Prepared Buildings - Reducing Your Exposure to Risk & Loss
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•230 views
Address gaps in your risk management program! Presented by: Kathleen M. Nickerson Learn the essential tips for preparing your team or organization for an unplanned event, accident, or liability incident. Find simple ways to insulate your liability by managing COIs and Contracts more effectively! Register to view presentations On-Demand: http://be.buildingengines.com/Webinar-On-Demand-Prepared-Buildings.html
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (12)
More from Building Engines
More from Building Engines (9)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Prepared Buildings - Reducing Your Exposure to Risk & Loss
- 1. Reducing your exposure to risk & loss
- 2. Kathleen M. Nickerson SVP, Robert M. Currey & Assoc. About Kathleen: Kathleen has over 30 years experience addressing the insurance and risk management needs of large, diversified real estate clients. She chairs the Real Estate Practice of Robert M. Currey & Associates, Inc. - the largest independent risk management consulting firm in the nation. Ms. Nickerson is a highly respected and well known professional in corporate risk management and has appeared on the PBS's Jim Lehrer Report to explain the impact of terrorism when structuring insurance programs that include properties in high risk areas. Ms. Nickerson has presented and participated in seminars on many insurance and risk management topics including the NMHC Property/ Risk Management Forum.
- 3. Prepared Buildings Reducing Your Exposure to Risk & Loss Register for the Complete Real Estate Operations Masters Series! Now Available On-Demand: Event Videocast: Executive Briefing Sarah Fisher Breakfast-The Energy Roadmap sfisher@buildingengines.com Marketing & Communications Webinar: Emergency Preparedness Building Engines Go to: www.buildingengines.com
- 4. Prepared Buildings Reducing Your Exposure to Risk & Loss Today‟s Webinar Topics •What are some of the key drivers causing building owners and operators to increase their levels of risk management activities? •What are key best practices for how companies are managing risk? •How does Kathy recommend you get started? •What are the key criteria for a successful program – what does management need to do, who needs to be involved?
- 5. State of the Industry Risk & Liability A formula for risk management policy & procedure Economic Downturn Increase in Natural & Terrorist Events Increased Concerns About Costs! $$
- 6. Primary Drivers for Risk Management What other factors are driving interest in risk management? •Transparency from investors •Investment and SEC regulations •Increase in catastrophic events/losses worldwide
- 7. Evaluating Your Risk Management Program Operational Facilities Oversight Internal Current Risk Insurance Brokers vs. Management vs. Consultants Procedures Carriers Contractual Transfers
- 8. Indentifying Your Exposure to Risk Many Companies Outsource Specific Risk Management Functions to Professionals: •Environmental •Structural •Terrorism •Insurance •Fire & Life Safety •Etc.
- 9. First Steps: Risk Management Program 1 Choose an area an area to focus on first i.e. Physical Assets Are they properly maintained? Are they in terrorist-prone areas? Are they in natural disaster-prone areas?
- 10. First Steps: Risk Management Program 1 Choose an area an area to focus on first i.e. Contractual Do your contracts cover all parties-Tenants, vendors, contractors, loans? Is the coverage sufficient for each? Are the requirements for each achievable?
- 11. First Steps: Risk Management Program 2 Analyze the history of the property What are the past losses? What is unique to the portfolio? What corrections have been made? What is the likelihood of an event occurring again?
- 12. First Steps: Risk Management Program 3 Standardize Safety Procedures Are all building systems up to date? Do you have an emergency preparedness plan? What is your emergency broadcast plan? Do you have safety procedures in place for all stakeholders?
