Establishing and understanding the facts is key to resolving disputes and recovering financial losses.

In today’s business environment, recouping lost revenues and costs in the aftermath of loss events such as property damage, business interruption, product recalls, employee theft and litigation, can strengthen your business’s ability to maintain competitive advantage, meet shareholders’ expectations and maintain the confidence and support of your board of directors.

Facing ever-increasing scrutiny from regulators, shareholders and the public, the need for business leaders to demonstrate their ability in managing unforeseen events or crises, including accurately quantifying losses and maximising insurance recoveries, is patently clear.

What will you say when they ask what happened?

Given today's demanding reality of running a major organisation, business leaders should ask the following questions when they must file insurance claims, become a party to litigation and other disputes, or face product recalls and other unforeseen events:

• Have I already established the necessary accounting and technical protocols to measure and track the extent of my losses?
• Do I understand that the failure to promptly document losses can limit recovery later?
• Can I recover lost revenues and other expenses resulting from the event?
• How can I present my claims to help ensure the maximum recovery from insurers and third parties?
• Do we have sufficient knowledge of insurance policy rights and obligations to fully identify and recover losses?
• Do we have the ability to investigate and uncover fraud and employee malfeasance?
• Do we have the necessary expertise to conduct financial investigations?
• If we are sued, how can we prepare to mitigate the damages? How can we be sure the damages the claimant is seeking accurately reflect actual losses?
• Do we have the requisite understanding of technology to extract, authenticate, and preserve digital information?

Who's looking out for you?

When faced with such questions, many business leaders seek out boutique firms because of their specialised expertise. Others engage large consulting organisations because of their breath and depth of services and resources. At Marsh, we provide clients with the specialised expertise of a boutique firm and the resources of a large, global organisation.

Our Forensic Accounting and Claims Services (FACS) Practice can provide a full range of forensic accounting, insurance claims, and dispute advisory services. We have professionals who have spent the larger part of their careers focusing solely on claims accounting, dispute advisory, forensic accounting and investigations and other economic loss related matters.

The global FACS Practice includes forensic accountants, CAs and CPAs, loss adjusters and lawyers, providing services that revolve around the assessment, quantification and valuation of economic loss both pre and post event losses that may result from a variety of insured and uninsured events.

Services

Pre-loss services are designed to help avoid insufficient coverage, wasted premiums or redundant capacity and minimise and mitigate damages before a loss event.  Additionally, quantifying the business impact of potential actions assists business in the decision making process.

Post loss services are designed to quantify, support and recover business interruption losses, economic claims and other disputed financial losses after a loss event – allowing clients to remain focused on employees, operations and customers.

Additionally, more detailed service offerings are available from within the global practice in areas that include:

• Construction consulting services
• Valuation services
• Product risk consulting
• Claims project management and claims engineering

Marsh does not provide financial statement audit or attestation services.  Accordingly, the Sarbanes-Oxley auditor independence rules do not apply to our services.

Comprehensive solutions

Importantly, as part of a cohesive global team, FACS has the ability to support clients’ Head Office operations along with site operations spread across the globe. In addition to Pacific region colleagues throughout Australia, we often call upon FACS colleagues operating across Asia, the Americas, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East and South Africa to assist in the provision of rapid, comprehensive and cost effective client solutions.

Our experienced team of FACS consultants works closely with the insurance broking and claims services teams at Marsh.  Frequently, FACS collaborate with additional risk services at Marsh such as business continuity planning, product recall, property risk assessments and supply chain analysis, all of which may be applied to understand and often reduce the financial impact of an event