation be added on a blanket basis, thus giving it to everyone on an as needed basis.
Total cost $6,000 or less than 5 tenths of one percent of all premium; a small price to pay to make a big problem go away.
Bottom line, though, is that you need to know what you are talking about before you are able to communicate it well.
On January 12, 2005, my company gave me permission to pursue the CPCU designation.
At that time, I really didn’t know what CPCU stood for, although I knew that anyone worth their salt in the insurance industry has or is working towards a CPCU.
On February 28, 2005, I passed the first CPCU test.
On August 22, 2005, or 176 days later, I passed the eighth and final test.
I received my designee letter on September 6, 2005.
When I was in the middle of this whirlwind, I found out a bunch of things. First, less than 2% of CPCUs are risk managers and less than 1% work outside the insurance industry. Being a risk manager who has never worked in the insurance industry made me that much more unique.
I also went to find that book that I had looked for back in 1989 that explained business insurance and risk management in plain language, and I still couldn’t find it.
So I wrote it. Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy is a humorous plain speaking text for folks like me who had to learn on the fly. This book would have been invaluable to me if it were available back then.
It also serves as a great communication tool for risk management departments to show their organizations what they do in an approachable way.
Risk management written by a career risk manager. What a concept!!
I am a risk manager. I am one of you. I’m not a genius. People ask me how I could earn the CPCU designation so quickly.
I don’t know. The only explanation is – it’s what I do.
Have faith in what you know.
Continue to learn.
And learn to communicate what you know in a way that everyone can understand.
One day, instead of hearing ‘What does a risk manager do?’ you are going to hear,
“Wow, you’re a risk manager, that’s pretty cool’
And it is…
First off, before I explain to you who I am, I want to tell you what I am not:
1. I am not the insurance ‘answer man’. I do not profess to know all things about insurance, so I will not be fielding questions about retrocessionaire reinsurance contracts or loss to premium ratios. Although I do know of such things, it is not my area of expertise.
2. I am not the insurance industry. Although I have worked alongside the insurance industry for over 20 years, I have never held a position in nor received any compensation from the insurance industry or related industry
I AM A RISK MANAGER.
I work on the business side of the table, and although I am associated by, well, the entire world as an insurance guy, I do not sell insurance.
Currently, I am the Vice President of Risk Management for Valcourt Building Services in Arlington, VA and I also have a risk management consulting firm – The Vassar Group, LLC located in Sterling, VA.
How many risk managers do we have here today?
Any brokers?
Brokers, for some reason, love me. Whenever a broker finds out I’m a risk manager, they seem to a person to hang on every word I say. Brokers like to take me out to ballgames, dinner, and for some reason, brokers seem to think I am the greatest thing to come along in years.
Okay, of all the risk managers here, did any of you when you were a kid dream of growing up and becoming anything other than a risk manager?
You remember- You’re sitting at your desk in kindergarten and the teacher asks you what you want to be when you grow up. One kid says doctor, the next astronaut, the next a mommy… and then it’s your turn and you say “risk manager”.
Never mind that no companies had risk managers back in 1963 when I was in kindergarten. I would get the same reaction in 2007 that I would have in 1963-
“What does a risk manager do?”
After about 30 seconds into the explanation, their eyes start to glaze over as I explain probability versus possibility, activities versus results, risk financing, etc. It really doesn’t matter what you tell them, they always come away with the same conclusion:
Rick sells insurance.
These days, I just tell people that I buy insurance and leave it at that. If they ask any follow up questions, they do so at their own peril.
I have a brother-in-law, and for the past 20 plus years, I have explained to him what I do for a living. He has read the book, the articles and he is a pretty intelligent guy.
Every time I see him, he introduces me as Rick Vassar – he sells insurance.
Is there anyone here who chose another career both other than risk management?
I think I can safely say that for most risk managers, they do not choose risk management as a profession – it chooses them.
I am going to make a bold statement right here and now. Although risk management seems to be a thankless ill-defined profession at times, to me it is one of the greatest jobs in the world.