- 13. Creating Your Risk Management Team Commitment is necessary from top management- there is time and cost associated with doing the right thing! •CFO •General Counsel •Controller •Human Resources
- 14. Dealing With Resource Constraints Identify Areas of Low Hanging Fruit! What are some of the quick and simple things that can be done to help improve your exposure to loss, or your exposure to risk? Even small investments in risk management can have big insurance pay offs
- 15. The Critical Elements That Impact Success 1 Support from the Top 2 Consistency & Standardization 3 Communication to all Parties and Properties
- 16. Contracts, Insurance, and COIs! “Insurance is a dirty word to a lot of people, because it’s not always the most fun, or easiest arena to navigate… “ Tip: Do a contract Tip: Law firms review. Make often use corporate boilerplate decisions that all language in all of your contracts of their must maintain contracts that certain standards is outdated!
- 17. Risk Management: The Role of Technology Technology simplifies, automates and centralizes all of your risk management initiatives. COI Incident Tracking Tracking Reduced Emergency Risk Broadcast Life Messaging Safety Fire Visitor Safety Access
- 18. Certificates of Insurance “In addition to the „paper‟ COI, have a contract in writing that they must maintain it.”
- 19. Tracking Your Risk Management Efforts Don’t stick your head in the sand! The result: You are become more attractive to tenants, investors and insurance companies! The best pre-event risk management strategy is to adhere to Best Practices: •Address issues quickly •Establish and emergency preparedness program •Hold on-site training sessions
- 20. Kathleen M. Nickerson SVP, Robert M. Currey & Assoc. About Kathleen: Kathleen has over 30 years experience addressing the insurance and risk management needs of large, diversified real estate clients. She chairs the Real Estate Practice of Robert M. Currey & Associates, Inc. - the largest independent risk management consulting firm in the nation. Ms. Nickerson is a highly respected and well known professional in corporate risk management and has appeared on the PBS's Jim Lehrer Report to explain the impact of terrorism when structuring insurance programs that include properties in high risk areas. Ms. Nickerson has presented and participated in seminars on many insurance and risk management topics including the NMHC Property/ Risk Management Forum.
- 21. Reducing your exposure to risk & loss
Editor's Notes
- Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today for our Real Estate Operations Masters Series. Today’s topic is Prepared Buildings: reducing your exposure to risk and loss. My name is Sarah Fisher, Marketing Communications Director at Building Engines, and we are sponsoring today’s presentation. This Webinar is part of our ongoing Real Estate Operations Masters Series, where we present expert content from industry leaders on a variety of important building and facilities operations topics, at no charge to you. In addition to today’s webinar, we have prepared other content on this topic including video vignettes, checklists and articles that we will be sharing with you over the coming days and weeks, so please look for those as follow-up to the webinar.
- Our featured speaker today is Kathy Nickerson, Senior Vice President at Robert M. Currey & Associates, an outsourced risk management consulting firm in Boston. Kathy is a 27-year veteran of the firm, and has worked in risk management for her full tenure, primarily in real estate. During Kathy’s time at the firm, Robert M Currey has moved from working across multiple industries to being a specialist in real estate risk management consulting, so she has a really rich perspective on these topics to share with us today. Welcome Joe, Kathy thank you for joining us today.KATHY NICKERSON: Oh, you’re very welcome. Thanks for having me join this, and I look forward to participating with everyone.
- This webinar is part of our Real Estate Operations Masters Series, and we have some upcoming events:
- And with that, let’s get back to today’s topic of risk management. As we prepared the agenda today, we thought some of the questions you may have for Kathy include:What are some of the key drivers causing building owners and operators to increase their levels of risk management activities?What are key best practices for how companies are managing risk?How does Kathy recommend you get started?What are the key criteria for a successful program – what does management need to do, who needs to be involved?So Kathy, let’s get started. You have such an extensive history and background in risk management, could you start by taking us through what are the key themes or changes that you’re seeing in the industry today, as it relates to risk management?
- KATHY NICKERSON: Well, interesting enough with real estate today, what we’re finding is that there’s actually a lot more tension being paid – excuse me, a lot more attention being paid to risk management focus with the economic downturn. I think – in some I think it might be related to – some might think it might be the other way, because there’s a cost to risk management, but in fact, what we’re seeing is people are now much more concerned about the cost of their insurance, the cost of uninsured loss, and are focusing more on risk management practices, so, as a result, we have been seeing an increase in interest to putting in strong risk management practices, policies, and procedures from very large groups of real estate companies.
