Earthquakes, floods and wildfires … oh my!

“First and foremost, have some sort of plan. It doesn’t have to be a million dollar plan for the smaller operators but communication needs to be spelled out.” – David Losson

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans area office of Crump Insurance Services was left without a home, like hundreds of other local businesses. But fortunately for Crump, a multi-line wholesale insurance brokerage servicing the excess, surplus and specialty lines marketplace, a disaster recovery plan laid waiting to launch into action.

Insurance Journal Publisher Mark Wells spoke with David Losson, director of information technology for Crump Insurance Services, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, on how the firm stayed afloat to serve their retail agency clients after the storm.

To view the interview, which took place at the National Association of Surplus Lines Offices’ mid-year meeting in Phoenix, Ariz., visit www.insurancejournal.com/videos.

IJ’s Mark Wells: David, tell us a little bit about the problems Crump Insurance Services encountered after Hurricane Katrina and how you were able to get the New Orleans office back up online.

David Losson: Well, like many business located in the New Orleans area, we were heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Immediately we put into place or executed our disaster, recovery, and business continuity plan to try to recover those operations as quickly as possible. However, situations dictate for some flexibility; by having a plan in place it gave us options. We utilized the detail, infrastructure, and communication lines in our plans to really do some open field scrambling. I don’t think any of us had really anticipated a disaster of the magnitude of Katrina and the length of time we were really looking at. With our plans in place and resources available to us from some of our other operations in the Gulf Coast area, namely our Houston office, we were able to very quickly get our operations back up and functioning in Houston.

Wells: What was the biggest single issue–was it communications, or office space?

Losson: Initially it was communications. We had available office space in our Houston operation that was sufficient to house the New Orleans operation. However, communication was limited. One of the real life savers for us is we established an 800-number as part of our business continuity planning where announcements could be posted. So when we needed to communicate with folks, we could post an announcement there, and they could dial into this number once they got to a situation where they had phone service.

Another interesting aspect is once folks evacuated from Katrina, while they could not receive calls on their cell phones, text messaging worked. That led to some interesting situations … We were text messaging without staff as they were scattered trying to gather in the Houston area.

Wells: How long after the hurricane hit did it take you to get things back in order where you could conduct business?

Losson: Within three days we were literally back … e-mail was functional, PCs were functional, and our staff was able to communicate. Actually even a little sooner than that. Full functional operation took a little longer simply due to the fact that we couldn’t get access to our backup tapes. A real eye opener is when you have a vendor who is rotating your tapes to a secure facility and you can’t get to them. You think you’ve taken care of every possible problem and then these surprises happen.

Wells: As chief technology officer for Crump, tell us a little about some of the other things you do with Crump besides disaster planning and disaster recovery plans.

Losson: We support the group with our main systems, e-mail, WAN, LAN infrastructure. A lot of tech support for brokers and our support staff across the group.

Wells: Anything else you want to add about the situation in Louisiana?

Losson: I think it’s a testament to the employees of our New Orleans office of how well they weathered the storm, literally and figuratively. Our operation is back fully functional in their office space, fully remodeled, and we were able to continually serve our customers and our clients and it’s really a testament to their dedication.

Wells: So you were able to help your retail agency clients continue to do business through Crump?

Losson: Absolutely. One of the early challenges we had was communicating with those retail brokers who are clients of our New Orleans office and we did that through various means, including through our Web site. We also did blast faxes to get the word out where to send claims and any other correspondence, which again was in our Houston location. So, being an organization of our size we had the benefit of having those other resources in those other locations to leverage.

Wells: Are there any lessons you could share that any office could benefit from in a fire, hurricane, what ever the national disaster is?

Losson: First and foremost, have some sort of plan. It doesn’t have to be a million dollar plan for the smaller operators but communication needs to be spelled out, alternative locations, cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and alternative gathering points. A whole host of things and you don’t have to spend a tremendous amount of money to have an effective disaster recovery/business continuity plan but having no plan is really inexcusable in this day and age and we’ve seen the weather patterns, the terrorist attacks, and other things, strike.

Wells: Quakes in California. Floods in the Midwest.

Losson: And wild fires in Texas.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Wildfire Flood Hurricane