Welcome to Risky Business. Commercial insurance with Butler Byers. Paul Martin here, the business commentator on CKOM. And joining me is Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. And the guy who is the star of this show on a weekly basis so Colin welcome. And it is a little belated, but I’m going to say happy birthday to you too, but let’s get that out of the way. And I know you had lots [crosstalk].

Of people saluting you and sending you greetings. And so anyway, happy birthday from me as well.

Now today, we’ve talked a lot in the past about probably three themes that have, maybe four that have dominated what we’ve talked about for the last year. COVID being one of them of course, and another being cyber. The other big one you always referred to as the hard market, which is I guess it’s terminology you guys use, but it’s something that’s affecting businesses right across the country, across the world is that the insurance industry is having to replenish its treasury. And so that means higher premiums, lower coverage, yada, yada, all those stuff that goes with it.

I wonder today, if we could talk about trying to help people understand just what does that mean?

So I think it’d be helpful if we looked at a vertical, and said, here’s one industry, here’s how it’s affecting them. Here’s how they’re fighting back. So even if you’re not in this industry, it makes sense to listen to this because you’ll see, here are the steps you can do to mitigate what the big premium increases are coming. If that works for you, then we’ll just rock on that one.

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks again for the birthday wishes. I don’t feel as old as I am, but apparently 40 is my age, so I appreciate it. We have talked a lot about the hard market and I mean it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, it really does give our clients… When everyone is under the microscope, it does allow the clients that are working on risk management, working the plan, trying to grow and mitigate risk. I mean, this is where this is where the work shows up, right? So we’re saying that depending on your industry, you’re going to see low end increases of 20 to 30%, high end 400%. I mean, that’s the average. So now we know, okay, so the average competitor of yours is going to see, let’s just say 40% increase overall. That’s what’s average.

So you think those that really aren’t doing well, there is no plan. High frequency and severity of losses. I mean they’re going to be outside. They’re going to be in the 80, 90 percentile. They’re going to be in those classes of business where they may not get renewal terms at all. If they do higher deductibles, reduced capacity, more subscribers. But then on the other side of the coin, now’s the time to say, okay well, if the benchmark is this, what happens to the good businesses that are putting in the work, that really do care, that want to be a better customer to the insurance market. Where do they end up?

And I mean, I can’t promise you decreases over last year, but if we can document and say 40% is the benchmark and you got away with five, I mean, that is the result of your work. That’s the result of working the plan. And it’s a result of all the effort. And it just shows that the insurance industry, the market, is listening.

However, you have to speak their language. What are they after? What do they want to hear? We’ve talked about our reporting process and telling the story correctly. But to take it a step further, we were always working on documents that we can provide to our clients that we’ve developed, you can fill out, you can make your own, you can circulate those, you can review them. And then when the time comes, when we’re at renewal we’re looking to potentially remarket, or in this case, I tell you, “Hey you know, we’ve got a call from the insurance company. They want to send loss control in.” Well, what if you said. “Absolutely, in fact, we’ve done an internal loss control document. I’ll make sure that’s updated, ready to go when he or she arrives. And I’d love to actually compare notes and show them what we’ve done, what we’ve caught and how we’ve addressed that before they have a chance to.”

And today that’s what I want to talk about. I guess an industry in particular that would be impacted by the hard market and then documents that we have developed today to help with that.

All right. You made an interesting comment just before we get into talking about that specific industry. I just want to circle back to that. You said that in a hard market, this is actually the opportunity for those doing the work to shine. And normally you wouldn’t go looking for difficult times, but I guess that’s the time when the real quality and value surfaces.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you say, okay the opposite of a hard market would be a soft market. Where everyone’s fighting to the bottom. So if you’re working on risk and I say, “Hey during a time where really everyone’s undercutting everyone else, I was able to reduce your premium by 20%.” You never really know if that was the work you did, that was just good timing. And then you can talk to your other competitors and, “did you get an increase this year?” “No, no. We saved a ton.” “You putting a lot of work in?” “No, not really.” “Geez you know, we saved a bit, we sure are putting in a ton of work.” So I mean, it’s more apparent when times are tough, right?

The bad risks are going to see higher deductibles. They’re going to have trouble finding coverage. They’re going to have trouble finding broad coverage. And they’re going to be faced with reduced capacity, which we talked about insurance markets saying “I’m just not prepared to risk my money on your company based on what I’m seeing.” So if we explain for any class of business what’s going on in their market and what they should expect, and then the result is something different because they put in the work. I mean, this is where we can really show there is value… In addition to sort of operational performance. There is real value, come renewal time, to putting in the effort.

All right. Well let’s take a look at an example. Let’s take an industry group and let’s look at how are they faring in this and how does the industry look at them right now? And it’s renewal time for them and what are the best in class doing to mitigate any increases.

You’ve been working on one I know, so let’s have a talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about the auto body industry kind of as a whole. And that’s everything from an auto body shop to sort of auto repair and everything in between.