- Sarah: Kathy, and in addition to the economic factors, what else are you seeing as driving interest in risk management? KATHY NICKERSON: I believe that the issues of transparency nowadays from investors, the oversight by investment and SEC regulations have all played into this. The catastrophic losses that are happening around the world between the earthquakes in Australia, and New Zealand, Japan; the floods and the tornadoes here in America, have all really opened the eyes of many property owners and investors to saying, “Wait a minute, if all those things are happening out there to others, how are we prepared to withstand a loss of that type of nature?”
- Sarah: And what do you say to these owners and investors? Where does a business get started? How should owners and operators be looking at addressing these potential issues? KATHY NICKERSON: Oh, I think the first place to start is to really evaluate internally what do you have in place for, one, your risk management procedures? Who’s taking care of these things for you? Is it internal? Are you relying on outside consultants? Are you relying on insurance brokers or carriers? How do you know that you are doing the right thing? How do you know that you’re properly insured? There are so many ways to minimize your exposure to loss before you even get to the insurance piece, that that is really what the risk management portion is all about. You want to make sure you have all the practices in place, the contractual transfers in place, the management and operational facilities oversight in place that really minimizes the chance that you’re going to have a loss versus someone w ho’s not paying attention to those things. Once those processes are in place, then you really want to start addressing now what insurance do I need over and above that, and how do I make sure I’m getting the right coverages?
- Sarah: And how do those companies go about identifying what is their exposure to risk within their building, or their portfolio of buildings? KATHY NICKERSON: Well, many have internal – may have internal risk management departments, or risk management staff. Many will rely on a variety of outside consultants – engineering, structural, environmental – that people who are going to step up and help you as a real estate company assess what the conditions are in place for your existing building or portfolio of buildings. So, many real estate companies do what they do best, and that is identify the properties that make sense for them to invest in, possibly acquire those properties, manage those properties, and then outsource many of the functions of the specialties to professionals who have those experiences. Together, they would bring in, including risk management, ways to identify where there might be areas to focus on. In the risk management commercial insurance arena, terrorism is a very large piece of concern these days. So, how do you evaluate that? You bring in specialty firms that make sure that your buildings are getting the attention that they need to prevent as much as possible, or to make people aware, as much as possible of how to deal with a potential terrorist event. What about your insurance? Are you actually putting that insurance in place, and are you relaying to the insurance industry all of the good things you are doing to make sure that they give you credit when you go ahead to obtain that insurance. So, there are many professionals out there that you can rely on, and should rely on to pull that all together. The last thing you want to do would be to put your head in the sand and say, “I saw something, but it’s too big an issue to address.” In today’s area of liability, and property owners being liable for not only the safety of the asset of the property itself, but more importantly for the safety of the people inside, the last thing you can do is be aware of something, and do nothing about it.
- Sarah: So, Kathy, once companies have made a decision to do something about it, how do you advise them? How do they go about creating a risk management program? What are the first steps? Where do they start? KATHY NICKERSON: Well, there are many, many areas that you can focus on, and every company would probably have to figure out what is the area that they want to address first? It’s a large – risk management covers a large area, so, for a real estate you might say you want to look at your physical assets first, and do an analysis of the condition of those properties. Are they being properly protected? Are they being properly maintained? Are they in areas that are prone to terrorism, or wind events, hurricanes, or flooding events? And – and what needs to be done to minimize the – the potential that a loss could impact the building. So, you look at the physical, you want to address that, and there are a variety of things to do for that. You look at your contractual, and that’s another piece of risk management. As a property owner or manager, developer, you are going to be getting into contracts with many different individuals. It could be a general contractor could do a building. It could be a lease with the tenant, a variety of vendors for services, even your loans are going to be contracts, so you need to button up all of those contracts from the side of indemnification and insurance. That is a big piece of risk management. You want to look at those contracts and make sure what you are requiring of others is enough to protect you from losses that they may cause. You also want to make sure that what you are required to carry, one, makes sense, is not overreaching, and two, you can live up to those requirements. So, that is another piece of a risk management program, and it’s the contractual side of it.
