Less than a month into Lance J. Ewing’s job as a risk manager for Harrah’s Entertainment, Hurricane Katrina caused about $1.6 billion in damage to the company’s Gulf Coast casinos.

Talk about being thrown into the deep end.

Considering the experience gained through that trial and in the years since, it seems appropriate that Ewing would be selected to guard against risk for Chartis as head of its new Hospitality and Leisure Industry Practice Group.

Ewing says he has the “battle scars” from handling multiline, complex claims at Harrah’s resorts and casinos and that Chartis has assembled a seasoned, veteran group with the “wherewithal to know the needs of clients and provide them with innovative solutions.”

The Hospitality and Leisure Group will be charged with finding specialized insurance and risk-management solutions for casinos, high-end restaurants, quick-casual restaurants, resorts, cruise lines, theme parks, zoos, circuses and professional sports—to name a few.

“Holding them all together is the fact they each deal with the public in some tangible way,” Ewing notes. “We think we can continue to grow in this area and create new products.”

The hospitality and leisure industries are always “looking to [seek out] people who understand their risk. We want to be that resource for this industry and build long-term relationships,” he adds.

Ewing says a number of brokers have units dedicated to this risk class and that Chartis wants to align with these producers, so when the latter are presented with a risk to place, they immediately “know we understand the nuances.”

Ewing, a past president of RIMS, is also starting a client-advisory board within the Hospitality and Leisure Group to find out “what’s working and what’s not working” in order to better understand clients’ needs and to help shape new products, he adds.

Chartis now has 11 such industry-practice groups, focusing on transportation, health care, public entities, financial institutions, higher education and real estate, among others.

Special Reports /

Chartis Angles for Larger Slice of Hospitality & Leisure Niche

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