Business Management
The Insulator • June 2026 
30
Dedicated to keeping its members at the forefront in their industry
to ensure the company has sufficient funds for 
rebuilding.”
Businesses should also consider taking out 
business interruption insurance to replace lost 
income; extra expense coverage for the higher 
moving costs and rents possible at a new 
location; and contingent business interruption 
insurance for lost income when a damaged 
supplier is unable to deliver.
Finally, there is the growing challenge of 
policy availability. Many insurers are exiting 
unprofitable markets, leaving businesses with 
limited choices.
“There’s a lot of concern today about what is 
going to happen regarding insurance policies 
in areas that are particularly disaster prone, 
such as Florida and California,” said Kates. The 
fires that recently ripped through portions of the 
latter state have resulted in insurance becoming 
extremely difficult to obtain.
Flood insurance can be a special problem 
anywhere. “The frequency and severity of 
extreme weather events have increased,” said 
John Peterson, Chief Growth Officer at World 
Insurance Associates, an insurance brokerage. 
“Consequently, flood insurance is becoming 
very difficult to obtain in certain geographies.” 
Bonus tip: Flood insurance must cover not 
only damage from rainstorms and burgeoning 
streams, but also from blocked storm drains, 
broken water towers, and damaged pipes or 
boilers.
Take action
Getting the right recovery plan in place can 
seem like a daunting task. Little wonder the 
default position is procrastination. “Too often, 
a crisis propels the topic to the forefront,” said 
Kates. “Then a company scrambles to design a 
plan for whatever they have just been through.” 
Planning after the fact, of course, does little to 
protect the company’s assets. 
The tendency to leave the topic on the back 
burner means it can be a struggle to get key 
leadership on board. Front office attitudes, 
through, are undergoing change. “We are 
seeing more disasters in the news, and that 
is creating more urgency around the whole 
topic of emergency planning,” said Kates. 
“Companies are starting to realize they need to 
put good plans in place and train their teams to 
handle these crises.”
The alternative is not acceptable. “The human 
cost of disasters, along with the levels of 
destruction, is increasing every year,” said Rice. 
“We might feel like a disaster will never happen 
to us, but the things we imagine will never 
happen seem to be happening more and more, 
and costing more time and money, than ever 
before. And that’s really the ultimate reason that 
businesses should have disaster plans.”
continued from pg.29

View this content as a flipbook by clicking here.