- Sarah: So, Kathy, once companies have made a decision to do something about it, how do you advise them? How do they go about creating a risk management program? What are the first steps? Where do they start? KATHY NICKERSON: Well, there are many, many areas that you can focus on, and every company would probably have to figure out what is the area that they want to address first? It’s a large – risk management covers a large area, so, for a real estate you might say you want to look at your physical assets first, and do an analysis of the condition of those properties. Are they being properly protected? Are they being properly maintained? Are they in areas that are prone to terrorism, or wind events, hurricanes, or flooding events? And – and what needs to be done to minimize the – the potential that a loss could impact the building. So, you look at the physical, you want to address that, and there are a variety of things to do for that. You look at your contractual, and that’s another piece of risk management. As a property owner or manager, developer, you are going to be getting into contracts with many different individuals. It could be a general contractor could do a building. It could be a lease with the tenant, a variety of vendors for services, even your loans are going to be contracts, so you need to button up all of those contracts from the side of indemnification and insurance. That is a big piece of risk management. You want to look at those contracts and make sure what you are requiring of others is enough to protect you from losses that they may cause. You also want to make sure that what you are required to carry, one, makes sense, is not overreaching, and two, you can live up to those requirements. So, that is another piece of a risk management program, and it’s the contractual side of it.
- When you acquire a property you want to understand the history, so what has this property dealt with in the past? Is it a hospitality portfolio? Is it a habitational? What are the areas of concern? Where have they had losses in the past? Has anything been done to correct that, and is it likely to happen again in the future? So, analyzing history to help you try to put plans in place to better predict the future is very much a piece of putting in a good risk management program.
- Making sure that there are safety procedures for people: If you have any type of retail, residential, or high-rise commercial, any type of property where the public is coming in, you have a duty to protect that public, so you need to make sure your building is safe, that your systems are up-to-date, that you’re able to evacuate a building under an emergency, if needed. And there are very – very many risk management procedures that can be put in place in that area for emergency response, and proper loss prevention. So, risk management is – is a very broad arena, and so you need to pick the areas that you want to focus on, and start implementing some procedures, and analysis, and training, and then move on, but piece by piece you can get there. Most companies have a good portion of it, but maybe not all. There’s also the side of risk management that has more to do with the financial side, and that’s going to be your professional liability exposure, so your directors and officers, and how do you protect them from the claims or issues that might arise, based on advice that they give, or investments that are made? And that’s a whole different arena of risk management, as well. But for most real estate firms, what we see is the primary focus has been on protecting the asset, and the people inside it to make sure that everyone is safe, and minimize the exposure of the owners from having any type of damaged building or lawsuits from individuals.
- Sarah: Great information, thank you Kathy. So you’ve done a great job outlining what to do. In terms of who does it, what do you advise the audience looking to put a team together? What areas of the business, what departments, who are the right people that need to be involved in putting together a comprehensive risk management program? KATHY NICKERSON: Depending on how the company is set up, we frequently see that this falls under the corporate general counsel, or the CFO. A lot of what they do is going to be making decisions on where to invest time, resources to putting risk management programs in place. It is definitely going to be a time commitment. It’s a time commitment to doing the right thing. It definitely could have some cost implications, not only for the salaries related to the employees, but the training, the work that needs to be done, changing maybe procedures, or implementing procedures. So, frequently it’s going to be a CFO to sign off, or corporate general counsel who’s going to understand the implications legally of all of these different areas. On occasion, you’re also going to need somebody in a more controller environment, that’s going to be maybe more controlling some of those costs, or HR. HR is going to be involved, because it may involve your people; it may involve workers, and the injuries that could happen to people inside your properties, your own employees, so a variety of different people, but the best risk management programs do come from the top, because someone right at the top of the firm is blessing that this is important, and wants it to filter all the way down through all levels of that firm.
