Understanding and Calculating Your Total Cost of Risk

Few things seem quite as daunting to business owners and risk managers as taking an in-depth look at the risks your business faces and the steps you must take to truly protect against them, prepare for them, and even mitigate or eliminate them. The extent to which you can do any of these things depends on your business, your unique risks, and how carefully you plan and execute your strategy. A key element of planning and implementing an effective risk management strategy is calculating and understanding your total cost of risk.

Calculating and evaluating your total cost of risk is complex and time-consuming. It is well worth the effort; it can help you determine which risks truly pose the greatest potential threat to your business and your profitability, and can help steer you toward effective solutions.
Using your total cost of risk as a guide can help you make objective decisions, not emotional ones, and later you can consider whether your risk management strategies make sense or are having an impact. You will see that managing certain risks is relatively easy; for example, you purchase commercial property insurance to protect against losses associated with a fire or natural disaster. Protecting against or mitigating more indirect risks and their associated costs can be much more complex. Have you considered the potential for negative publicity or lost business after a lawsuit, data breach, or an industrial accident? These are very real possibilities with devastating financial consequences.

The costs associated with your risk exposures can be placed into the following categories in order to calculate your total cost of risk.

• Insurance premiums: premiums you pay to insurance company to transfer risk to another party.
• Direct Costs: losses that you retain that are directly related to an accident, mishap, etc. Direct costs can include losses beneath your insurance deductibles, above your insurance limits, or even those that have no coverage at all. In addition, direct costs can include self-insurance costs.
• Indirect Costs: costs that are not directly related to a loss incident, but result from it, such as diminished profits or productivity, payments to third parties, lost efficiency or competitiveness, increased human resources costs, and penalties that must be paid.
• Risk Management Administrative Costs: risk control costs, clerical costs, claim and administrative expenses, salaries, training, internal legal counsel, loss control costs, and brokerage and consulting fees.

A complete and thorough examination of your total cost of risk helps you avoid making assumptions, rather than concrete, data-driven decisions. You will prevent unnecessary expenses and make sure you are prepared for circumstances out of your control.

SouthGroup’s mission is to help businesses assess their risks and find the best strategies to address them. Our Risk Reduction Approach is a unique process that begins with identifying the risks that are inherent in your business. We then evaluate your exposures and recommend proactive solutions and strategies for assuming, transferring, financing and mitigating them. The Risk Reduction Approach helps you calculate and examine your total cost of risk as well as design and implement a plan that is entirely tailored to the needs of your business. In addition, we will help you track, monitor and amend the plan over time as your business grows and your needs change.
We have experience helping companies of various types and sizes calculate and evaluate their total cost of risk as part of our Risk Reduction Approach. We can help you, too. Call SouthGroup Insurance Services today to learn more about our Risk Reduction Approach and how it applies to your business.
Your Trusted Choice Insurance Agent, SouthGroup Insurance Gulf Coast wants you to know you can call on us with your questions or concerns seeking more helpful advice or answers to your pressing insurance questions. A full insurance review is always your best bet to make sure you have all of the adequate coverage for your personal insurance needs. Remember, we offer a personalized insurance review to anyone who is interested at no charge – just visit any one of our 3 convenient coastal locations!

We are your LOCAL Trusted Choice Advisors, SouthGroup-Gulf Coast http://www.southgroupgulfcoast.com ,  SALES AND SERVICE AGENTS: Angelyn Treutel Zeringue, Tammy Garfield, Tammy Hogue, Brittany Jones, Denise Russell, Melissa Moran, Alex Treutel, Anne Gillam, Ashlie Moody, Mark Strickland, and Whitney Zimmerman at SouthGroup Gulf Coast. You can reach us by snail-mail or in person: 412 Hwy 90, Suite 6, Bay St Louis MS 39520, email: info@southgropugulfcoast.com , phone: 228-466-4498 fax:888-415-8922,  FaceBook www.facebook.com/southgroup.gulfcoast, or Twitter www.twitter.com/atreutel !

We have 3 Gulf Coast locations to serve you - 2505 Pass Road - Biloxi, 5400 Indian Hill-Diamondhead, and 412 Hwy 90 Suite 6-Bay Saint Louis, MS. We write coverage in 40 different states and can assist you with Mississippi insurance, Louisiana insurance, and Alabama insurance and many other states.

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