Most commercial insurance companies have either engineering departments or loss control departments. The departments are staffed by highly trained engineers or technical safety personnel. These staff members have the task of coming out to see and inspect businesses and properties that are insured by their carrier. Most of these insurance company inspections are performed once the policies are written. The need and purpose of this service is many times misunderstood by the policy holders. Many times the policy holder assumes the task is to double check the facts that were provided on the policy application. Or that the insurance company has already assumed the risk and must now just live with it. While the inspector does start here, the actual purpose of the insurance company inspection is intended to be much more beneficial for all parties. The main purpose of these departments and inspections is to have a technically trained person review areas of potential loss and seek to develop a plan to minimize the likelihood of having a claim. It is always helpful for businesses to have a different set of eyes to review their business. There can be issues that a business owner just doesn’t recognize as a problem and/or really doesn’t know how to address an issue. Even though some of the issues may be required by law.

After the inspection, the business owner is usually presented with a list of recommendations from the insurance company. Some of these recommendations can be quite expensive or challenging to implement. This is where the insurance company and issued relationship can get strained. Does the business owner have to put these recommendations into place? The answer is, of course, that it depends.

Many times the recommendations are presented as mandatory. Usually these are loss control issues that are life threatening safety concerns or to avoid what could be an imminent loss. The insurance company will generally require that these recommendations be performed or the policy may be cancelled.

Most of the recommendations are usually presented as “ suggested” and can usually be handled easier.

If the recommendations are unclear, the agent or loss control inspector should be available to discuss and explain the reasoning behind each request.

Although the need to avoid claims is obvious from the insurance company perspective; although there may be plenty of insurance in place, any claim can have disastrous effects on a business due to downtime or customer service. At Ramey King we work with our clients to help manage this process and make any insurance company inspection as painless as possible.

Ramey King Insurance partners with Denton businesses and homeowners to provide the right type of coverage for their unique needs. For more details on these topics please contact Ramey King Insurance at 800-453-9691 to speak with one of our insurance specialists or visit our office at 320 Eagle Drive, Ste. 210, Denton, TX 76201. Find us online atwww.rameyking.com.