- Sarah: We’ve heard that importance of management commitment a lot. Now we know that everyone is dealing with resource constraints, limited resources. What’s your advice? What’s the best way to deal with potential resource constraints, and all the other things a management team has to get done on a day-to-day basis while also balancing a risk management initiative? KATHY NICKERSON: It’s not always – it’s not always an easy balance. I think the first step is a philosophical one: Is the company committed to putting the time and resources into improving their risk management, and protecting what they’ve invested in and in their future? Many times from our perspective being a risk management consultant, what we would see from our experience is you come to a consulting firm like ours, or others that are out there, and you instantly go in and identify areas that are more of the low-lying fruit, if you will, right off – off the start. What are some of the quick and simple things that can be done to help improve your exposure to loss, or your exposure to risk? And what we typically see is once those procedures are in place, or even starting to be in place, it’s critical that it’s tied into your purchasing of your insurance, so you work with your broker and your carriers to make sure they understand all the good work you’re doing. And by doing that good work, you should see very big impact on the level of losses, the types of losses that your company may experience, and that equates to, if properly handled, buying you insurance with better coverage and a better price. And so, although there may be some investment into getting yourself into a safer place, there are some very good return on being able to better purchase your insurance, and save money on that end, as well.
- Sarah: Kathy you’ve been involved in many risk management initiatives over the years. As you look at it, what are the key criteria for a successful project? What are the 1 or 2 or 3 critical elements that are going to impact the success of the program? KATHY NICKERSON: I think that one of the things, which we’ve already mentioned is the support from the top. That message is critical. Knowing that this is important from the top, all the way down to through the chain makes it much easier to implement, and to keep it going. I think consistency is key. If you are in a position where we are, where we’re working with multiple properties, not just one, you can see great differences between one building, versus another, versus another, and that’s because staff – staff changes; staff differs; people differ. So, how do you get a consistent philosophy and style out there? Training them is very important, so, you don’t have some that are doing great jobs, and some that aren’t really focusing on it. So, it’s very important to make sure you have that consistent message across all lines, across all people throughout your portfolio.
- Sarah: And are there any specific examples that you can share? KATHY NICKERSON: Some of the areas that we see that have great impact, so you pay some attention to, and then the impact, or the results from it really help is contracts; so, I’ll focus on – although that’s one piece of a risk management program, we can focus on contracts. When you have a contract with a tenant, or with a vendor, a service provider, or a GC, or a subcontractor, you are always going to be asking them to provide certain services; you will be paying them for those services – on a lease it’s a tenant and rent – and you’re going to ask them to provide certain safety issues, or certain levels of insurance. Insurance company policy forms change all the time, and if you’re not in the arena of insurance on a daily basis, there is no way you could keep up with those changes, whether you’re a CFO, or a corporate general counselor, or somebody in HR, insurance is a – is a complex, and constantly changing area. It’s a lot – it’s a dirty word to a lot of people, because it’s not always the most fun, or easiest arena to navigate. So, when dealing with insurance, you’ve got to know that you are dealing with current day requirements, and terms. And so, contracts are a good place to start. Many law firms have standard insurance language that they’re going to recommend you include in all of your contracts. Unfortunately, some of the law firms might be working with boilerplate language that is also – could be outdated, and unless they’re dealing with insurance regularly, they would not necessarily be aware of that. So, it’s critical to pull someone in right up, and let’s say, “Let’s do some contract reviews. Let’s make some corporate decisions that all of our insurance contracts must maintain these standards.” And the standards should match the current day requirements, and put them throughout the systems in all of the contracts to make sure you are being protected by the insurance of others, by people who you are hiring. If people you hire do not have the right insurance, you could be pulled into those losses, and you could end up having to pay for claims, and impacting your financial, because of that. So, a real easy place is to button up your contracts, and transfer those risks to others. That is one area that we see has a huge impact, and if you’re a company that has insurance policies with deductibles, those first dollars are going to come right out of your pocket. Even if you don’t have a deductible, if you have a lot of insurance loss history, the loss history is going to impact your ability to buy insurance cost-effectively in the future. So, really one of the biggest bangs for the buck we have seen is getting your contracts in place, getting everything in writing; button it up to today’s standards, and make sure that you are consistent, across the board as much as you possibly can be with those procedures.
