RMs Urged To Improve Disaster Plans

By Caroline McDonald

NU Online News Service, April 24, 3:28 p.m. EST, NewYork?A panel of experts bearing battle scars from Sept. 11yesterday advised risk managers and others in the insuranceindustry to beef up their disaster plans and prepare for theworst.

Executives addressing the monthly Advancement of ProfessionalInsurance Women luncheon here recommended contingency plans thatinclude an emergency operations center and a blueprint for locatingand accounting for employees.

"Sept. 11 was a paradigm shift," said panelist Barry L. Zubrow,chief administrative officer for Goldman Sachs in New York. "Weneed to plan for events that go well beyond 9-11, events that mightfollow weapons of mass destruction or biological attacks."

Though their offices are located on the East side of lowerManhattan and didn't bear the brunt of the aftermath, Mr. Zubrowsaid the organization decided there was a need to locate itsworkforce outside of lower Manhattan.

The company is planning to move a portion of its equity tradingstaff to a 1.5-million square-foot space in Jersey City, he said,that will house support areas of the investment management divisionand part of the equities trading operation.

At a business continuity planning session recently hosted by theFederal Reserve Bank, Mr. Zubrow said regulators noted three keyvulnerabilities:

? Contingency planning generally did not account for region-wideevents.

? The financial industry and the regulatory community need tothink about vulnerabilities of concentrations of people from bothmarketing and geography standpoints.

? Organizations need to make sure they have the right models forcontingency plans and they need to test those plans.

"Nowhere have we had a robust set of testing across all of ourdifferent institutions and in the higher marketplace." As a result,he said, Goldman Sachs has encouraged industry-wide testing"reminiscent of the period leading up to Y2K."

Donna L. Makow, senior vice president with Marsh in New York,said the company's plans in place on Sept. 11 were designed with"the worst case scenario" in mind.

Those plans, however, "as well orchestrated as they might havebeen, were definitely stretched beyond anybody's imagination," shesaid.

At Marsh, Ms. Makow said, there were 1,900 colleagues,contractors and guests in One World Trade Center on Sept. 11. Thelatest number of those lost in the event, she said, is 294.

Of that number 126 were technology specialists. Other areasaffected were the Guy Carpenter reinsurance arm, finance, claims,risk lost control and other business lines, she explained.

By noon of that day, an emergency call center was set up, sheexplained. Management posted a list of colleagues and began phoningfamilies to find out if they had heard from loved ones at One WorldTrade Center. A list was soon compiled from printed lists andfamilies were contacted.

A family center was "up and running" by Friday morning, shesaid. It stayed open for nearly two weeks and offered manyservices, including regular updates from City officials, a diningarea, a chapel, day-care facilities, information about benefits andsocial security, and vans making trips to Ground Zero.

Ms. Makow said Marsh is broadening its contingency plans toinclude guidelines for leaving the city as well as evacuating thebuilding. The company also is working to establish designatedmeeting places for employees and places for family members togather.

Cross-training and back-up plans are being implemented withemployees "to make sure that we've got the knowledge base dispersedabout the organization and not kept in silos."