Guide offers commercial buyers insurance road map

A comprehensive Insurance Efficacy guide to help Airmic members purchase the best possible cover for their organisations was launched yesterday (Tuesday June 17) at this year’s Airmic conference in Birmingham.

The document aims to help buyers work successfully within the UK legal system, which the association believes to be weighted against commercial policyholders.

The guide says it is essential to ensure terms and conditions are agreed fully and in writing before policies come into force, and that the wordings are understood and well tested in advance. In many cases this will mean bringing forward the renewal process to allow more time.

Over the past five years Airmic has produced a series of guides, protocols and model clauses that highlight pitfalls in the insurance-buying process and recommend ways to avoid them.

The new guide brings these topics and other aspects of the commercial insurance process into a single document, together with more general advice on how to ensure that claims are paid as expected. It includes advice on process and timing, and checklists on what needs to be done.

“Airmic’s Insurance Efficacy Guide has been a huge undertaking. It distils decades of experience accumulated by senior risk managers,” said Airmic chair Chris McGloin, who also heads the association’s Insurance Steering Group.

“A key message for any risk manager is to get things right at the start, and to leave nothing to chance.”