- Sarah: And how do those companies go about identifying what is their exposure to risk within their building, or their portfolio of buildings? KATHY NICKERSON: Well, many have internal – may have internal risk management departments, or risk management staff. Many will rely on a variety of outside consultants – engineering, structural, environmental – that people who are going to step up and help you as a real estate company assess what the conditions are in place for your existing building or portfolio of buildings. So, many real estate companies do what they do best, and that is identify the properties that make sense for them to invest in, possibly acquire those properties, manage those properties, and then outsource many of the functions of the specialties to professionals who have those experiences. Together, they would bring in, including risk management, ways to identify where there might be areas to focus on. In the risk management commercial insurance arena, terrorism is a very large piece of concern these days. So, how do you evaluate that? You bring in specialty firms that make sure that your buildings are getting the attention that they need to prevent as much as possible, or to make people aware, as much as possible of how to deal with a potential terrorist event. What about your insurance? Are you actually putting that insurance in place, and are you relaying to the insurance industry all of the good things you are doing to make sure that they give you credit when you go ahead to obtain that insurance. So, there are many professionals out there that you can rely on, and should rely on to pull that all together. The last thing you want to do would be to put your head in the sand and say, “I saw something, but it’s too big an issue to address.” In today’s area of liability, and property owners being liable for not only the safety of the asset of the property itself, but more importantly for the safety of the people inside, the last thing you can do is be aware of something, and do nothing about it.
- Sarah: You mentioned certificates of insurance. Could you spend a little more time talking about best practices for handling certificates of insurance? KATHY NICKERSON: Oh, absolutely happy to, and it is a really important piece, one that many people shiver when they hear, certificates of insurance, it’s a piece of paper that can be a total pain in the neck. However, it is a critical piece to protect yourself when you are getting into any agreement. So, certificates of insurance are just that. It’s a piece of paper, but it’s going to outline insurance coverages that are in place from one party being evidenced to another. The paper, itself, is – doesn’t have a lot of value, and what has happened recently, maybe the past five years or so in the insurance industry is insurance policies have started to include language that states unless these requirements are in writing they will not be provided under the insurance policy. So, you might ask someone for a certificate of insurance to evidence their insurance coverage, if you don’t have a requirement in writing with them that says they must maintain it, then you’re not going to have access to that. It has to be a written contract, so that’s the most critical piece, and in those contracts you should require certificates of insurance. Now, you get the certificates of insurance, and to have a good certificate of insurance compliance program, you need to know what you’re looking at. So, the first thing you need to do is get some quick training on what does it mean? What do these boxes mean? What do these words mean? What do these abbreviations mean? And have somebody who’s responsible for collecting, following up, and tracking certificates of insurance. If you have a – technologically have a Building Engines, or a type of tracking system – certificate tracking system that you can rely on, that will help make the administration of it much, much easier, but the reason it is so important is that if you do have something take place from a risk management perspective on your property, whether it’s a vendor who’s performing services, and somebody gets injured because of it, or whether it’s an injury in a tenant space, the first thing you’re going to want to do for your insurance company is pull that contract, and lease, and the certificate of insurance, provided to them, so that the insurance that pays attention to that claim is the insurance of the party that caused it, and not your insurance, because you forgot to get the certificate, or the contract from those particular people. So, it’s very – a certificate of insurance compliance program is critical in the insurance arena, or in any – any business practice; it truly is best practices to put those training and procedures in place, and then to make sure you’re sharing all that knowledge with your insurance company, so you get credit for that type of work, because when it comes to paying claims, the insurance companies are used to companies who do not pay attention to certificates, so they are going to assume that you’re going to fall into that general category, unless you prove to them that you are doing all the right things, and having a good certificate compliance program.
