Insurance Agents are in the business of advising their clients how to survive catastrophes, and frequently these same agents do not bother to examine how they will survive catastrophes. At our office, we have gone through an extensive disaster planning review. Here are some of the key elements of what our plan is to survive a disaster.

Create Redundant Systems
We have made sure that our critical communications and information systems have at least two different ways of functioning after a natural disaster.

• Our telephone system, which includes switchboard answering as well as direct dialing, has the ability to be pointed to a third party to answer the call which in fact may be a company like Agency 24/7, or to individual employee phones, or to our redundant copper wire emergency phone lines.
• Our connection to the internet is through a fiber optic DSL line, but we also can switch our internet connections to a Cablevision line.
• Our Data System uses on site back-up tapes, but we are also backing up on the DSL line to a remote back up site run by a company by the name of Ebackup Inc..
• We have installed automatic generators at both our offices for redundant electrical supply to LIPA.

As a result of having the flexibility of these redundant systems, we can plan our response to a natural catastrophe like a hurricane, or a specific catastrophe like a fire in our building.

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Our Plans for a Hurricane would include the following responses:

• We would point all of our telephone numbers to Agency 24/7, and after the hurricane occurs all calls we would normally receive would be received by this third party vendor. They in turn have a copy of our data so that when an insured calls them, they would look up the insured’s name, find out the appropriate insurance company’s name, and ask the insured to call the insurance company’s claims reporting line. They would then send us an e-mail informing us that the insured has had a claim, or, in the case of very serious claims, they would call us on designated cell or satellite telephones.
• In addition to this transferring of telephone responsibilities, prior to the storm we have also put two carpenters on retainer and they have agreed to come and hang up precut plywood panels on all the windows in our two offices.
• Both offices have automatic generator systems so that after the hurricane has come through, we can go back to the offices, remove the panels, and if there is no damage to our equipment, take back our phones and handle the claims ourselves.
• If the damage is extensive in the main location, we have retained an office trailer company by the name of Agility Systems who will move in a double-wide trailer into our rear parking lot, that is equipped with desks, phones, computers, servers, internet functions and generators so that we can operate out of the trailer while we recover our main offices.

In the event of a fire or other building specific disaster that makes it impossible for us to occupy our building, we will follow many of the steps enumerated above in case a hurricane makes it unable to use our building.

Other options we considered are taking our Agency Management System on line, sending our employees home, and pointing their individual Direct Dial numbers to their own locations so they can work out of their homes while we recover our main site.

The cost of all these plans is equal to less than one half of one percent of our income in our agency. The agency represents the largest personal asset of each of it’s owners, and therefore it is critical that we are able to function, satisfy our customers and companies in case of a natural disaster or fire. This seems like a very small investment in insuring our future.

P.S. If you are doing anything different that you think is better, please e-mail me at jmcguirk@droins.com