Now, would they be the hardest hit? No. You know, somewhere in the middle. However, there is a lot going on. You’ve got big buildings with employees. You’ve got paint booths, potentially ventilation systems. You have… You’ve got dust and debris and spark creation, that sort of thing. You’ve got vehicles, whether you’re on the repair side, like auto repair or auto body. You’ve got vehicles that are in the care custody and control of the particular shop. And there’s a bunch of different lines of coverage that all come into play.

So it’s… You think, it seems like a fairly simple business model. However, from the insurance side, there still is a lot going on. And when you look at the industry they are one of those that rising frequency and severity of claims. And so therefore, certainly seeing the impacts of the hard market. There are fewer players that are even prepared to look at the class. And so if we’re reducing the number of insurers that are even prepared to look at this class of business, we’ve got to make sure that we’re putting our best foot forward, and that the best are getting, one, noted and also treated as such.

So what we’ve gone ahead and done is we’ve got, I guess, a series of documents and we’ve got more on the way, which, it looks like we got to take a break, so Ill probably

break. Because we’ll get you to start explaining this after we take just a couple of minutes. So we’ll be back right after this. You’re listening to Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business back after this.

Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers, Paul Martin here, and joining me Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers.

Colin, just before the break, you were kind of leading up to, or leaning towards some of these new publications that some new documentation that you guys have put together, which is designed to help those in the automotive auto repair, auto body business, and even if you’re not in those businesses, it’s still worth listening here because you can learn for your industry, similar examples, I’m thinking.

Yeah, absolutely. So I don’t want, you know, if you’re not in the auto body business or auto repair, I don’t want you to turn off the radio. You know, the point is, is we are developing documents consistently that are going to aid, you know, whatever industry you’re in, we usually have something and we’re always expanding that library. So if I don’t reference your class of business, not to say we don’t have it, but I want those that are listening to think along these lines.

So when it comes to autobody, you know, the auto industry in general, we’ve developed employee safety manuals for really all lines of business. That’s important because it’s not just about employee safety we cover, we cover what to do in a disaster, we cover sexual harassment, we cover return to work, we cover injured at work, it’s a very comprehensive, detailed package. Whereas, you know, if you don’t have anything in place now, it’s certainly a concern of the insurance industry that what’s going on there, are you open to litigation, is there going to be an employment practices lawsuit, are we going to hear about sexual harassment claims that sort of thing?

And so we’ve developed, again, the employee safety manual, which is very, very all encompassing, which you can review, make changes, make it your own, have everyone sign off on and implement basically right away. Now for anyone that’s listening and says, I’m a part of an association, I already have something or we’ve developed our own from scratch, this is a great document for you to just review, update, take what you like from this document, change it, that sort of thing. But again, it’s just showing that from an employment practices perspective, we are thinking about our clients, we are developing new documents and the auto industry is one of those.

The other document that we have that I’m particularly excited about is a loss control questionnaire. And we’ve talked about this in other industries before, and I just want to reiterate again, that depending on the industry you’re currently operating in like auto, every year or every few years, and certainly if you switch insurance companies, someone from their loss control department is going to stop by. Now, they are there to help, but they also are there to judge in a way, and they are certainly reporting back to the insurance company, what they find. So what we’ve done is said, okay, if we already know what they’re looking for, can we not develop a document that preemptively asks those questions of our clients? So then when the loss control inspector comes to your business, wouldn’t it be great for you to say, you know, I’m really glad you called, we have our own document, we’ve recently filled it out, I’d love to get it to you for your review and any tips you could offer. That would be fantastic.

Just imagine if that’s how that conversation went. And I’m not trying to imply again, that the loss control is a negative thing, but just imagine the conversation that’s going to be had at the insurance company level, once they leave your business and they see that you had your own questionnaire filled out prior, how excited that person is going to be writing up their report on what they found and the type of client they think you are.

Yeah, if you’re doing that kind of work on this, you must be doing good work in other areas too. So you’re probably a better looking prospect for somebody to insure.

You know, absolutely. And again, I’ve said on this show, the result of the loss control, it doesn’t result in, you know, you get a phone call from the broker. Look, they need to raise deductibles, they want off risk. I mean, in extreme cases, maybe, but at that point you’ve got the broker basically selling the wrong risk. So I don’t want to suggest that these are negative. However, if you talk, or if you’ve ever been through a renewal process, the underwriter has that loss control assessment. They see it, they’re very aware. And if you’ve done nothing to update the story, like you’ll get underwriters that will refer to a document that’s 10 years old.

You know, back 10 years ago, you had this and this and this problem, therefore I feel that this rate is warranted. And that’s the opinion if you don’t give them anything else to work with. So what if, even prior to a loss control inspector coming by, we just handed that in every year? Well, they did their own assessment, here it is, it’s filled out, here’s the notes, here’s what they found, here’s what they’ve addressed. And we add that to the renewal. You don’t have to be an underwriter to know it’s going to go a lot better with that information than without.

