Post-Loss Damage Assessment and Business Recovery Management: Cyclone Debbie and Associated Floods

Published: April 7, 2017

Cyclone Debbie has been the largest weather event to hit northern Queensland since Cyclone Yasi in 2011. The unusual nature of Cyclone Debbie has resulted in significant damage initially from the cyclone and from the subsequent floods caused by the rain brought by Cyclone Debbie. The floods continue to be a cause of concern in areas which were not directly affected by the cyclone.

As Queensland continues to manage through the overwhelming impacts of this natural disaster, companies are also assessing business recovery and restoration options, including production and distribution alternatives. Given the extent of the business interruption being faced in Queensland, actions taken at an early stage can be essential to a company’s finances, operations, and overall success. Marsh Risk Consulting’s Forensic Accounting and Claims Services (FACS) Practice can help your company – no matter the industry – work through the vast number of claim-related issues following this flooding. Our team of forensic accounting and claims professionals can provide you with global expertise and proactive support to help manage this crisis. We offer claims leadership and other resources to help you mitigate your losses, focus your attention on your employees and community, and achieve a timely recovery and return to business.

Catatrophic event insurance claims

Severe flooding can have far reaching implications if your company does business in the affected region, whether physically located there or reliant on a supply of inputs, goods, or services. We can help manage your insurance claims and coordinate with your insurance broker’s advocacy team, so you can focus on running your business and assisting your people. Our services include post-event loss analysis of:

Property damage.
Extra expense.
Business interruption.
Contingent business interruption.
Service interruption.
Supply chain disruption.

Utilising our proprietary FACS database (FACSdb) technology and web- based data share portals, our experts collect, store, and track large amounts of data efficiently and accurately, allowing us to help manage your complex damage claims and helping you to communicate and share this critical information with insurers and adjusters.

Claims project management and claims engineering

Large property losses following a cyclone or flood can be extremely complex from a data management as well as a stakeholder standpoint. Such management issues may exceed the scope of your resources and capabilities, particularly if there are property access issues.

Our claims project managers are domiciled in strategic locations around the globe so they can travel to loss sites worldwide quickly and assist in managing clients’ claim processes with stakeholders, including home office and local personnel, repair contractors, and loss adjusters. They can provide timely claims process progress reports and identify critical claims issues to be resolved – potentially before they develop into challenges that could delay the recovery.

Additionally, our team can provide claims engineers and other experts to help establish the scope and values of property damage. These experts can separate the flood damages from maintenance or related repair upgrades, which may or may not be insurance recoverable. Our claims engineers work with you to help address issues such as code upgrades, changes in technologies, actual versus hypothetical baseline schedule analysis, and to identify damage scope issues that may not be evident to your insurer or the adjustment team. These efforts can help improve recovery efforts and reduce losses, allowing you to dedicate resources to the well-being of your employees and to resuming operations.

Our team

Our people have more than 200 professionals and administrative personnel worldwide. Our team brings global insight to local challenges, using consistent protocols and practices for post-loss analysis, claims project management, and claims engineering. Senior practitioners have spent an average of 20 years in forensic accounting and claims services, with extensive experience in insurance loss accounting, valuation, and insurance policy formats and requirements. Clients also have access to Marsh’s extensive capabilities in insurance policy< coverage interpretation and claims advocacy. Our reputation for integrity with insurers and familiarity with the adjustment process provide a distinct advantage to our clients in helping to reduce the time for receipt of settlement.

Our experts have diverse backgrounds such as:

Chartered Accountants/Certified Practicing Accountants.
Forensic accountants/ certified fraud examiners.
Professional engineers/forensic engineers.
Insurance claims specialists/ former insurance adjusters.

Marsh has helped clients recover from catastrophic events including:

Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Earthquakes in Solomon Islands (2007)
Chile and Haiti (2010); and New Zealand (2011).
Flooding in Jakarta (2007) and Queensland (2010-2011).
Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004).
Typhoon Saomai and Tropical Cyclone Monica (2006).
Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, Jeanne (2004); Katrina, Rita, Wilma (2005); and Dolly, Gustav, Ike (2008).

For the latest insight on flood claims, please refer to our Flood Insurance Claims Practical Tips and Mitigation Strategies article.

Disclaimer: This document is not intended to be taken as advice regarding any individual situation and should not be relied upon as such. The information contained herein is based on sources we believe reliable, but we make no representation or warranty as to its accuracy. Marsh shall have no obligation to update this publication and shall have no liability to you or any other party arising out of this publication or any matter contained herein. Any statements concerning actuarial, tax, accounting, or legal matters are based solely on our experience as insurance brokers and risk consultants and are not to be relied upon as actuarial, accounting, tax, or legal advice, for which you should consult your own professional advisors. Any modeling, analytics or projections are subject to inherent uncertainty, and the Marsh analysis could be materially affected if any underlying assumptions, conditions, information or factors are inaccurate or incomplete or should change.

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