If I forget to tell you why, remind me at the end.
For me, it happened way back in 1986. No cell phones, no Internet. MY company had a fax machine but no one else did, so there was no one to fax stuff to.
I was working for a small local car rental company running an even smaller suburban rental location. I had just come off a bad experience at one of the national car rental chains, and I was pretty burnt out.
In November of that year, my boss took me out to lunch and offered me a position of district manager. I would continue as office manager and oversee the operations at another three branches. The promotion included a $50 per week raise that about doubled my salary.
There a catch, he said. You also have to handle the claims for the company as well.
No way, I told him. I hate claims. I hate insurance. I will never do that job.
He offered me another $25 per week as well as a percentage of the subrogation claims I collected on.
When do I start?...
Less than a week later, I got a call from one of the branch managers that an employee had tapped a little old lady in a parking lot, and there was damage to her bumper. I got the report, called the lady. She sent me three estimates, the lower being $221.23. I put in a check request, typed up a release that I found in a file cabinet (using a typewriter and those little white-out strips). It was pretty ugly, but I figured it would do the trick.
A few days later, accounting called and told me the check was ready. I drove over to the accounting department, walked into the controller’s office. She lit up a cigarette, reached back in an accordion folder, and pulled out an envelope.
After she took another pull off of her cigarette (because we didn’t have cell phones, computers or fax machines back then, they let us smoke in the office), she uttered those seven words that would forever change my professional life:
‘You know we have insurance to cover this?’
“Really”
Yup, just turn it over to the insurance company and they will handle it.
“Really”
And that, ladies and gentlemen completed my training as a risk manager for almost ten years.
In the next three years, the company grew from an 800 car fleet and eight offices to a company with a fleet of over 2,000 vehicles and 25 offices. In April of 1989, I was named Director of Risk Management for the largest independently owned car rental franchise in the world.
Although I held this lofty title, I did little more than handle the claims side of the business, and my boss handled the renewals and policy end. In May of 1992, 30 days prior to renewal of the insurance program, it was announced that my boss was leaving the company, and that I would be assuming his duties on the policy end.
NOW I had a problem…
As long as I was just doing claims, I only had to know a little more than everyone else in the company.
It reminds me of the time Diane and I were cutting through Central Park one day a few years back.
It was a beautiful spring day, when out of nowhere, a big black bear came out of the woods and started to chase us. It turns out the bear had escaped from the Bronx Zoo and had hooked over to the Cross Bronx Expressway to West Street, unseen by anyone until it saw us.
Diane and I started to run as fast as we could when I looked over at her and said,
“Hey, Diane, we can’t outrun a black bear.”
“I don’t have to outrun the bear” she said; “I just have to outrun you.”
Well, that’s the way the past six years had gone – I knew a little more than anyone else in my organization, but now it was a whole different ballgame.
I was dealing with insurance industry folks and they figured out that I knew almost nothing about insurance and risk management in about… oh 30 seconds.
I got through the renewal and a friend sent me a little book called Insurance in a Nutshell. Unfortunately, it was written in a language I did not understand- the language of insurance, and I was incapable at that time of cracking the code.
So I continued along, learning what I could when I could, trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else.
In 1996, I took the ARM courses, completing all three and receiving my Associate in Risk Management designation in December. By this time the company had grown to a fleet of over 4,500 vehicles and 40 locations in a 250 mile radius around Washington, DC.
The ARM helped to fill in the blanks and gray areas of the insurance and risk management process.
In 2001, after 15 years with one this one company, which grew to a fleet of over 6,000 vehicles and 45 locations, the company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization due to the hit we took from the 911 attacks. Although it was a reorganization attempt, it was fairly obvious that the company would not survive.
In 2003, after a year and a half of unemployment and a series of other non-risk management jobs, I hooked up with Valcourt Building Services, where I am today.
This brings me to 2007 and the subject of Enterprise Risk Management.
There has been an increased emphasis these days on Enterprise Risk Management, which attempts to systematize risk management at all levels of an organization.