Do you typically see clients doing that?

Certainly not on their own. You know, I’ve personally never seen it on my own to say, you know, we’ve thought about this, we’ve prepared our own documentation and we would like you to have that and submit it on our behalf. You really almost never run into that.

So that’s why you built these step-by-step plans so that you can hand them to your clients and say, here, fill this out, and it will improve your chances of getting better coverage at a better rate.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the documents that we have, I mean, they’re very, I mean, there’s a lot to them. And, now I’m not trying to say it’s a lengthy task. But, if I went to any client that we had and said, why don’t you prepare your own loss control document, and then get it back to me. I mean, it would take you months, and you’d probably still do it wrong. So the fact that we can say, well, this is the language they speak, this is what they’re looking for in your industry. All you have to do is basically say yes or no, with some comments, and you could rip through this thing in 30 minutes tops. And then we will have that document, we’ll submit it on your behalf and it’s going to help everybody involved. And certainly, I mean, ultimately the client. I mean, if you notice deficiencies in this document, it’s only going to serve you and the business to remedy that.

You know, it’s interesting, and you’ve got them for, I mean, we’re talking today about the automotive sector, but you’ve got them for virtually every kind of line of business that’s out there, don’t you?

Yeah, we’ve got dozens and dozens of documents, you know, loss control guides, safety manuals. I mean, you name it. Incident response plans, return to work. I mean, I just want to sort of pick one industry just to show very specifically what we have, and then what we’re developing to reference that, you know, depending on the class of business you’re in, we either are working on those documents or, or we already have them.

And just a reminder, these are available for free? Anybody can call you up and you’re quite willing to share these with them and whether they’re a client or no, and the whole idea is maybe someday they will be a client because they like being treated like this.

Absolutely. It’s all part of our risk reduction work that we do.

You’ve been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers, talking today about the hard insurance market and some ways that you as a business owner, or a business manager, can mitigate some of the potential increases that many in industry are seeing these days when it comes to renewing their commercial insurance policies.

Colin, as always, thank you. Appreciate it, and look forward to talking again next time.

I’m Paul Martin, thanks for joining us. And we’ll talk to you next time on Risky Business.

Welcome to Risky Business. Commercial insurance with Butler Byers. Paul Martin here, the business commentator on CKOM. And joining me is Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. And the guy who is the star of this show on a weekly basis so Colin welcome. And it is a little belated, but I’m going to say happy birthday to you too, but let’s get that out of the way. And I know you had lots [crosstalk].

Of people saluting you and sending you greetings. And so anyway, happy birthday from me as well.

Now today, we’ve talked a lot in the past about probably three themes that have, maybe four that have dominated what we’ve talked about for the last year. COVID being one of them of course, and another being cyber. The other big one you always referred to as the hard market, which is I guess it’s terminology you guys use, but it’s something that’s affecting businesses right across the country, across the world is that the insurance industry is having to replenish its treasury. And so that means higher premiums, lower coverage, yada, yada, all those stuff that goes with it.

I wonder today, if we could talk about trying to help people understand just what does that mean?

So I think it’d be helpful if we looked at a vertical, and said, here’s one industry, here’s how it’s affecting them. Here’s how they’re fighting back. So even if you’re not in this industry, it makes sense to listen to this because you’ll see, here are the steps you can do to mitigate what the big premium increases are coming. If that works for you, then we’ll just rock on that one.

Yeah, absolutely. And thanks again for the birthday wishes. I don’t feel as old as I am, but apparently 40 is my age, so I appreciate it. We have talked a lot about the hard market and I mean it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, it really does give our clients… When everyone is under the microscope, it does allow the clients that are working on risk management, working the plan, trying to grow and mitigate risk. I mean, this is where this is where the work shows up, right? So we’re saying that depending on your industry, you’re going to see low end increases of 20 to 30%, high end 400%. I mean, that’s the average. So now we know, okay, so the average competitor of yours is going to see, let’s just say 40% increase overall. That’s what’s average.

So you think those that really aren’t doing well, there is no plan. High frequency and severity of losses. I mean they’re going to be outside. They’re going to be in the 80, 90 percentile. They’re going to be in those classes of business where they may not get renewal terms at all. If they do higher deductibles, reduced capacity, more subscribers. But then on the other side of the coin, now’s the time to say, okay well, if the benchmark is this, what happens to the good businesses that are putting in the work, that really do care, that want to be a better customer to the insurance market. Where do they end up?

And I mean, I can’t promise you decreases over last year, but if we can document and say 40% is the benchmark and you got away with five, I mean, that is the result of your work. That’s the result of working the plan. And it’s a result of all the effort. And it just shows that the insurance industry, the market, is listening.

