Risk managers need to learn lessons from the ongoing World Trade Centre Trial, said the president of the New York chapter of the Risk and Insurance Management Society.
Swiss Re's leading lawyer, Barry Ostranger, has argued that the role of Silverstein Properties' risk manager in placing insurance demonstrated that the insurers of the complex had agreed to an insurance binder which defined the disaster as a single event.
Developer Larry Silverstein and the Port Authority of New York are contesting this claim, saying the terrorist attacks were defined as two events under a different insurance binder.
Brendan Cahalan said one of the most important lessons for the insurance industry from September 11 was that the industry needed to do a better job of understanding what is being bought and sold.
"It takes so long for insurance companies to produce policies that these types of disagreements are inevitable," he said. "This court case shows how much money can be involved."
Risk managers cannot anticipate everything that might happen to their organisations, but they must be able to anticipate how their insurers would respond to any imaginable scenario, said Jim Crockett, a Colorado-based risk and benefits manager.
