From supply chain disruption to pandemic outbreaks, there are dozens of risks that include the use of insurance that insurance companies can help mitigate. On the flip side, though, insurers want to safeguard against various risks, including operational, credit, market, liquidity, underwriting, and more.
For that, they apply four basic risk management methods – avoidance, transfer, retention, and reduction, all equally important to keep an insurance business afloat, maximizing its profits and minimizing its losses.
What Does Risk Reduction Mean?
One of the four basic risk management techniques, risk reduction – also known as loss mitigation – allows organizations and individuals to effectively manage the risk of loss they inevitably encounter as they operate in their industry. It is done by implementing specific risk reduction techniques, such as minimizing the frequency of risk cases and the damage caused by them.
No matter which particular measures a specific risk reduction case encompasses, it will inevitably be focused on one, a few, or all of the following:
- Reducing the frequency of a loss.
- Reducing the severity of a loss.
- Reducing the likelihood of a loss.
Altogether these measures would allow an insurer to maximize its profits and decrease the risk of unexpected (too frequent) payouts.
How Does Risk Reduction Work in the Insurance Industry?
There’s no denying that an insurance company wouldn’t want to provide coverage for an insurance case that will most likely happen shortly or, even worse, will keep happening regularly. That is why most insurance companies practice risk reduction, obliging their clients to follow the required risk mitigation measures.
Practical Methods of Risk Reduction
- Fire insurance. Before fire insurance can be sold to a client, an insurance company may require the future policyholder to install smoke detectors and sprinklers. They can also ask to use fireproof materials so that the building is fireproof enough to mitigate the risks that the insurance company undergoes (the less the loss caused by fire, the less the insurance company has to compensate).
- Homeowners insurance. To protect the policyholder’s property against damage and theft, an insurance company might be interested in having reliable security systems installed on the property of the insured (smoke alarm, monitored alarm, intruder alarm, CCTV cameras, etc.). That, of course, would lower the probability of the insurer having to cover the losses.
- Liability coverage. Providing a business liability insurance package to an enterprise, an insurance company may ask the business to install adequate safety systems in the workplace so that employees wouldn’t be at risk of injuries.
It’s only natural that insurance companies are most interested in the clients purchasing insurance that have implemented risk reduction practices. The more advanced the risk reduction measures on the client’s side, the less expensive this client is to an insurance company. At the same time, risk reduction usually works together with risk retention in insurance and other risk management methods to achieve a better effect.
Oleksandr is an expert in deep research. He covers insurance topics across four major insurance verticals – auto, health, life, and home insurance – while taking into account the legal landscape of the state in question. Come rain or shine, you can expect regular quality blogs and timely updates from Oleksandr.