Insurance companies have a role to play in business continuity awareness. Despite recent events, awareness of business continuity issues such as computer security and data back-up remains low, especially in the small to medium enterprise business (SME) area.
Increasing levels of exclusion clauses in insurance policies and soaring insurance rates have left the average SME in need of some sound business advice, or at the very least somewhere to turn, to get answers to business continuity issues.
Insurance companies now have an increasingly important role to play in raising awareness among their customers, so that together, they can find a solution to benefit both the insurer and the insured.
According to the Business Continuity Institute, there has been a significant rise in the communication of business continuity plans to insurers, up from 16% in 2002 to 29% in 2003. Yet for many industries such communication has not been a way of reducing premiums but instead, has been their only chance of getting insured in a sector desperate to minimise exposure.
Terrorism may have raised awareness of the need for business continuity but it is the day-to-day threats to business that most insurance companies encounter frequently with their customers in formulating corporate insurance that need to be addressed if the UK is to minimise business loss and avoid unnecessary business failure before it is too late.
Graeme Howe
Event director
Business Continuity, The Risk Management 2004
Send letters to: Insurance Times, 30 Cannon Street, London, EC4M 6YJ or email
letters@instimes.co.uk or fax : 020 7618 3499
