2020 US Insurance Awards: KCIC LLC, Insurance Consulting Team of the Year

It took 40 professionals skilled in technology, economics, insurance and more, 11 weeks to mine over 1,300 insurance policies, including more than 15,000 pages across 22 coverage programs, to find and decipher coverage to help cover a large liability payout.

Nick Sochurek, a senior manager who leads the team at the Washington-based consulting firm, said KCIC LLC prides itself on being at the intersection of advanced technology and insurance industry knowledge to better understand policies that can span years and thousands of pages. Mr. Sochurek and his colleagues are the recipients of Business Insurance’s 2020 U.S. Insurance Award for Insurance Consulting Team of the Year.

“We use technology to extract those key terms from policies and put that into a database,” he said. “By doing so, we are taking thousands and thousands of data points, exclusions, etc., to understand how some policies work with other policies.” 

Mr. Sochurek said the firm specializes in product liability claims and that some common themes have emerged in recent years: asbestos, bankruptcies and pharmaceuticals. Another area is sexual abuse claims from religious institutions, which are “challenging” because of the nature of the claims. 

“Where we come in, we are not defending anyone,” he said. “We are looking for ways to help organizations that are facing this kind of crisis; we are trying to help them locate insurance assets that they purchased long ago, but lost track of, in order to pay. That doesn’t make those survivors whole, but it is part of the equation.” 

Otherwise, plaintiffs with valid claims or cases could see a company or organization go bankrupt before being able to collect on an award or settlement, he said. 

The real-life example of a consulting contract — the 11-week journey through 15,000 pages of policy wordings — led to the discovery of assets to pay out claims, he said.   

FINALISTS

• Aon PLC — Developed by a team of claims management professionals, safety consultants, and program developers, Aon’s spectrum analytics is an online interactive workers compensation claims performance dashboard that provides users the ability to identify and quantify key loss and cost-driving issues and trends.

• Charles Taylor Technical Services — The firm uses technology to identify potential risks and mitigate losses before they occur. It offers full-service engineering, specialty consulting, project management and forensics capabilities to a wide range of organizations in the public and private sectors, covering a range of engineering disciplines such as electrical, structural, civil, marine, aviation, nuclear and petrochemical. 

• FTI Consulting — FTI Consulting’s Global Insurance Services team supports the strategic requirements of boards and senior executives to govern and guide, protect assets, improve business operations, and achieve performance goals and compliance requirements.

• Trion Group — The Marsh & McLennan Cos. Inc. unit developed a proprietary model for employee benefits captives that provides pre-structured fronting arrangements with insurers and administration, enabling employees to purchase voluntary benefits.