Brennan Paris SVP, Carrier Distribution

HOW ARE CRC GROUP’S CARRIER RELATIONSHIPS BENEFITING OUR INSUREDS DURING THIS TOUGH TIME?

BP: The insurance industry is built on relationships and it is times like this where we can lean on those relationships in order to find solutions for our insureds in this unusual time that we find ourselves in and I think we’re leading the way in that regard. We’ve got a great team of people that engage with our carrier partners daily and I know our leadership team as well as all our broker communities have tremendous relationships with the carriers we do business with and that pays off in times like this.

HOW DOES CRC GROUP SHARE COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE INTERNALLY ABOUT CARRIERS?

BP: There is a very collaborative atmosphere here at CRC and right now that’s show more than ever. One thing we did early on in order to make sure that our folks were aware of everything going on in real time was develop a landing spot on our intranet that we could house all the carrier bulletins and memos that were coming out. As you can imagine, the first few weeks and really even still to this day they’re coming in fast and furiously. So we have a central spot that our brokers and their teams can go to and stay up to date with the most current info. We made the site very easy to navigate, allowing brokers to search by practice group to find the latest information, as well as search by our carrier. So if our teams have a particular question regarding a particular carrier they’re dealing with they can go right to that landing page and find the latest information.

Another thing we did in response to COVID-19 was develop a coverage consideration document that we could use for each practice. This document allows our teams to have a consistent and uniform approach when working with our carriers on some unusual situations. It’s the same approach that we’ve built within our REDY system with our submission template, we believe that these coverage consideration documents going to allow our team to approach our carrier partners in a more uniform and consistent manner, which hopefully leads to more efficient underwriting results in working with our carrier partners.

HOW IS CRC NAVIGATING THIS CORONA VIRUS ENVIRONMENT WITH OUR CARRIERS?

BP: CRC Group has developed great relationships with all of our carrier partners, which allows us to be in constant communication with them about COVID-19. One thing we have asked our carriers to do is notify us on all quotes that have new exclusionary or endorsement language added due to COVID-19. Our brokers are also proactively confirming with carriers any new changes in the policy language due to the virus. It the best way we can look out for the insureds during this time, to ensure the policy reflects what was intended when the risk was quoted.

Bob Greenebaum National Casualty Practice Leader

TURNING SPECIFICALLY TO CASUALTY, WHAT IS THE CASUALTY PRACTICE DOING TO RESPOND TO THE CORONAVIRUS AND THE POSSIBLE INSURANCE IMPLICATIONS?

BG: I will tell you that all of our practice groups are working very hard to navigate our way through these COVID-19 issues. At this point in time, there are way more questions than there are answers. Each day we are working hard to put tools together to help our teams navigate this uncharted territory we find ourselves in. There have been a number of things from a casualty perspective that we’ve been doing and I’ll give you a few examples. Construction projects around the country are coming to halt because of the coronavirus and our teams are being approached to ask for discounted pricing on project and/or wrap policies for jobs that have voluntarily or involuntarily suspended work at the site. Many of these jobs have very light operations, such as maintenance and security. But the actual construction work has stopped and we’re asking carriers to reduce pricing, or at least work with us to make sure that coverage is inforce, not only during the slowdown or stoppage, but after coverage resumes. When there is a resumption of work, we ask the carriers to put a resumption of coverage endorsement automatically on the policy. The problem with coverage is that it actually goes retroactive after a project might finish. If coverage stops somewhere in the middle, there might be a gap in the coverage. We have to be really careful when making these types of requests.

We are also in the process of developing a checklist for repurposed companies to help them analyze their new exposures. Everybody knows that when you are changing what you do as a company, it presents a whole new array of issues from an insurance coverage standpoint. So we’re working to help our clients understand what those new coverage issues might be and going to the insurance companies to help negotiate different or better coverage.

Paul Martin National Property Practice Leader

HOW IS THE CRC GROUP PROPERTY PRACTICE RESPONDING TO THE INSURANCE CHALLENGES OF COVID-19?

PM: On the property side we are consistently communicating to ensure everyone on the team is aware of changes in the marketplace or if we are receiving special endorsements from carriers; we’re working hard to ensure that everyone is checking their quotes to find out if there have been any wording changes, as well.

From a Builders’ Risk perspective, one of the things that we’ve talked a lot about is the Cessation of Works clause. What we’re doing is making sure our carriers are aware of any cessation of work first and foremost. Most of the underwriters so far, have been very willing to work with us and make concessions where they can. We’ve found that since the projects are simply on hold and once the project begins again that from a property standpoint, the exposure doesn’t change so we cannot really get any reductions in premium because there is no less exposure. What we have been asking carrier to do is, depending on the length of the shutdown, is to extend their policies to cover that additional timeframe that will be needed to completed the project once the work has resumed. So far, none of our carriers have given us a blanket response on that, but they are all analyzing the risk on a case-by-case basis. The carriers are committed to working with us as much as they can.

