Insurers Vetting Crisis Communications Counselors for Policy Holders

Large industrial and institutional insurers are beginning to develop policies that seriously consider the advantages of effective communications for their policy holders facing a crisis.

Last year, my agency was engaged by the nation’s largest insurer of colleges and universities to provide communications for their clients in a crisis.

The insurance company’s strategy received a real payoff last October when policy holder Westmont College was caught in the middle of the Santa Barbara Tea Fire, a terrible conflagration in an outlying area of Santa Barbara, Calif. Almost immediately it was rumored that Westmont students were involved in starting the fire, not a surprising development in the annals of traditional town and gown friction. The College was committed to working with local authorities to investigate the disaster while needing to protect the rights and privacy of its shell-shocked students and safeguard its own reputation and exposure as an unsecure institution in an unsafe area.

The insurance company instructed Westmont to call Fineman PR to help assure the college’s effective communications and as a condition of coverage. In less than a week’s time, Fineman PR provided counsel to the school which ultimately led to its working effectively with authorities and with the community while demonstrating concern for its student body. Both the Los Angeles Times and Santa Barbara News-Press published the story of Westmont’s response along with the complete Q&A that the school had posted to its web site.

With professional, experience-based communications, insurance providers benefit by minimizing the client institution’s total loss related to reputation, credibility and even legal exposure from misleading, false or clumsy communications. Because of this, the crisis event is less likely to contribute to dropped applications, enrollment and donations. The amount of time the institution is fully involved in its crisis may also be shortened if its communications do not add complications to the original situation.

The issue is also one of quality of service provided. If the insurance company vets the communications firms they wish to use and is confident in those firms’ qualifications and experience, its members are assured of having quick access to quality professional services during a time when members would have limited ability to find a provider themselves. As a crisis unfolds, crucial time delays are encountered as the institution looks for a provider. Also, less experienced providers, selected in a rush, may have limited ability to affect the desired outcome.