The Importance Of Insurance Archaeology To A Company

By Harriet Porter


Many organizations have been through a rough patch in the last few years due to litigation resulting from policy documents issued years ago. However, since this is in the past, these documents bearing information about brokers and policies are not available. The unavailability of the documents may cost the company millions in litigation fees. The only way to avoid this is insurance archaeology.

These law suits are mostly based on products which were made decades ago and turned out to be harmful. Most of these cases are from asbestos based compounds and so the environment. Asbestos has been found to be harmful to human beings over time. This information was not previously known until a recent scientific study. Companies that made these products are then subject to law suits over the same. When this happens, the old policy documents have to be located.

These policy documents can only be found by insurance archaeologists. Their work is to use any possible clues they can find to locate the tiniest shred of information regarding the policies. It is not always possible though and most times they go missing completely. It has been difficult to keep the old insurance policy documents over the past years.

Mergers and acquisitions have characterized the last few decades. The incorporated companies may lose most of their documents during this process. Relocation and downsizing also cost the companies these files. In addition, restructuring and file purging has also contributed. Another blame factor is the 1999 Millennium bomb where organizations sought to erase all their old documents.

When faced with a probable expensive claim, the insurer will wan to see the policy documents. These documents when available are a sure way to avoid long costly litigation. For this reason companies need to locate and organize them and also secondary evidence coverage of the insurer. If there are not suits likely to face your company then you may relax. However when you have the documents they will give you preparedness for any claims.

This information is not only important during law suits. In the process of acquisition or in the event of a merger, it is prudent organizations dig up the old policies of the target company to know what you are getting into. This is because liabilities and policy agreements are transferred to corporate successors. When you assess the insurance coverage of a target company over times it means the difference between acquiring an asset building company or an asset draining company.

Insurance archaeologists carry many work titles as they work as detectives, excavators and people who study history. In the course of their work, they have to track past brokers as well as employees. Sometimes when they are deceased they have to look for their descendants and interview them. Archaeologists also have to read through past accounting documents as ell government archives.

When you have been in business for many years and you cannot locate all your files it would be best to hire insurance archaeologists. This is going to save you millions of money in litigation. Besides, when undergoing a merger or acquisition let an archaeologist review the old policies of the target company. This will go a long way to protect your company from possible future law suits.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment