Zurich’s Man for a Crisis

From earthquakes to hurricanes, and cyber-attacks to terrorism, John has witnessed the devastation of some of most significant events over the past six years. And he’s dealing with the biggest catastrophe in a generation – coronavirus.

John was thrown into the deep end on his first day in his job when he flew into a disaster zone caused by Hurricane Odile in Mexico - a Category 3 hurricane that battered the Baja California peninsula in September 2014.

“Buildings, infrastructure and even the airport were destroyed by extreme winds and storm surge. The emergency situation was compounded by rioting and looting on the streets. The region was locked down by martial law and at times it was scary,” remembers John.

These traumatic scenes have become a common site for John, but his first-hand experience of these catastrophes is invaluable to Zurich.

Whenever John is dropped into area wrecked by a catastrophe he acts as a crisis controller working with local country teams. He helps build a team for assessing and agreeing a strategy to manage the event and to ensure there is a single, coordinated view of the impact for Zurich and a clear plan to pay claims.

War rooms

“When I arrive I set up what I call a ‘war room’,” explains John. “This is where we bring together loss adjusters, legal representatives and other technical specialists who are able to review the impact of the event.

“For Odile, for instance, we had forensic accountants specialized in the hospitality industry to estimate the business interruption impact on our hotel customers. For the Tianjin explosions in August 2015, we had specialists assess thousands of vehicles potentially contaminated by the explosion to decide if they could be cleaned, repaired and salvaged.”

John also captures learnings from these events. “Our insights from Tianjin have enhanced our underwriting, risk engineering and accumulation management, and also improved our response for subsequent CATs,” says John.

“As an example, we couldn’t access the explosion site for many weeks, so we used satellite technology to assess the damage and potential claims. We used the same approach to assess the devastation caused by the Fort McMurray wildfires a year later in Canada. Today, we’re combining satellite technology with drone footage to give us a picture of potential losses where we can’t get our people on the ground.”

Turning data in to insight

John also collates and records all claims data related to a catastrophe. This is required by our underwriters, actuaries, Cat modellers, reinsurers, auditors and regulators, as well as analysts and investors who want to understand the impact on Zurich. But collating data on coronavirus-related claims will be John’s biggest challenge to date.

“The pandemic has essentially triggered hundreds of CAT events in every region of the world. We will investigate each claim and undertake detailed coverage analysis to check the wording and terms and conditions of the policy. We must also balance this analysis with a quick response to ensure we support our customers at this very difficult time for them,” explains John.

John’s virtual ‘war room’ for coronavirus is bulging with international experts from all regions representing most functions within Zurich – from underwriting and risk engineering, to actuaries and finance teams.

It also includes external experts, such as virologists, loss adjusters, forensic accountants and lawyers.

“We have enhanced our insight capability by developing new tools and leveraging technology, including PowerBI Premium. Meanwhile, real time claims data provides an updated picture on the scale of customer impacts,” says John.

Teamwork

“It’s a colossal undertaking, but every country across Zurich is well prepared with a ‘Claims CAT Response Plan’,” he adds.

“Events such as Covid-19 require excellent collaboration, coordination and communication for us to respond in the right way. And yet again, we have demonstrated that this is when we at Zurich are at our best.”