It is my feeling that, for risk management to be effective there has to be a top down commitment to risk management that flows through and incorporates the efforts of all levels of the company to be effective. ERM is another way of saying the same thing in a more formalized manner.
Now, I have been blessed to work in organizations that put a pretty high priority on safety and the prevention of accidents, injuries and illness. Still, in the business world, production is king, and often times, operations, sales and other interests in your organization can work against your best efforts to reduce your overall cost of risk.
As a risk manager, I hold no direct authority over anyone in my company, yet I am still tasked with the responsibility of lowering insurance costs and keeping them down.
If a risk manager is to be successful, he or she must be able to communicate with all levels of the organization in language they understand.
I call this speaking well in the boardroom and talking good in the backroom.
For example, if you are talking to the board or a group of executives, this is the time to wheel out all the bells and whistles, charts and graphs, five year plans, financial models, etc, etc, etc…
Most risk managers, though, answer to the CFO or Treasury officer, and it is most important to speak in their language if you want your message to be heard.
The language of the CFO is numbers.
Plain and simple.
I have found that it less important what the numbers are and more important that the numbers add up. If the numbers do not add up, there is no point in going on.
Stay away from conceptuals when dealing with the CFO unless you have numbers to back it up.
One time I told him that the problem that he thought horizontally and I thought vertically, since my spreadsheets went top to bottom and his went left to right.
You should’ve seen the look I got.
How about operations?
Well, if you try to give operations numbers and use insurance-speak to communicate, you will get shut down every time.
First of all, operations does not want to hear about strategies that they perceive will slow down the production process. Second, the only numbers that count in their world are production numbers. Your numbers are meaningless to them.
I try to communicate with operations management by speaking in terms of net versus gross, meaning not the amount of money they bring in, but the amount of money that stays once all the bills are paid.
When dealing with on line employees, it is important to emphasize safety and the need to keep the employee safe.
But don’t leave it with the greater good scenario. Employees know this is a business, so it is the risk manager’s job to convince employees that not only does safety make good economic sense, it also serves to protect the employee, and that can only be a good thing.
What about sales?
Most sale people I know and work know why our contracts call for certain amounts of coverage and contract language. They just don’t understand why THEIR customers need that coverage?
If you the risk manager are able to communicate the need to your sales team, they will in turn be able to communicate these needs to the customer, so there won’t be confusion or misunderstandings later, after the contract is signed.
And finally, the customer…
I used to umpire baseball at the high school and college level. If I was able to get through the whole game and not be noticed, I knew I did a good job.
It’s the same with you the risk manager. The company I work for does a lot of property management work in occupied buildings, and most companies have unique limit requirements and certificate language.
Some language is for lack of a better word, funky. If you call the customer, the person requesting the language is working off a checklist, and they have no idea why the requirements are what they are.
If you try to kick it upstairs, you will find that the supervisor doesn’t know why either.
The point is, it’s difficult to argue for limits or language with people who have no idea what the language means. It’s best to try to see if you can overcome the objective language or limits from your end.
If you can’t, see if you can determine what your organization can live with.
For example, the big coverage du jour a few years ago was waiver of subrogation. Someone put out an article in a trade magazine that property managers had to have this included in all their contracts. So it became a requirement.
In 2003, our company had waiver of subrogation added by endorsement on work comp on an as requested basis. The problem was that the insurance company did not know how to charge for it.
At renewal for 2004, we asked that waiver of subrogation be added on a blanket basis, thus giving it to everyone on an as needed basis.
Total cost $6,000 or less than 5 tenths of one percent of all premium; a small price to pay to make a big problem go away.
Bottom line, though, is that you need to know what you are talking about before you are able to communicate it well.
On January 12, 2005, my company gave me permission to pursue the CPCU designation.
At that time, I really didn’t know what CPCU stood for, although I knew that anyone worth their salt in the insurance industry has or is working towards a CPCU.
On February 28, 2005, I passed the first CPCU test.
On August 22, 2005, or 176 days later, I passed the eighth and final test.
I received my designee letter on September 6, 2005.
