What kind of disaster are you ready for at your insurance business? While you might think that as an insurance company, your business is disaster recovery, a surprising number of businesses aren't really ready for some of the most common disasters that could come your way. Here are some ways that businesses have experienced serious problems and survived.
Get Ready for Big and Small Problems
While your insurance business is likely prepared for a catastrophe, are you prepared for a smaller problem that could take down your operations for a time? According to Enterprise Features, that's what Quest experienced. Quest is a disaster recovery business, so they should be ready for anything.
However, their own disaster plan was tested when utility poles fell outside their building, knocking out the power and blocking everyone in the building. Quest was able to switch to working remotely by the afternoon, continuing to serve customers as their employees moved to work from home.
Are you prepared for a smaller disaster such as a power outage? While it might not seem like it would have a serious impact on your business, these smaller problems such as a day-long computer outage can have serious repercussions for your business. You need to make sure that you have contingency plans in place to allow your business to continue running and serving your customers, especially if they are impacted by the same disaster. Using cloud computing technologies can help your insurance business stay afloat during a crisis.
Get Ready to Maintain Business Continuity
Are you ready for a serious loss of data? At Option One, "The first employees in the office after the weekend discovered every computer was missing from all 84 desks; only the keyboards, monitors and mice remained." All of the memory cards were gone from the computers. They had to source new computers while monitoring customer calls. They managed to do this within six hours.
When you look at business continuity in the face of disaster, ask yourself:
Have you developed a business continuity plan in case of this kind of data loss or a natural disaster?
Have you trained your employees in what to do in case of different kinds of crises?
Do you have a plan to continue to run your business in the face of a natural or human-caused disaster?
Create Your Own Backup Plan
Are you ready for the financial impacts of a natural, human-made, or internal disaster?
"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." – Bill Gates,
You can learn a lot from your disasters and failures. However, you need to make sure that your failures don't break the bank. By purchasing E&O insurance, you can make sure that if you suffer a business setback due to an error or an omission on the part of your staff, your business will not go under due to this singular problem. E&O insurance is part of your successful contingency plan so that you have the wiggle room to learn from your mistakes, reflect, and grow.
At American Agents Alliance, we want to ensure that you are ready to create a future in the insurance industry. That's why we work to provide affordable E&O insurance for your independent insurance agency. Are you curious to learn how we can help? Contact us today.
