Zurich Canada Issues ‘White Paper’ on Drones & Risk Management

Zurich Canada has released a new white paper on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly referred to as drones at the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) Canada Conference in Québec City.

Entitled, “Hovering Over Opportunities: Managing risk with drones, and managing drone risk,” Zurich said the “white paper was created as a discussion starter for insurance brokers, risk managers and other stakeholders interested in exploring the many risk management applications available with the use of drones.” It also discusses “some of the new risks companies may be exposing themselves to by using drones, with suggestions on how to mitigate them.”

The white paper “builds on Zurich’s thought leadership and value proposition around drones,” the announcement explained. “In April of this year, Zurich Canada launched its drones insurance package, a tailor-made insurance solution with first- and third-party coverage for corporate clients in Canada that want to make use of drones in their operations.”

Since launching the last April, Zurich Canada has issued “a number of policies and seen a steady stream of interest” from its customers who are involved in using drones. “We want to support our customers that wish to embrace new technologies by helping them understand and protect themselves from the risks the new technologies create,” said Urs Uhlmann, CEO, Global Corporate, Zurich Canada.

He added that the “white paper lays out some of the big issues that our customers need to think about as they move into this area,” which were listed as follows:
• Drone use in the civil and commercial sectors is expected to grow exponentially. UAS industry groups predict that the global drone market will be fast approaching US$100 billion in 10 years from now.
• Using drones for risk management can save lives and save money. Drones are well-suited for a wide variety of risk management tasks that involve visual inspection, surveillance and reconnaissance. They can also remove the need for human presence in some dangerous situations. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has estimated that averting the death of a single cell tower climber with a drone could save as much as US$ 9.2 million.
• Operating a drone is a serious aviation activity. For many companies, the staffing, skills and operational procedures required to operate a drone safely may lie outside its core competencies. Operator training, along with maintenance and safety procedures, borrowed from the aviation industry, is important starting points for mitigating drone risk.

Zurich described its “support for the development of safe commercial drone applications” as one of the ways the company “is embracing new and disruptive technologies around the world. Last week, Zurich announced that it has been appointed as the insurance associate to CityMobil2, an EU-funded research project that is staging tests of automated road transport systems with self-driving buses across Europe.”

Source: Zurich Canada