Webinar | Loss adjustment in agriculture: Key principles of building an effective system

About the Webinar

Building an effective system of risk and loss adjustment in agriculture is extremely important for both insurance and banking industries.

International experience provides various examples of different approaches to loss adjustment. Some examples are more effective, some less. This webinar will describe agricultural risks and go on to review the loss adjustment models of different countries to identify key elements that can be used when building a new system or changing an existing one. The presentation will also highlight a loss adjustment model that is currently being introduced and developed in Ukraine, which bringing positive results. The sample model that we will discuss could be used and applied in most countries of the world.

Introduction

When dealing with natural risks in agriculture you may find that most of such risks are hard to predict and even harder to get protection from their influence. Insurance industry offers quite a number of, probably, the most affordable and effective protection solutions from the natural hazards. Nowadays, anyone may insure the production costs or revenue, quantity and quality of the crops produced.

Nevertheless, when it comes to a risk assessment issue - the better your loss adjustment system is organized, the less costs you have to spend on insurance payouts. A well-organized loss adjustment model saves not only the cost but also time on providing all necessary adjustment procedures.

Related Work

Global loss adjustment practice provides a lot of useful information and approaches that could be studied and applied. It should be noted, though, that not all of the models are “ready-to-use” and not all of them are applicable in different countries due to various reasons – educational, legislative, existing professional experience on the market, availability of experienced professionals, etc.

The key objective of any effective loss adjustment model is its effectiveness on all operational levels. Before applying a new model, or changing the existing one, one needs to consider attracting the existing experts on the market, who can add value with their practical and theoretical experience.

Another key element to consider is development of the specific model for a certain country/market needs. The algorithms the model applies should be thoroughly considered on the initial stage – working with the insurance companies, banks, agricultural producers; internal relations and interactions within the model/system structure; responsiveness of the experts and their activities coordination; standard operation procedures for the personnel; standard paperwork and processing periods; etc.

The last, but not the least important issue for consideration – technical requirements for the set of instruments and appliances used to adjust the risks and losses.

Building a structure  

No matter how developed the loss adjustment market is in this or that country, one should look not only at attracting the existing market professionals in risk mitigation, management and assessment. It is vitally important to consider training activities for bringing up a new “generation” of experts, who are trained in a new model/system environment, according its key guidelines and standards. Such an approach will always bring positive results in a long-term prospective. Constant training curricula should be developed for both theoretical and practical training, as well as, there should be a regular professional competences tests for the existing experts. This will promote experts’ professional development.

Implementation and Results

When the system is up and running, one should remember about constant tuning and changing it, introducing better and more effective solutions. System changes are unavoidable due to the technology progress, changes in legislation, state regulations and requirements, etc.  Each season results should be thoroughly analyzed, and in case any changes are possible, they should be applied immediately.

Obviously, the main changes and system tuning are applied at the initial stage of its development. Although, within a certain period of time (agricultural season, quarter, year, etc.) the system must be audited, and possible changes should be applied. Such an approach will allow that model to stay on the high level of professional competence and work effectiveness.

Conclusions

Looking at the existing loss adjustment models and successful global experience there might happen a false sense, that building an effective loss adjustment model/system is quick and easy. However, global practice proves this process to be long lasting and involve much time and efforts consumption for continuous development and introduction of new technology solutions to keep the system useful and effective in a long-term prospective.

About Agroinsurnace International

The project www.agroinsurance.com is a specialized informational and analytical resource featuring a broad array of issues related to agricultural insurance and risk management in the agrarian sector. The web-site was founded in 2006 by a team of consultants that have worked in the insurance sector and have an analytical, research and training professional background. We have accumulated many documents while working in the segment of agricultural insurance for the past 10 years and would like to offer them to the visitors of our web-site.