When I was in the middle of this whirlwind, I found out a bunch of things. First, less than 2% of CPCUs are risk managers and less than 1% work outside the insurance industry. Being a risk manager who has never worked in the insurance industry made me that much more unique.
I also went to find that book that I had looked for back in 1989 that explained business insurance and risk management in plain language, and I still couldn’t find it.
So I wrote it. Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy is a humorous plain speaking text for folks like me who had to learn on the fly. This book would have been invaluable to me if it were available back then.
It also serves as a great communication tool for risk management departments to show their organizations what they do in an approachable way.
Risk management written by a career risk manager. What a concept!!
I am a risk manager. I am one of you. I’m not a genius. People ask me how I could earn the CPCU designation so quickly.
I don’t know. The only explanation is – it’s what I do.
Have faith in what you know.
Continue to learn.
And learn to communicate what you know in a way that everyone can understand.
One day, instead of hearing ‘What does a risk manager do?’ you are going to hear,
“Wow, you’re a risk manager, that’s pretty cool’
And it is…
Rain or shine, they aid business climate
Are you willing to bet the farm on weather reports you get on the Internet?
Weatherbill.com lets you hedge your business risk when you are affected by the weather. Is it a good deal? You bet-literally
Rain or shine, they aid business climate
Startup offers financial hedge against weather
by Ilana DeBare, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
A San Francisco startup is touting a new kind of financial hedge aimed at helping small businesses weather the weather.
WeatherBill, a venture capital-backed firm started by two former Google employees, sells what are called weather derivatives -- contracts that pay out in cash if the weather hits a selected level of heat, cold, rain or drought.
Weather derivatives have mostly been available to very large companies such as electric utilities for a decade. But WeatherBill is making them available over the Internet to smaller companies that are affected by the weather, such as golf courses, restaurants and even hair salons.
So, for instance, a San Francisco golf course trying to compensate for slow business on rainy autumn days could buy a contract that would pay $500 for each day with more than half an inch of rain between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30. WeatherBill quotes a price of $1,451.74 for such a contract.
"We can sell a weather contract for $1 or $100 million," said Chief Executive Officer David Friedberg, who founded the company with Chief Technology Officer Siraj Khaliq. "We've used technology to let us address the needs of businesses of any size."
In reality, WeatherBill's services will initially be limited to businesses with a net worth of $1 million or more. That rules out very small mom-and-pop firms.
And some observers caution that weather derivatives are too complicated and risky for most small businesses. They note that weather derivatives were pioneered by Enron as a tiny part of its business during the go-go days before its collapse.
"It's basically placing a bet, and you might as well go to the Preakness," said Rick Vassar, a Virginia risk management consultant and author of the book, "Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy."
WeatherBill isn't the first company selling tools for businesses to protect themselves from bad weather. Insurance companies have traditionally offered policies covering catastrophic weather or major crop failures. They've also offered policies covering cancellation of special events due to weather.
But WeatherBill's contracts go beyond catastrophes like hurricanes, to address more-modest weather challenges such as a somewhat rainy spring or cool summer.
And unlike insurance, WeatherBill doesn't require businesses to show proof of actual losses to get a payout.
Spencer Malay Hair, an Atlanta salon and day spa that opened less than a year ago, is a WeatherBill client and an example of how weather derivatives can work for a small business.
The salon's owners rely on walk-in customers from a nearby movie theater as a way to build a client base. But they found their walk-ins dropped dramatically on sunny days when people stayed away from the movies.
Searching on the Web for weather forecast information, co-owner Ray Luciano stumbled upon WeatherBill. He and partner Spencer Malay decided to spend $2,000 for a contract that would pay them $10,000 if the weather were completely dry over a particular two-day weekend.
The skies did indeed stay dry, and the salon reaped $10,000. Luciano and Malay bought a similar contract for another weekend and reaped another $10,000.
They plan to continue buying a weather contract every few months until their salon is busy enough that they no longer need walk-in clients.
