25 Quick Tips To Get Started With Your Risk Management Planning (Part 3/5)

This is the third installment of five blog posts that summarize the 25 quick tips from my eBook, “Insurance Premiums Are Killing My Business.”  This risk management ebook is a great start for small to medium-sized business owners that are curious about starting the risk management planning process.

The tips below have been written with small to medium-sized businesses in mind, although the same principles should be employed by very large businesses.

Click here if you want to review risk management tips 1 – 5  before going on.

Click here to read risk management tips 6 – 10. 

Risk Management Tips 11 – 15

3 Steps You Must Take TODAY to Reduce Your Software Risks

It’s a normal human tendency to stay optimistic and believe that you are immune from disaster. We say, “that’ll happen to other people, I’ll hope for the best and focus on my day-to-day activities.”

Here are 3 things you can do TODAY to reduce your software risks:

1. Create a Crisis Phone Tree

11 Reasons Your Laptop Will be Hacked and How to Immediately Prevent it.

John Downey is the Vice President of Software Development at ClearRisk Inc. The ClearRisk team is excited to share John’s technical expertise to help you manage technology risk at your organization. 

It seems like every day now that we hear about another company’s network or laptop being hacked, or a business accidentally revealing confidential files. From Stanford Hospital exposing 20 000 patient records to the hacker attack on Sony that compromised 71 million accounts, even the largest and most seemingly secure organizations are susceptible to data insecurity.

Collaborating with the IT security experts here at ClearRisk, I’ve created a list of 11 easily preventable mistakes almost everyone unknowingly makes. I’ve also provided information security tips that are necessary to help prevent data insecurity as a result of these common mistakes.

Top 11 Easily Prevented Information Security Threats:

1. Using the same password for multiple account.

Never use the same password for two separate accounts. This is especially important for your email; if a hacker can gain access to your email, it’s likely that they can also get into other important accounts from your email, such as your online bank account. Think about this: if you sign up for a service, providing your email and creating the same password you use for your email, this is the only information the wrong person needs to gain access to everything else. 

At the very least, you can create different groups of passwords. For example, create one password to be used for your email, one to be used for your banking, and another for all low security accounts. Ideally, you should use a password generator or manager that allows you to create passwords that are impossible to guess.

Read more

10 Ways Risk Management Will Recession-Proof Your Brokerage

We aren’t technically in a recession (that we know of), but it’s not looking good!  Troubled economic times make your clients and prospects price shop; that increased competition is the icing on the cake for brokers who are also struggling with the economy.  A slight change in approach can go a long way towards growing brokerage revenues and weathering the economic storm. 

I once gave a presentation to a large regional brokerage on risk management, how they could use it to help them attract and retain clients and, of course, make more money.  Everyone in that room nodded at the right time, laughed at the right time, and said all the right things – my presentation seemed to be on track.  However, when I was done, a senior partner in the room piped up and said, “That all sounds really good, but we make money by selling insurance policies.”  That was back in 2004 – things have changed since then.

Now, risk management is a value-added service that is often considered essential by insureds. I’ve discussed this topic in many posts before, including the post Using Risk Management to Increase Brokerage Revenue.

As a trusted advisor, your clients already expect you to help them manage risk.  In fact, many of your insureds, if asked, would tell you that their insurance broker is their risk manager.  You already have their confidence in dealing with risk, so why not take it to the next level?

10 Ways Risk Management Will Increase Brokerage Revenue:

1. Satisfy your customers

Make no mistake, in these especially trying times, risk management has become the single most critical issue in the mindset of your target customer – if you don’t offer your customers a more robust and personalized service, by finding ways to minimize the cost of risk, they will find a broker who does.

Read more

Risk Management Interview: Nowell Seaman at RIMS Canada

This is the first installment of the Risk Management Interview series on the ClearRisk blog.  Over my business trips, I’ve had the opportunity to meet many risk management thought leaders. I decided it would be a great idea to gather the opinions of various risk management and insurance professionals to share on our risk management blog, and so began this series.

From September 18 to the 21, I am attending the RIMS Canada Conference in Ottawa. This conference gathers risk management and insurance professionals together to learn more about what’s going on in the industry and to share ideas and strategies.

In this short video, I interview Nowell Seaman at the RIMS Canada Conference 2011 in Ottawa. Nowell is the risk manager of the University of Saskatchewan, and he is on the board of directors for RIMS.

I asked Nowell what was on his mind in terms of risk management this week. 
Read more

RIMS Canada Conference: 10 Years Post 9/11

September 11, 2001 is this generation’s Kennedy assassination. It’s the day when everyone knows exactly where they were and what they were doing when they first found out about it. For risk managers in Canada, that day was spent in Ottawa at the RIMS Canada Conference.

I was walking through the exhibit hall when a friend with BI&I (the Hartford Steam Boiler -Munich Re) asked if I had heard what happened. I spent the rest of the day mesmerized and horrified in front of my hotel room TV. The rest of the conference was sombre and serious as we thought about our industry friends and colleagues that were among the victims that day.

In a few days, risk managers from across Canada and many from the US will once again gather in Ottawa, the nation’s capital. The annual RIMS Canada conference runs from September 18th through 21st. I suspect there will be a lot of reflection about what has changed in the world of risk and risk management since that dreadful day. The short answer: everything.

Read more

The 6 Biggest Risks Concerning Small Businesses

I recently participated in an interview on the risks faced by SMBs with Pam Clark of Business Insurance.   Matthew Brodsky of Risk & Insurance Magazine, Jon L. Gelman an expert on worker’s compensation and I set out to give small business owners some useful advice on their most pressing risk management issues. Go here to view the full interview.

Matthew and Jon provided some excellent answers, so the entire article is well worth reading! For the benefit of our readers, I want to reiterate 6 important points we covered.

Early Risks to Address

Read more

Risk Management: The Disney Approach

On a recent family vacation to Disney World, my mind couldn’t help but wander back to the office as I walked around the various theme parks.

I have met Disney’s risk manager, Stephen Wilder, in the past and have seen him speak on risk management at Disney.  I have also noticed various aspects of it here on previous trips, but this time, something occurred to me that hadn’t before.

Read more

How to Reduce Social Media Risk in Your Company: A LinkedIn Discussion

The risk involved with social media is not a new topic. In fact, we talked about it last year in our blog post Social Media Policy: Avoiding a Death-Blow! This is still a relevant topic; with the popularity of social media ever increasing, businesses must prepare for the risks that come along with the opportunities that social media provides.

I asked the LinkedIn community “How do you handle the risk of social media in your company?” With such a great response, I had to share the discussion. Here’s what several LinkedIn professionals had to say.

Read more

Risk Management is a Team Sport

This week, ClearRisk is proud to present a guest blog post by Allan R. Morton, Jr. CIC, CRM.

Allan is the managing partner of Morton Insurance & Risk Management.  15 years in the industry is marked by his passion to drop money to their bottom line and increase negotiating leverage with insurers via proactive risk management.  He is a Certified Insurance Counselor as well as Certified Risk Manager.

One of the biggest challenges I have is how to keep a prospective client’s eyes from glazing over when the phrase “Risk Management” is mentioned.  It’s almost like those two words are part of a magical incantation which puts many in upper management into trance-like states.  It confounds me. There is something utterly unglamorous about it I suspect.  It’s not exciting, flashy, or as sexy as landing a big deal.

Read more