Risk & Business Magazine Cooke Insurance Risk & Business Magazine Fall 2017 | Page 29

ARE YOU PREPARED?
Are You Prepared If Disaster Strikes?
Planning For The Worst
F
rom fires to floods, earthquakes
to hurricanes, disaster can strike
anytime, anywhere, and often
with little to no advance warning.
According to the Insurance
Information Institute, as many as 40
percent of businesses forced to suspend
operations due to a natural or human-
caused disaster never reopen their doors.
Try to imagine the challenges your
business would face in the wake of a
natural disaster like the massive floods
in 2013 or Superstorm Sandy. It’s scary to
even consider. Now here’s something even
scarier: a relatively minor fire or flood that
forces you to shut down operations carries
many of the same challenges as a disaster
on the scale of the 2013 floods or Sandy.
Your commercial property insurance
policy would help you rebuild your
physical infrastructure, but are you
equipped to deal with lost revenue and
mounting expenses while you work to
restore operations?
PLANNING FOR THE WORST
The difference between surviving a
business interruption and going belly-up
often hinges on one factor: preparation.
The best way to prevent a disaster from
putting the future of your business at risk
is to have a proper continuity plan in place.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLANNING
INVOLVES THE FOLLOWING:
1. Defining potential risks
2. Determining how those risks will affect
operations
3. Implementing safeguards and
procedures designed to mitigate those
risks
4. Testing those procedures to ensure that
they work
5. Periodically reviewing the process to
make sure that it is up-to-date
Start the process by establishing a
planning team tasked with developing the
continuity plan. Typical goals of your plan
should include the following:
• Protecting the safety of employees,
visitors, contractors, and others at
risk from hazards at the facility
• Maintaining customer service
by minimizing interruptions or
disruptions of business operations
• Protecting facilities, physical assets,
and electronic information
• Preventing environmental
contamination
• Protecting your organization’s brand,
image, and reputation
The planning process should take an “all
hazards” approach. The probability that a
specific hazard will impact your business
is hard to determine—that’s why it’s
important to consider many different
threats and hazards and the likelihood
they will occur. A business impact analysis
can predict the consequences of an
interruption and give you a good idea of
how your operations would be affected in
case you were forced to temporarily close.
Implementing the plan means more
than simply exercising the plan during
an emergency. It means acting on
recommendations made during the hazard
analysis, integrating the plan into company
operations, training employees, and
evaluating the plan on an ongoing basis.
It is important to conduct a formal audit of
the entire plan at least once a year to help
identify any factors that may necessitate
changes, such as updated regulations or
new hazards.
LET US GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE
PROCESS
No business owner wants to think about
what would happen to the business if
disaster strikes, but it’s a reality that
all business owners must face. Cooke
Insurance Group realizes it can be a
daunting task to plan for a major business
interruption—but it doesn’t have to be.
We can help you kick-start your planning
efforts with a suite of industry-leading
business continuity tools and resources,
including a sample plan that can be
tailored to meet the unique needs of your
business. We can guide you step-by-step
throughout the planning process, from
assessing hazards to implementing
safeguards to ensuring your plan stays
up-to-date. +
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