ITIC offers three-point guide to engaging with insurers

TRANSPORT professionals need to spend more time engaging with their insurers or risk endangering their business, according to Roger Lewis, Underwriting Director of the International Transport Intermediaries Club (ITIC), the specialist professional indemnity mutual for the transportation industry.

Lewis says, “Transport professionals spend less than one per cent of their time buying insurance protection for their business, yet it is often one of their biggest ‘top three’ company expenses. Using that one per cent of time more efficiently has to be a good idea, otherwise the remaining time invested in the business might, one day, all come to nothing.”

Lewis adds, “There are three useful tips to follow which will enable you to buy insurance more effectively:-

(1) Present yourself as a true professional. Avoid sloppy proposal or application forms and look for an insurance broker who can help you sell your professionalism to your underwriters;

(2) Engage and educate your broker and insurer about exactly where you are positioned in your industry.

(3) If you get silence back from your insurers (i.e., they appear not to be interested), keep on looking. Brokers or insurance companies who will not engage with you at the buying stage are unlikely to want to do so when you need them most. Remember that you may well be relying upon them to help rescue your business in the event of an insurable loss.”

Roger Lewis’s comments are reported in the latest edition of the ITIC newsletter The Wire, which this time focuses on liability issues affecting the rail industry.

ITIC is managed by Thomas Miller. More details about the club and the services it offers can be found on ITIC’s website at www.itic-insure.com.

3rd September 2010
ITIC Press Release PR0510