FM Global launches new disaster protection tool

FM Global has launched a new online tool to help businesses plan for and protect against the growing risk of catastrophes.

The commercial property insurer’s NatHaz Toolkit draws on more than 175 years of research and engineering and includes four sections dedicated to understanding the hazards associated with earthquake, flood, freeze and windstorm.

Each section includes a range of loss prevention education material, including podcasts, brochures and checklists, on protecting property from natural catastrophe.

The free toolkit comes at a time of increased frequency of natural catastrophes, with a higher number of companies being affected due to their complex and multi-tier supply chains. The Thailand floods and Japan Tsunami last year have led to supply chain risk becoming a high priority concern for businesses.

A recent FM Global survey looked at the supply chain risks companies would face in China resulting from a disaster of the scale of the Japan tsunami. The survey revealed that financial executives of multi-national corporations were extremely concerned about the impact of supply chain disruptions in China, and agreed that firms must be more diligent in addressing their exposures in the region. The study also underscores the fact that supply chains in the region are more likely to face business disruption by a natural disaster, particularly as China has not yet fully embraced many of the risk management practices followed in Europe and the US.

Given the increasing popularity of outsourcing functionality internationally, businesses also need to be aware that interdependent risks can have severe financial consequences in global supply chains, according to the research. Firms should therefore undertake proactive measures, such as finding several sources of supply to prevent themselves from being dependent on a single source that could be adversely affected by a natural disaster, said FM Global.

FM Global Northern Europe operations vice-president and operations manager Stefano Tranquillo said “We believe that the majority of all loss is preventable and that businesses need to ensure they are properly prepared in order to be resilient. The information provided in our NatHaz toolkit will help ensure property risks are only a distraction, not a disaster, for companies with exposure to natural catastrophes.”

FM Global also recently strengthened its ability to simulate risk with the opening of its new SimZone facility, which enables FM Global engineers to use simulations of most environment and property hazards for training purposes. The facility gives FM Global a real insight into understanding the hazards that threaten client facilities which can be shared with clients.