Recovery from a catastrophic event such as a weather-related disaster, earthquake, terrorist attack, fire, or structural collapse can be essential to your company’s finances, operations, reputation, and overall success. The same can be said for financially crippling incidents such as employee theft, embezzlement, fraud, and liability lawsuits.

Even the best planning may not anticipate all of the contingencies an organization faces in the wake of such events. First and foremost, an organization must restore operations and ensure that the business is up and running as quickly as possible. Obtaining assistance from your insurers and maximum financial recovery of your losses will be important—perhaps crucial—to the future of your organization. In such times of crisis, you can rely on Marsh’s forensic accounting and claims professionals to assist you in quantifying your losses and accurately presenting your insurance claims so that you can resume business as usual in a timely manner.

Service Highlights

Marsh’s Forensic Accounting and Claims Services (FACS) Practice can help your company—no matter the industry—work through the vast number of claims-related issues that may follow a catastrophic event. Our team of professionals can respond almost anywhere in the world within 48 hours of a loss event to provide you with proactive, on-the-ground support to help manage your crisis.

After major disasters such as September 11, Hurricane Katrina, the Buncefield explosion, and Tropical Cyclone Gonu, our consultants have prepared hundreds of complex claims for clients totaling multi-billions of dollars. We offer the claims leadership and other resources in the wake of a catastrophic event to help you mitigate your losses, focus your attention on your employees and community, and achieve a timely recovery and return to business.

Post-Loss Claim Measurement and Claim Preparation Services

FACS helps to ensure that solid procedures are in place to assist you in securing your financial recovery when a catastrophic loss event occurs. We can help manage your insurance claims and any potential FEMA claims, and our services include post-event loss analyses of:

• business interruption/contingent business interruption/extra expense;
• property damage and contents;
• service interruption;
• stock losses;
• environmental issues;and
• casualty, builders risk, and subrogation claims;

In addition to providing assistance after catastrophic events, FACS can help you with any fidelity or liability claims that you may face. When confronted with allegations of employee theft or fraud, companies must act quickly and decisively. FACS can help you obtain the information needed to manage the situation, take appropriate action, and get back to business.

Our forensic accountants and certified fraud examiners are experienced in preserving and recovering evidence and interviewing employees, beginning our investigations with the knowledge of the potential questions that must be answered to satisfy insurers. We work with our Financial and Professional (FINPRO) Practice to assist with the preparation of the proof-of-loss and coordination with insurers. Involving FACS from the inception of the investigation can help enhance the credibility of your claim and increase the likelihood of full insurance recovery, including, where applicable, recovery of investigative costs.

If faced with a liability suit, there are a range of issues that need to be managed from your perspective, as well as for responsible third parties and their insurers. FACS recognizes the importance of preserving existing business relationships and provides a range of services to help support your business objectives when dealing with a liability issue, including measuring economic damages sustained as a result of third party losses and assisting in the evaluation and defense of all claims made against the client.

Claim Project Management and Claim Engineering

Large casualty and property losses can be extremely complex from a data as well as a stakeholder standpoint. Complex management issues may exceed the scope of your resources and capabilities, particularly if your business was affected in a location where you are not familiar with local and state regulations and procedures.

FACS claims project managers travel to the loss sites and assist in managing clients’ claim processes with stakeholders, including home office and local personnel, repair contractors, and loss adjusters. They can provide timely claims process progress reports and identify critical claims issues to be resolved—potentially before they develop into challenges that could delay the recovery.

Additionally, FACS can provide claims engineers and other experts to help establish the scope and values of property damage, separating the damages from maintenance or related repair upgrades, which may or may not be insurance recoverable. Our claims engineers work with you to identify and address damage scope issues that may not be evident to your insurer or the adjustment team. With these comprehensive services, we can help you achieve your recovery goals and improve your claims process efficiency.

Marsh’s FACSdb

FACS supports its work with a powerful database tool that greatly facilitates the claim management and recovery process. Marsh’s FACSdb allows you and the FACS team to effectively compile, manage, and distribute large amounts of claim data, especially for claims with multiple locations, damage categories, and submissions. FACSdb is a highly customizable, easy-to-use system that provides quick and secure online access to claim information—including control over data-specific access privileges—allowing database entry, updates, and data manipulation from multiple locations.