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Q&A: Cheryl Harper, RIMS South Louisiana Chapter

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Q&A: Cheryl Harper, RIMS South Louisiana Chapter

Cheryl Harper is president of the South Louisiana chapter of the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc. and operations manager for Catholic Mutual Group, which provides the Roman Catholic Church in North America with property, liability and employee benefits coverage. Ms. Harper spoke recently with Business Insurance reporter Shelby Livingston about the insurance market in Louisiana and what risk managers from other states can learn from how Louisiana risk managers have handled natural disaster-related issues. Edited excerpts follow.

Q: Nearly 10 years after Hurricane Katrina, what is the insurance market like in Louisiana? Are property insurers still charging large amounts for coverage?

A: Yes. In post-Katrina, we now have named storm deductibles, which are a percentage of a building value ranging anywhere from 2% to 5% to 6%. So that’s a huge expense.

A lot of insurance companies tried to bail out on writing any coverage in this area post-Katrina. The Louisiana commissioner of insurance, Jim Donelon, has done a wonderful job getting some other companies to write coverage in our area, but the premiums still remain high. They have gone down a little from what they were immediately following the hurricane.

Q: What are the most significant risk management or insurance issues your chapter members are facing right now?

A: The cost of claims in general with regard to risk managing the claims, because we have one of the highest jury thresholds in the country. In the New Orleans area, especially, it’s about $50,000 before you can get a jury. So it’s very difficult to litigate cases, and it’s a lot of pressure for the judges to settle.

Also, the overall cost of workers compensation in this area is very high. Our fee schedule is extremely high, and we have a very liberal comp system with regard to the hearing officers. They tend to lean toward the claimants.

Q: What can risk managers in other states learn from how Louisiana risk managers handle natural disasters?

A: Data retention, records retention … our servers are virtual, so they can be accessed remotely from anywhere we set up. So we can actually pick up, move to another state and still access all of our databases so we can keep our operations up and running. That’s a big part of it, because we didn’t have virtual servers pre-Katrina. It’s all about having your corporate structure set up so that you can operate from anywhere if a disaster hits.

Q: How have your local members prepared for the conference this year?

A: We have heavily promoted the conference though our local chapter. We also have members from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette; we’re affiliated with Dr. Bill Ferguson there. He’s one of the local professors and has a bachelor’s program in finance that includes risk management, so he’s coming to RIMS with a group of his students.

We’re also having a reception with the national board to network with them as well. We’re looking forward to hosting a large group of people here.

Q: What are you hoping to take away from your time at the conference?

A: Knowledge. If I can take away one thing that I can implement in my job to improve the risk management of the organization that I service, then I would consider it a success.