Preparing Your Business for Hurricane Season 2010
Experts are predicting an extremely active hurricane season, with as many as 23 named storms and 3 to 7 reaching major hurricane force in the Atlantic Basin.
Named storms can create numerous safety and asset protection risks—businesses of all sizes can be displaced, and in many cases, completely shut down. Businesses will be faced with the challenge of dealing with complex property and business interruption insurance claims. However, there are actions businesses can take now to better prepare for hurricane season.
BDO Consulting’s Glenn Pomerantz, national director of Insurance Claim Services, and Robert Glasser, managing director of Insurance Claim Services, have worked with hundreds of businesses, from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, to help minimize hardships and assist in accelerating the insurance recovery process.
They suggest that businesses:
- create or update disaster recovery plans;
- consider changes in locations, operations, strategy, logistics, employees, contracts and other significant impacts to the business’s risk profile;
- assess whether accounting systems can adequately capture information to quantify and document losses, including lost orders, cancellations, decline in demand, extra expenses, property remediation and property repair;
- assess whether employees have been adequately trained to capture relevant loss data and documentation;
- review insurance policies for appropriate values and coverage, including deductibles and self-retentions and coverages;
BDO Consulting, a division of BDO Seidman, LLP, provides litigation, investigation, restructuring and risk advisory services to major corporations, law firms, insurance companies, financial services entities, and government organizations.