However, you have to speak their language. What are they after? What do they want to hear? We’ve talked about our reporting process and telling the story correctly. But to take it a step further, we were always working on documents that we can provide to our clients that we’ve developed, you can fill out, you can make your own, you can circulate those, you can review them. And then when the time comes, when we’re at renewal we’re looking to potentially remarket, or in this case, I tell you, “Hey you know, we’ve got a call from the insurance company. They want to send loss control in.” Well, what if you said. “Absolutely, in fact, we’ve done an internal loss control document. I’ll make sure that’s updated, ready to go when he or she arrives. And I’d love to actually compare notes and show them what we’ve done, what we’ve caught and how we’ve addressed that before they have a chance to.”

And today that’s what I want to talk about. I guess an industry in particular that would be impacted by the hard market and then documents that we have developed today to help with that.

All right. You made an interesting comment just before we get into talking about that specific industry. I just want to circle back to that. You said that in a hard market, this is actually the opportunity for those doing the work to shine. And normally you wouldn’t go looking for difficult times, but I guess that’s the time when the real quality and value surfaces.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you say, okay the opposite of a hard market would be a soft market. Where everyone’s fighting to the bottom. So if you’re working on risk and I say, “Hey during a time where really everyone’s undercutting everyone else, I was able to reduce your premium by 20%.” You never really know if that was the work you did, that was just good timing. And then you can talk to your other competitors and, “did you get an increase this year?” “No, no. We saved a ton.” “You putting a lot of work in?” “No, not really.” “Geez you know, we saved a bit, we sure are putting in a ton of work.” So I mean, it’s more apparent when times are tough, right?

The bad risks are going to see higher deductibles. They’re going to have trouble finding coverage. They’re going to have trouble finding broad coverage. And they’re going to be faced with reduced capacity, which we talked about insurance markets saying “I’m just not prepared to risk my money on your company based on what I’m seeing.” So if we explain for any class of business what’s going on in their market and what they should expect, and then the result is something different because they put in the work. I mean, this is where we can really show there is value… In addition to sort of operational performance. There is real value, come renewal time, to putting in the effort.

All right. Well let’s take a look at an example. Let’s take an industry group and let’s look at how are they faring in this and how does the industry look at them right now? And it’s renewal time for them and what are the best in class doing to mitigate any increases.

You’ve been working on one I know, so let’s have a talk about that.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to talk about the auto body industry kind of as a whole. And that’s everything from an auto body shop to sort of auto repair and everything in between.

Now, would they be the hardest hit? No. You know, somewhere in the middle. However, there is a lot going on. You’ve got big buildings with employees. You’ve got paint booths, potentially ventilation systems. You have… You’ve got dust and debris and spark creation, that sort of thing. You’ve got vehicles, whether you’re on the repair side, like auto repair or auto body. You’ve got vehicles that are in the care custody and control of the particular shop. And there’s a bunch of different lines of coverage that all come into play.

So it’s… You think, it seems like a fairly simple business model. However, from the insurance side, there still is a lot going on. And when you look at the industry they are one of those that rising frequency and severity of claims. And so therefore, certainly seeing the impacts of the hard market. There are fewer players that are even prepared to look at the class. And so if we’re reducing the number of insurers that are even prepared to look at this class of business, we’ve got to make sure that we’re putting our best foot forward, and that the best are getting, one, noted and also treated as such.

So what we’ve gone ahead and done is we’ve got, I guess, a series of documents and we’ve got more on the way, which, it looks like we got to take a break, so Ill probably

break. Because we’ll get you to start explaining this after we take just a couple of minutes. So we’ll be back right after this. You’re listening to Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. This is Risky Business back after this.

Welcome back to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers, Paul Martin here, and joining me Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers.

Colin, just before the break, you were kind of leading up to, or leaning towards some of these new publications that some new documentation that you guys have put together, which is designed to help those in the automotive auto repair, auto body business, and even if you’re not in those businesses, it’s still worth listening here because you can learn for your industry, similar examples, I’m thinking.

Yeah, absolutely. So I don’t want, you know, if you’re not in the auto body business or auto repair, I don’t want you to turn off the radio. You know, the point is, is we are developing documents consistently that are going to aid, you know, whatever industry you’re in, we usually have something and we’re always expanding that library. So if I don’t reference your class of business, not to say we don’t have it, but I want those that are listening to think along these lines.

So when it comes to autobody, you know, the auto industry in general, we’ve developed employee safety manuals for really all lines of business. That’s important because it’s not just about employee safety we cover, we cover what to do in a disaster, we cover sexual harassment, we cover return to work, we cover injured at work, it’s a very comprehensive, detailed package. Whereas, you know, if you don’t have anything in place now, it’s certainly a concern of the insurance industry that what’s going on there, are you open to litigation, is there going to be an employment practices lawsuit, are we going to hear about sexual harassment claims that sort of thing?