"If it had rained, we would have lost $2,000 but we would have more than made up for it with the new clients we would have gotten," Luciano said. "This helps us protect ourselves if the weather doesn't go the way we want it to."
Not all of WeatherBill's clients, of course, receive the dramatic payoff that Spencer Malay Hair did.
The challenge for weather contract buyers is weighing the likelihood of bad weather against the cost of protection.
"You need to be really, really informed," Vassar said. "A lot of small-businesspeople don't have the time or expertise to do this kind of financial modeling."
WeatherBill faces its own set of challenges. To turn a profit, the company must rely on databases of historical weather information and complex mathematical formulas aimed at calculating the likelihood that a given time period will be wet, dry, cold or hot. And it's got to do this at a time when global warming is calling much historical weather data into question.
The company also must find enough customers to balance its own risk -- offsetting payments to some clients with revenues from others who didn't win a payout.
"Their challenge is to build a diversified book, so their risk is spread across different kinds of weather conditions, different geographical areas and different time periods," said Scott Mathews, president of WeatherEX LLC, a commodity trading advisory firm. "If they have that, they won't be inundated by rain people or drought people."
WeatherBill has some deep-pocketed help. It has venture capital investment from New Enterprise Associates and Index Ventures. Nephila Capital, a $3 billion reinsurance company, also owns a minority stake in WeatherBill and provides reinsurance for the firm.
Friedberg said he got the idea for WeatherBill about two years ago when he was still working in Google's corporate acquisitions division and Khaliq was an engineer there. Friedberg lived across the street from a bicycle shop and noticed that its business plummeted on rainy days. "I thought it would be cool to do something to help protect these businesses whose revenues were so dependent on the weather," he said.
At that point, Friedberg had never heard of weather derivatives. But derivatives had been around since the late 1990s.
Electric deregulation, which spread across the country in the 1990s, meant that utilities were no longer able to pass all their costs on to consumers. They began looking for ways to control expenses such as unexpected spikes in the cost of energy due to weather. Enron started selling weather derivatives and soon a mini-industry developed.
More than 730,000 weather contracts worth about $20 billion in potential payouts were traded during the past year through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and over the counter, according to the Weather Risk Management Association. But nearly all of these contracts were written for large entities such as utilities.
WeatherBill aims to reach smaller businesses by using the Internet to streamline the process, making it as simple to price a weather contract as it is to buy something on eBay.
"It's a very interesting concept and might have broad appeal because it's not insurance -- no applications or assumed claims hassles, (and) easy online contracts," said Charles Wilson, a risk management consultant with RiskSmart Solutions in El Cerrito.
Weatherbill.com lets you hedge your business risk when you are affected by the weather. Is it a good deal? You bet-literally
Rain or shine, they aid business climate
Startup offers financial hedge against weather
by Ilana DeBare, San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
A San Francisco startup is touting a new kind of financial hedge aimed at helping small businesses weather the weather.
WeatherBill, a venture capital-backed firm started by two former Google employees, sells what are called weather derivatives -- contracts that pay out in cash if the weather hits a selected level of heat, cold, rain or drought.
Weather derivatives have mostly been available to very large companies such as electric utilities for a decade. But WeatherBill is making them available over the Internet to smaller companies that are affected by the weather, such as golf courses, restaurants and even hair salons.
So, for instance, a San Francisco golf course trying to compensate for slow business on rainy autumn days could buy a contract that would pay $500 for each day with more than half an inch of rain between Oct. 1 and Nov. 30. WeatherBill quotes a price of $1,451.74 for such a contract.
"We can sell a weather contract for $1 or $100 million," said Chief Executive Officer David Friedberg, who founded the company with Chief Technology Officer Siraj Khaliq. "We've used technology to let us address the needs of businesses of any size."
In reality, WeatherBill's services will initially be limited to businesses with a net worth of $1 million or more. That rules out very small mom-and-pop firms.
And some observers caution that weather derivatives are too complicated and risky for most small businesses. They note that weather derivatives were pioneered by Enron as a tiny part of its business during the go-go days before its collapse.
