Emergency officials and hurricane experts pointed out essential steps agencies should take to prepare for the hurricane season which begins in 90 days: Have a backup system up and running, and perform regular checks to make sure the systems work.
“If you don’t do anything else, move your website out of the local area so that in case of a catastrophe you can communicate with your employees and customers and provide them with information about how to contact you,” Richard Roy Jr., Artizan Insurance Services, advised an overflow crowd of attendees at the Feb. 22 Independent Insurance Agents of Dade County’s All Industries Day 2006 in Miami, Fla. The event featured a exhibits, a tax workshop and a panel that discussed “Lessons Learned and How to Prepare for the Next Hurricane Season.”
Panelists, who speeded through a list of now-accepted precautions and preparations to make before a catastrophe occurs, included: Leslie Chapman-Henderson, Federal Alliance for Safe Homes; Frank Reddish, Miami-Dade County Office of Emergency Management; Richard Roy Jr., Artizan Insurance Services; George Thomas, PBS&J; Tim Woodcock, Courtesy Computers; Kathy Nicotra-Duffy, TR Jones; and Tony Martely, IIADC president with Elliott, McKiever, Stowe.
Reddish said not to depend on communicating with cellular phones and advised agents to obtain analog phones that do not need electricity to operate. He outlined his efforts to prepare for the upcoming season, while still coping with debris piled up from Hurricane Wilma. He explained that contractors who would ordinarily be available to help clean up debris are busy in other states.
No matter what the size of the agency, panelists said that it is essential to have a catastrophe plan and to practice by “pulling the plug” to make sure the plan works.
Roy pointed out that the clients of most agencies are not geographically consistent. He said policyholders not in an area where a catastrophe has occurred still expect to receive the same level of service, even if their agent is without services.
“Agents are expected to be the last to leave, the first to return and must offer uninterrupted service,” Roy said. “It’s essential to establish a virtual agency in a safe area.”
According to Roy, it will cost an agency an average of 30 cents per policyholder per month to guarantee its telephone will be answered during any crisis.
“In times of crisis an agent will be lucky if he can find his employees,” Roy said. “If the catastrophe is local, you’re behind from the start.”
Roy said that in times of wind events or other similar catastrophe’s, he believes in a ten-times formula.
“If an agency routinely averages 200 calls a day, during a catastrophe you can expect ten times the calls,” he explained. “That means an agency will receive 2,000 calls. At the same time, the formula is proportional, every day an agency is without communications, the calls double, 4,000, the second day, 8,000 the third, and so on.”
Woodcock agreed, saying only a small number of agencies have a disaster plan.
“Everyone needs what I call a business continuation plan,” Woodcock explained. “It’s essential to have all business and policyholder data backed up and recoverable, otherwise the business goes away.”
Woodcock advised agencies to replicate critical server information off site. He said that with every change at the main office the same changes should be replicated at the remote site. He conceded that this isn’t always cost-effective, until downtime occurs. He recommended combining a backup system with offsite storage.
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