And so we’ve developed, again, the employee safety manual, which is very, very all encompassing, which you can review, make changes, make it your own, have everyone sign off on and implement basically right away. Now for anyone that’s listening and says, I’m a part of an association, I already have something or we’ve developed our own from scratch, this is a great document for you to just review, update, take what you like from this document, change it, that sort of thing. But again, it’s just showing that from an employment practices perspective, we are thinking about our clients, we are developing new documents and the auto industry is one of those.

The other document that we have that I’m particularly excited about is a loss control questionnaire. And we’ve talked about this in other industries before, and I just want to reiterate again, that depending on the industry you’re currently operating in like auto, every year or every few years, and certainly if you switch insurance companies, someone from their loss control department is going to stop by. Now, they are there to help, but they also are there to judge in a way, and they are certainly reporting back to the insurance company, what they find. So what we’ve done is said, okay, if we already know what they’re looking for, can we not develop a document that preemptively asks those questions of our clients? So then when the loss control inspector comes to your business, wouldn’t it be great for you to say, you know, I’m really glad you called, we have our own document, we’ve recently filled it out, I’d love to get it to you for your review and any tips you could offer. That would be fantastic.

Just imagine if that’s how that conversation went. And I’m not trying to imply again, that the loss control is a negative thing, but just imagine the conversation that’s going to be had at the insurance company level, once they leave your business and they see that you had your own questionnaire filled out prior, how excited that person is going to be writing up their report on what they found and the type of client they think you are.

Yeah, if you’re doing that kind of work on this, you must be doing good work in other areas too. So you’re probably a better looking prospect for somebody to insure.

You know, absolutely. And again, I’ve said on this show, the result of the loss control, it doesn’t result in, you know, you get a phone call from the broker. Look, they need to raise deductibles, they want off risk. I mean, in extreme cases, maybe, but at that point you’ve got the broker basically selling the wrong risk. So I don’t want to suggest that these are negative. However, if you talk, or if you’ve ever been through a renewal process, the underwriter has that loss control assessment. They see it, they’re very aware. And if you’ve done nothing to update the story, like you’ll get underwriters that will refer to a document that’s 10 years old.

You know, back 10 years ago, you had this and this and this problem, therefore I feel that this rate is warranted. And that’s the opinion if you don’t give them anything else to work with. So what if, even prior to a loss control inspector coming by, we just handed that in every year? Well, they did their own assessment, here it is, it’s filled out, here’s the notes, here’s what they found, here’s what they’ve addressed. And we add that to the renewal. You don’t have to be an underwriter to know it’s going to go a lot better with that information than without.

Do you typically see clients doing that?

Certainly not on their own. You know, I’ve personally never seen it on my own to say, you know, we’ve thought about this, we’ve prepared our own documentation and we would like you to have that and submit it on our behalf. You really almost never run into that.

So that’s why you built these step-by-step plans so that you can hand them to your clients and say, here, fill this out, and it will improve your chances of getting better coverage at a better rate.

Yeah, absolutely. And if you look at the documents that we have, I mean, they’re very, I mean, there’s a lot to them. And, now I’m not trying to say it’s a lengthy task. But, if I went to any client that we had and said, why don’t you prepare your own loss control document, and then get it back to me. I mean, it would take you months, and you’d probably still do it wrong. So the fact that we can say, well, this is the language they speak, this is what they’re looking for in your industry. All you have to do is basically say yes or no, with some comments, and you could rip through this thing in 30 minutes tops. And then we will have that document, we’ll submit it on your behalf and it’s going to help everybody involved. And certainly, I mean, ultimately the client. I mean, if you notice deficiencies in this document, it’s only going to serve you and the business to remedy that.

You know, it’s interesting, and you’ve got them for, I mean, we’re talking today about the automotive sector, but you’ve got them for virtually every kind of line of business that’s out there, don’t you?

Yeah, we’ve got dozens and dozens of documents, you know, loss control guides, safety manuals. I mean, you name it. Incident response plans, return to work. I mean, I just want to sort of pick one industry just to show very specifically what we have, and then what we’re developing to reference that, you know, depending on the class of business you’re in, we either are working on those documents or, or we already have them.

And just a reminder, these are available for free? Anybody can call you up and you’re quite willing to share these with them and whether they’re a client or no, and the whole idea is maybe someday they will be a client because they like being treated like this.

Absolutely. It’s all part of our risk reduction work that we do.

You’ve been listening to Colin Rooke, the Commercial Risk Reduction Specialist with Butler Byers, talking today about the hard insurance market and some ways that you as a business owner, or a business manager, can mitigate some of the potential increases that many in industry are seeing these days when it comes to renewing their commercial insurance policies.

Colin, as always, thank you. Appreciate it, and look forward to talking again next time.

I’m Paul Martin, thanks for joining us. And we’ll talk to you next time on Risky Business.