"It's basically placing a bet, and you might as well go to the Preakness," said Rick Vassar, a Virginia risk management consultant and author of the book, "Hide! Here Comes the Insurance Guy."
WeatherBill isn't the first company selling tools for businesses to protect themselves from bad weather. Insurance companies have traditionally offered policies covering catastrophic weather or major crop failures. They've also offered policies covering cancellation of special events due to weather.
But WeatherBill's contracts go beyond catastrophes like hurricanes, to address more-modest weather challenges such as a somewhat rainy spring or cool summer.
And unlike insurance, WeatherBill doesn't require businesses to show proof of actual losses to get a payout.
Spencer Malay Hair, an Atlanta salon and day spa that opened less than a year ago, is a WeatherBill client and an example of how weather derivatives can work for a small business.
The salon's owners rely on walk-in customers from a nearby movie theater as a way to build a client base. But they found their walk-ins dropped dramatically on sunny days when people stayed away from the movies.
Searching on the Web for weather forecast information, co-owner Ray Luciano stumbled upon WeatherBill. He and partner Spencer Malay decided to spend $2,000 for a contract that would pay them $10,000 if the weather were completely dry over a particular two-day weekend.
The skies did indeed stay dry, and the salon reaped $10,000. Luciano and Malay bought a similar contract for another weekend and reaped another $10,000.
They plan to continue buying a weather contract every few months until their salon is busy enough that they no longer need walk-in clients.
"If it had rained, we would have lost $2,000 but we would have more than made up for it with the new clients we would have gotten," Luciano said. "This helps us protect ourselves if the weather doesn't go the way we want it to."
Not all of WeatherBill's clients, of course, receive the dramatic payoff that Spencer Malay Hair did.
The challenge for weather contract buyers is weighing the likelihood of bad weather against the cost of protection.
"You need to be really, really informed," Vassar said. "A lot of small-businesspeople don't have the time or expertise to do this kind of financial modeling."
WeatherBill faces its own set of challenges. To turn a profit, the company must rely on databases of historical weather information and complex mathematical formulas aimed at calculating the likelihood that a given time period will be wet, dry, cold or hot. And it's got to do this at a time when global warming is calling much historical weather data into question.
The company also must find enough customers to balance its own risk -- offsetting payments to some clients with revenues from others who didn't win a payout.
"Their challenge is to build a diversified book, so their risk is spread across different kinds of weather conditions, different geographical areas and different time periods," said Scott Mathews, president of WeatherEX LLC, a commodity trading advisory firm. "If they have that, they won't be inundated by rain people or drought people."
WeatherBill has some deep-pocketed help. It has venture capital investment from New Enterprise Associates and Index Ventures. Nephila Capital, a $3 billion reinsurance company, also owns a minority stake in WeatherBill and provides reinsurance for the firm.
Friedberg said he got the idea for WeatherBill about two years ago when he was still working in Google's corporate acquisitions division and Khaliq was an engineer there. Friedberg lived across the street from a bicycle shop and noticed that its business plummeted on rainy days. "I thought it would be cool to do something to help protect these businesses whose revenues were so dependent on the weather," he said.
At that point, Friedberg had never heard of weather derivatives. But derivatives had been around since the late 1990s.
Electric deregulation, which spread across the country in the 1990s, meant that utilities were no longer able to pass all their costs on to consumers. They began looking for ways to control expenses such as unexpected spikes in the cost of energy due to weather. Enron started selling weather derivatives and soon a mini-industry developed.
More than 730,000 weather contracts worth about $20 billion in potential payouts were traded during the past year through the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and over the counter, according to the Weather Risk Management Association. But nearly all of these contracts were written for large entities such as utilities.
WeatherBill aims to reach smaller businesses by using the Internet to streamline the process, making it as simple to price a weather contract as it is to buy something on eBay.
"It's a very interesting concept and might have broad appeal because it's not insurance -- no applications or assumed claims hassles, (and) easy online contracts," said Charles Wilson, a risk management consultant with RiskSmart Solutions in El Cerrito.
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