- KATHY NICKERSON: Before an event occurs it’s always difficult, because it gets tested when that event occurs, so the best you can do before event is best practices, not to hide your head in the sand, and make sure you are doing your – your loss prevention checklist, somebody is paying attention to the actual facilities, and when there’s something that needs to be addressed, address it quickly. Don’t let it sit there. So, best practices, making sure you’re having your emergency preparedness, and you’re doing training sessions on site, so that the staff, and the management, and the security people, and the maintenance people know what to do when something happens. Frequently – let’s just talk for a minute about a building property; we all have property, whether it’s at home, or in work – one of the largest losses that happens in property is water loss. Pipes break, sprinklers leak, water flows down. So, frequently those water claims can become quite large, and most – most commonly the reason why they become large is because they’re flowing for a long period of time without anybody being able to quickly respond to it, find their shutoff, and shut them off. It seems like basic property management, but with – with the proper training, if you get your staff, and the staff changes, so you have to repeat the training – working on understanding those best practices, and facilities management, and operation procedures, that will end up helping you when you actually have a loss, because people are prepared, so it’s really preparing them to respond quickly; they get to that water shutoff; they shut off the water; the damage is less than it would have been had you not had that training; you have better losses, and eventually you’re going to see a difference in how much you have in out-of-pocket expenses for claims that occurred, or insurance losses that occurred, because now you have prepared; we see it in our own business here at Currey, because – because we do, do so much real estate, when we have clients join in here, and we are starting to implement with management practices one of our benchmark tools which any company should use is where are your losses before you started implementing new procedures? Start implementing them; start changing the way everybody is reacting and preparing, and handling risk management, and then start watching your losses. You’ll start to see that the losses will go down, and down over the years. And it’s not going down because it’s luck, or just a coincidence; it’s going down because you’re paying attention to the things that can help reduce those losses, and ultimately then, you show that to the insurance industry as you’re looking to buy your insurance, and you can prove what we’re doing works: Look at this; look at this change. One of the things that we are frequently amazed at is when we compare companies who do have good risk management practices to companies in the same industry who don’t necessarily put as much attention to it. The loss histories between the two are dramatic, and that loss history relates to expenses far beyond just that loss. One of the things that we have really realized over time is paying attention to risk management, to protect your property, and your people, and protect your investors, and owners actually turns around and becomes that it turns around in a way that now you’re going to be attracting investors, because you’re a better risk than others; you’re going to be attracting tenants, because your properties are better maintained than others, or you’re going to be attracting clients; you’re going to be also attracting insurance companies, because they’re going to want to insure a better risk. So, it really goes full circle in how the whole process can work.
- Sarah: Kathy, thanks for much for sharing your insights today. We’re going to open it up for Q and A, but before that I just want to thank you sharing your insights today. KATHY NICKERSON: Oh, my pleasure. I enjoy sharing it. I have a passion for it, and – and get excited to hear other people actually want to try to start making everything work a little smoother for them, as well. Sarah: Ok thank you Kathy. We are going to be opening up for questions for Kathy in a minute. You can submit questions via the Chat Panel.
- While you are preparing and submitting your questions, a few reminders:This webinar has been part of our Building Operations Masters Series, and you can register for the entire webinar series at XXXX. We’ll also include a link for you to do so in our follow-up email communications.Kathy has had some great information which we have converted to checklists and transcripts which we will make available to you as part of our follow up communications. We also had the chance to speak to Kathy about the increased concern and attention to earthquakes and we’re going to share Kathy’s comments on that with you as well in the coming days. We’ll also include segments of this webinar that make it easy for you to share with colleagues inside your organization, on topics that may be relevant to them, and we encourage you to do so.