There’s some really interesting points here, Ryan. Sorry, Colin. I just want to … In a way, what I’m hearing you say is the insurance industry’s claims experience on the benefits side particularly really is a bit of a proxy for telling us how the overall health of the population is going. Because, I mean, yes, we get it from the public health officers. But they’re really worried about prevention mechanisms and restrictions and how do you keep it from spreading? And you’re saying, here’s what we’re seeing as how it’s actually impacting real people.

I think that’s a great perspective and every insurer has a different segment, different demographic structure. So, does one insurer have a blanketed perspective over the entire nation? I would say no, but certainly they would have a very good indication within their own blocks and pools of how the population is doing through this.

And I would guess that Colin’s point earlier, my initial response would have been, “Well, I can’t get into the dentist, or even if they are open now it’s on such restricted hours that there couldn’t be very many dental claims.” And you’re saying, “Yeah, that’s true. But that’s not the big one. The big one is really around the longer-term health of people in mental health and those kinds of things.” So it’s a very interesting perspective that there are commercial and economic implications to this that sometimes get overlooked.

For sure. The aspect of your dental comment there too. I would take that a one step further to say that employers have relaxed a little bit in what they’re allowing employees to do, so more and more are getting out to see their providers as they need it.

Well, that’s good. Well, thank you again, Ryan. As always, you bring some interesting insights and you a national perspective that sometimes we lack here. So thank you for that. You have been listening to Ryan Warner, the benefits specialist with Butler Byers and Colin Rooke the commercial risk reduction specialist at Butler Byers. I’m Paul Martin. You’re listening to Risky Business. Thanks for joining us. We’ll talk to you next time.

Oh, that’s hilarious, actually. Okay, we’re back on.

All right. You’re rolling?

Yep.

Welcome to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. Paul Martin here, your host. And joining me, Colin Rooke, the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. And we have a special guest joining us today. Ryan Warner, who’s the benefits specialist with Butler Byers, and has a national perspective as well, because he does work not just here, but right across the country. He is able to figure out some of the bigger trends that are going on.

Colin, before we bring Ryan in, we’re pretty much a year now into the COVID lockdown stuff. We’ve known about it for about 14, 15 months, and we probably know more about pandemics, and virus transmission, and COVID and stuff than most real people would’ve known in or ever imagined they would have needed to know. But as you look back now, I mean, do you have some thoughts or some observations from your business perspective? I mean, a year ago, you weren’t talking about this stuff. Today, how much are you talking about it?

You mean about COVID specifically? It is the basis of every single conversation, I would say, we have with our clients. We’re either explaining the impacts of COVID on the hard market, or impacts of COVID on, for example, the pricing of directors and officers insurance, or even the availability. We are apologizing for tardy return times due to challenges with COVID. Working with Lloyd’s of London and underwriters and adjusters on claims. And in fact that’s a really good topic for a future show is claims and COVID. One, it’s particularly difficult if you’re having any sort of work done. You have to be careful with … Well, I mean, obviously, exposure, right?

And then on the reno side, people think, “Oh great. I’m getting a thousand dollar reno. It’s like, “You are, but you got to keep in mind that you’re going to have your home full of people that are out and about and have their own circles.”

So, we are talking about it all the time at every renewal. And I’ll say every call that we have with our clients or prospects, some COVID element does come up. It’s not all bad. I mean, a lot of our conversations are, “Look, you’ve had some time to slow down and think about your business and look at your systems and your processes. Internally, I’ll say, we are continuously looking at lean systems, but we are revisiting all of our workflows after already going through lean to say, “Well, what can we automate now? What can we change? What did we learn from COVID?” And we’re even having conversations on the HR side around return to work, and who’s coming back, and mental health around how our people are feeling. Are they suffering from Zoom fatigue, or have they never been more energized with the flexibility of working from home? And I’d say for every one person that’s saying, “I can’t stand it”, there’s someone saying, “This is arguably the best thing, career-wise, that’s ever happened to me.” So it’s really all over the map.

It is all over the map. And there’s a saying that I really like that flows from times like this, which is, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. In the sense that when there’s a crisis that you’re facing, people are very motivated to accept, or attempt, or try new ideas. They’re very change oriented. And often you will hear the challenges that management, or leadership in general, of trying to encourage people to embrace change, because the status quo is just way easier and it’s a lot less frightening. But we are seeing change now. And I think you’re just describing it that way. And some of it’s good, some of it’s bad, and probably that’s what you would expect in any kind of a crisis.

Yeah. And it’s funny, the conversations that we’re having, I mean, I didn’t think on the risk reduction side that so much of it would ever be centered around one thing. I mean, I thought that maybe over the years we’ve gone too heavy on the cyber discussion, but of course it’s top of mind. And then now, if I bring up the idea of a disaster recovery plan with a client it’s, “Yeah, yeah. That’s good. Let’s talk about COVID stuff.” It’s just so top of mind that it’s really hard to get to the other risks, like having conversations around culture and cohesive management team. But if I phrase it with, how is the management team working during this period of COVID, are you remaining cohesive? Let’s talk about that. I can sneak it in that way. But I find if you don’t use the word COVID, it’s, “Hey, let’s talk about something important.”

