As chief risk officer of the Westfield Group, Eamonn Cunningham insists his mantra when it comes to managing the company's global insurance program is to “layer certainty on top of certainty.”

That's no small undertaking, given that Mr. Cunningham is responsible for an insurance program comprised of 27 coverage lines spread among 50 insurers worldwide, at a premium cost of more than $40 million annually. Overall, Mr. Cunningham said Westfield's insurance portfolio covers more than $35 billion in total insured property, as well as total casualty and professional liability limits in excess of $250 million and $25 million, respectively.

Since taking responsibility for managing Westfield's insurance program in 1988, Mr. Cunningham has successfully streamlined and/or expanded several major parts of its coverage portfolio.

Lyndon Broad, the Sydney, Australia-based vice president and operations manager for FM Global and Associated FM's units in Australia and New Zealand, described Mr. Cunningham as a “meticulous” and “demanding” insurance buyer with an “impressive ability to navigate and balance the expectations” of his insurers with the commercial realities facing his company.

“He's a tough negotiator, both on renewals and on individual losses,” Mr. Broad said. “That doesn't mean that his focus on representing Westfield's interests necessarily comes at the expense of the relationship between Westfield and FM Global, it just means that we need to be able to demonstrate our value to Westfield and to deliver on that account.

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“At the same time, even through some admittedly difficult situations, I've always found him to be a very ethical and loyal person and someone who values the personal relationships,” he said.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Cunningham began negotiating to unify the separate property insurance towers Westfield maintained for its assets in Australia and the United States. Additionally, the company's property coverage within each tower was subdivided into separate policies for Westfield's static properties and its construction projects, the latter of which was bought on a project-by-project basis.

“I couldn't afford to have a situation where an event on one side of the mall impacts the other, and I have different groups of insurers pointing fingers at each other in terms of issues of causation and the like,” Mr. Cunningham said. “It took a lot of hard work to convince the markets that when you look at Westfield, you're looking at a product with a consistent risk management approach across the design, construction and property management phases.”

By reorganizing the separate property insurance policies into a single, global all-risk coverage program — and subsequently expanding the program to include coverage for California-based earthquake damage, as well as business interruption losses resulting from construction delays — Mr. Cunningham was able to save Westfield an estimated $50 million in premiums over the past five years.

“It's a holistic, global placement that is robust enough to cater to every redevelopment project that Westfield takes on, whether it's an extension of an existing center or a greenfield site,” said David Bidmead, Marsh L.L.C.'s New York-based global multinational client service leader. “We think it's a landmark placement, and it's proven to be successful.”

Peter Allen, Westfield's group chief financial officer, said he credits the gradual improvements made to the company's insurance program to Mr. Cunningham's tireless efforts to provide its insurers with as clear a view as possible of the totality of its operations and, more specifically, its global risk management strategy.

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“I look at the quality of information we provide to the insurance market today, and the understanding that each of those insurers has in terms of the way we operate, Eamonn's been such a strong communicator and driver of that,” Mr. Allen said. “It's probably the single biggest change that we've undergone in terms of the way we approach the insurance market.”

To that end, one of the more innovative tools Mr. Cunningham has developed in his time with Westfield is the company's insurance renewal web portal. Launched in 2005 and redeveloped in 2011, the web portal provides the multitude of insurers participating in Westfield's insurance portfolio on-demand access to the company's declarations and coverage requirements within a given policy year.

“We were giving these massive binders of information to our carriers, and it was a nightmare to prepare,” Mr. Cunningham said. “You have to hope to God you don't miss a single piece of paper, and with 50 carriers on the program, it makes life very difficult.”

Mr. Cunningham said the web portal saves Westfield's risk management department about 75 labor hours each year, and that he's been told by certain insurance executives that the depth and ease-of-access to the information it provides saves the company an estimated $1 million in premium costs annually.

“I can't think of any other company doing anything like the website at the time of its launch. Eamonn was definitely years ahead of his time on that,” Mr. Broad said. “It provides transparency around the declarations that Westfield makes to its insurers, and that's enormously important.”