It will be a similar situation for vacancy clauses or occupancy clauses on standard property policies. We’ve asked our carriers for a response on this issues to find out if there will be any flexibility, as well. Most standard property policies have a 60 day allowance and a property is not considered to be vacant until it has been unoccupied for at least 60 days. Many carriers have said they will not consider a property vacant just because the building is shut down now due to COVID-19 and most buildings have some kind of occupancy, therefore it doesn’t really fall within that definition.

Mike Robison National ExecPro Practice Leader

FINALLY, WHAT IS THE PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE DOING TO RESPOND TO THE CORONAVIRUS AND THE POSSIBLE INSURANCE IMPLICATIONS?

MR: The ExecPro practice group has also been really focused on communication during this time. We’ve been conducting national practice conference calls where everyone dials in and we have an update of what is going on in the industry, particular issues that are beginning to surface, new policy language, etc. It’s all about awareness on what our teams need to be on the lookout for. The intranet setup has been very helpful, where all of the responses from the marketplace are cataloged and can be referenced at any time. It’s not just leadership that is leading the charge sharing information, we have people stepping up from all over the country posting information they’re receiving on the site. The level of communication has really been impressive.

We are also working to ensure agents are aware of the challenges that we are facing right now. The top 3 issues we are watching out for are, from employment practices liability we are worried about having layoff exclusions. When people are being let go due to COVID-19 and the policies are coming up for renewal, we’re really being careful to try to avoid any layoff exclusions being added to policies. From the D&O perspective, we want to try to avoid bankruptcy or creditor exclusions because of the financial difficulty on a lot of these small businesses. Finally, from a cyber standpoint there are a lot of people working from home. What happens if you were working from a personal cell phone or a personal iPad? Does your cyber policies extend to those personal devices in this situation? So we reached out to all of our carriers. We’ve gotten most of that coverage negotiated in nearly every policy that we write, but we’re reaching out to make sure that it’s there and informing our agents.

The last thing I would say is informing our agents to get in their renewal information early. We are currently in uncharted waters, so we’re trying to get the information in early to ensure we have time to maneuver. If we’ve got a renewal and it’s not going well we will have time to at least go out to market. Making sure there is enough lead time is key right now because a lot of these underwriters are overrun and the response time is slowing down. These situations is where CRC can really shine. We are a big presence in the marketplace. We’ve got the best brokers across the country and we can get people to call us back where others cannot.

Neil Kessler Chief Operating Officer​

FROM A CORPORATE PERSPECTIVE, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE THINGS CRC GROUP HAS DONE AS AN ORGANIZATION IN RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS?

NK: I’m sure that all of our clients can understand the patchwork of state issues that are popping up with regards to payment moratoriums or other issues that States are enacting all across the country. We’re seeing them pop up almost every couple of days. We are carefully tracking all of those things and we have a whole section of our intranet devoted to it. We’ve made some changes in our workflow and processing to stay on top of receivables, to identify what accounts we did not get paid for, going back to our agents, and having conversations about those account to discuss the situation. We want to be sure that we’re doing everything we can to help businesses during these difficult times with regards to their cash flow. We also have an internal team standing by to help where needed if we get questions.

The other thing I would point out, is that we’ve really spent a lot of time informing agents and insureds about what’s going on in the marketplace and what issues they may need to be aware of. We have developed articles about a lot of the topics that Paul, Bob, Mike and Brennan have talked about previously. We have released articles about cyber coverage and business repurposing. We’ve got articles coming out on the property side, as well. We have a lot of great content out there about what’s going on in the marketplace today. I’m real proud of the work we’re doing there as well.

CAN YOU TALK ABOUT WHAT CRC GROUP IS DOING FOR EMPLOYEES? NO DOUBT THIS IS A TOUGH TIME FOR OUR TEAMMATES TOO.

NK: Well first of all, we were able to get the vast majority of our folks working remote within a few days. We have thousands of employees across America, even our call center employees are all working at home taking calls at home. That’s no small feat, it’s not something that is easy to accomplish, but we got it done quickly.

All the folks that do have to go to the office, we’ve increased pay for those employees. We’ve really worked on spreading those folks out if they are having to go in to maintain social distance. Again, I think we’re down to less than 50 employees across the entire country that are still going to the office at all. The work inside of the office is minimal, for example going into to do mail scanning, etc.

We’ve also given out bonuses related to coronavirus to help our teammate. CRC Group gave $1,200 bonuses to almost all of our employees. This bonus has nothing to do with the government, it just happens to be $1,200. We were able to give our bonuses out a few weeks ago and I think that went a long way to helping our employees during these difficult times. Obviously we don’t know if someone’s spouse, children or a parent has been impacted by the situation.

We are also getting ready to do a pretty big internal charity drive. I think it’s going to go a long way to helping out our communities where we can.

This is a time when insurance should be delivering, and we think that we are and working hard for our agents to get the coverage that they need.

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