Well, joining us also is Ryan Warner who is your benefits specialist, and Ryan, maybe I’ll just get you to jump in the conversation. You’d been hearing us talk here, and I don’t know if that sparked any thoughts for you. But I’m really just curious about, if we stick around that concept of change and that a crisis foments change, what changes are you seeing? How are businesses trying to improve their best practices?

Yeah, all of a sudden, I think it’s a little bit all over the place. Every industry’s handling this so differently. If we focus in on the frontline long-term care facilities in particular, they’re naturally just doing everything they can to stay at [inaudible 00:23:55]. To equate it, it’s kind of like drinking from a fire hose right now. It seems like there’s just a constant flow of information. So to adjust and do what they need to do to survive and get through this is all they can do. I’m fascinated in particular by how some of these homes and facilities are responding to having access to vaccinations, having access to their testing in homes. It’s a completely different ball game in that world versus most other industries. So best practices is one thing, but certainly just the evolution of the pandemic and how it’s impacting a specific industry is quite the conversation.

You mentioned, you singled out that industry and I think it’s interesting because they’ve been categorized as the high risk category and that vulnerable populations. And so they’ve been put to the front of the parade for vaccines and for the administration of vaccine. And I assume that as soon as you put any population, regardless of its size, front of the line, as you start to work your way through that population, you begin to learn things. Some people react differently than others. I’m guessing you’ve seen that too.

Definitely. I think about the employers and it seems so simple. Some things like, “Okay, we’re first out of the Gates to get vaccinated and we’re going to get as many people in here taking care of that way as possible.” And yet when you start to get into the challenging conversation of different viewpoints on who is and isn’t going to take a vaccine for one reason or another, that can really quickly derail what seems to be such a simple decision, at least in my humble opinion. And I don’t claim to be a vaccine expert.

But I mean, I’ve seen firsthand our own clients struggling to get the masses of their staff to agree to the fact of getting a vaccine. So, again, it just seems so simple that, here is the vaccine, it’s ready to be taken, and yet you’re going to have a whole number of folks that may decline it.

Isn’t that interesting. I mean, you do hear about people declining, but you’d think those on the frontline who actually experienced it more than any other segment of the population would be the ones to embrace it. And you say, “Well, don’t make assumptions.” It’s not necessarily so.

I’m floored by some of the things that I’ve heard and seen. I mean, again, I guess everyone’s entitled to their own belief system. And right now, I mean, just the nature of what we’re facing, where someone gets their information via their media source or their news source, it can skew someone’s perspective so quickly. And I’ve heard things anywhere from the vaccine could cause you not to be able to get pregnant in the future. I have no justification for that type of comment. I just can’t fathom how that’d be possible. But again, I’m not the expert.

Well, it is interesting. And I mean, it can be critical or not, but the fact is, there it is. That’s the viewpoint some people have. And it’s interesting to note, even at the political level, we hear phrases that we’ll have enough vaccine available for everyone who wants one. It’s not that everyone will have one, it’s everyone who wants one. So even at the highest levels politically, we’ve accepted that there are differing viewpoints on this. So you draw an interesting observation.

Listen, we’ve got to take a little break. We’re going to come back. And I want to pick this conversation up because this is the more fascinating piece of where the rubber hits the road in the next stage of the COVID crisis, which is vaccination rollout. So you’re listening to Risky Business Commercial Insurance with Butler Byers. Joining me today is Ryan Warner, is a benefits specialist. We’ll have him back after this short break.

Welcome back to Risky Business. Paul Martin here. And in studio is Colin Rooke, the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. And when I say in studio, I use that loosely because it’s the studio in his basement. But also joining us is Ryan Warner, who’s in his den at home as well. And he’s a benefits specialist. And Ryan, just before the break, we were talking about how what seems to be fairly straightforward isn’t necessarily straight forward, but there are always exceptions. Vaccinations, for example. Some people are refusing them. So you would think it was a fairly straightforward process. Not necessarily. I’m guessing that this is all part of the learning curve and it just makes things that much more complicated for employers, for insurance companies, for insurance brokers, for all of you that are playing through the whole system.

Yeah. Well, and intertwined in that same conversation is the very different worlds that are south of the border in the United States and here, and how employers that have bodies on both sides of the border are looking at this entire pandemic and how we get out of it, and the vaccines as it ties in. I mean, again, just the way things are handled south of the border versus here, it has a material difference on the perspective of the employers and how they’re trying to help their employees. So it’s been interesting times.

No kidding. But I guess while we’re talking really in the show, the theme is anomalies and how there’s change. But there is some things that don’t change too. Colin, you might want to chime in on this, but I’m thinking that one of our other perennial topics on this program is cyber security and cyber threats. I’m guessing they have not gone away through all of this and that that continues to be the thing that hasn’t changed.

No. Yeah, it’s growing, it’s getting worse. The cyber criminals, hackers, if you want to call them that, are very aware that it’s easier to intercept employees logging in remotely than being inside the confines of the server and the firewall. So there’s a lot more low hanging fruit. And I think too, just you think about people just being globally distracted on top of that. You look at the number and volume of just online activity, online transactions. You can’t go to your local store, so you have less savvy consumers looking for items that they can’t find, or they aren’t able to, or willing, to pick up in person.

So one of the new trends, of course, well, it’s not a new trend, it’s just increasing exponentially, is just fake websites, essentially. You think you’re getting the cat house that you couldn’t find locally, or again, didn’t want to pick up or couldn’t find it on Amazon. And so you find a website, well, they’re not really selling cat houses. They are just stealing information. And so it’s growing, but it’s also changing. The cyber criminals always seem to be not even one step, several steps ahead of the public at large. And it’s just getting worse from a claims perspective.

One of the new topics that is really emerging on the personal line side, or individual insurance, is also, do individuals need to purchase cyber liability or breach coverage? Which it’s certainly gaining traction, and I think in the next year will be a common topic.

You think we might see that where it’s an add on to your home policy or something?

Yeah. It’s available. It’s just, like cyber liability for businesses, it’s just been slow. People think, “Well, that’s not going to happen to me, or what do I have that someone else might want?” But again, if you’ve ever had your information stolen, you can have your own business interruption claim, meaning there could be impacts to your daily lives. And so it is available as an add on to some, I’ll say, not all home insurance policies, but you can also buy standalone coverage, and it’s growing. It’s just, unfortunately, it takes more individuals to be effected and then suffer a large loss as a result, that will get more people talking about it and then buying the coverage as a result. And that’s what’s certainly happening now.

Ryan, I’m going to get you to jump in. You see a lot more stuff nationally than either Colin or I would. This whole notion of cyber threats, I’m assuming you’re seeing that nationally as well. And perhaps even more accentuated in larger population-based communities, such as say Southern Ontario.

Yeah. The insurance industry is certainly … This is not a foreign topic. This is something that they would be working with consistently. I happen to be married to a compliance and privacy manager at one of the major insurers. So I happened to hear about these types of things far more than most. From my own perspective, I mean, just the simple, subtle things that a plan administrator or business should be doing as best practices is just consistently keeping an eye out on who they’re delegating access to.

The insurers provide a fairly open stream for plan administrators to provide that access. And it is the responsibility of [inaudible 00:33:51] admin to terminate somebody’s access if they’re no longer with the company. I was actually recently working on a case where a plan administrator hadn’t been with the company for several years and had still maintained their access. Fortunately, it didn’t seem that they were aware of it. But the nature of that is here’s someone that hasn’t been with the company for many years and still could log in and access old data. So important that the clients are being diligent about that. That’s for sure.

I’m assuming that involves things like checklists and just best practices, standard operating procedures. The heat was never under this one before, right? Nobody paid attention to it. All of a sudden now it’s been elevated on the list of priorities and potential threats. And it’s not a bad idea for employers to go back and take a look and say, “Are all our systems up date?”

If it’s not on your annual checklist, I mean, I would at least make sure it is annually to double check who’s got access, who should have access, and certainly who should not.

Well, that’s most interesting. And I’m just curious, is there a specific COVID over lay on this? Has any of this become more accentuated because COVID is on us?

Based on a couple of current scenarios that I’ve been facing, I don’t know that it’s specific to COVID, but I mean, I can certainly speak to the fact that the insurers are very quickly having to evolve their technology and their systems to defend against all that Colin was already talking about. The nature of everyone booting home and now working from your home office or your dining room table. I mean, it’s a whole different ball game now versus working in one structure with a sound security.

Well, Ryan, I want to thank you for sitting in with us. Your insights are always very useful. And Colin, we’ve got maybe a half a minute left in today’s time allocation. I’ll just give it to you to offer some overview comments or summarize what you’ve heard here. What should we be watching for?

Well, I think just on the nature of cyber security on the both have benefits and PNC and personal lines, it’s education is key. For the individuals listening to the show, teach yourself, look into it, know how you as an individual could be impacted. But as far as the organization’s concerned, take privacy breach very seriously. We hadn’t ran into or thought of the idea that, “Well, failure to remove a password could cause a data breach from an old employee poking around.” And the thing is, depending on what sort of information was accessible, they don’t even need to prove that that employee was in there as much as that they could have been, and they don’t know what they did or didn’t do over the years. I mean, if we’re talking a three-year span, you really can’t track. So education and awareness is just key.

Awareness. That is hopefully what we’re bringing to the fore today. So thank you as always, Colin. Colin Rooke, the commercial risk reduction specialist with Butler Byers. You’ve been listening to Risky Business. Thanks for joining us. We’ll talk to you next time.