Ahead of the 2019 Atlantic hurricane season, Zurich Insurance is launching a new Continuing Education (CE)-accredited training program on building resilience to severe weather events.
The two-hour program, The Post Event Review Capability (PERC) Program and Insurance: Analyzing Resilience and Insurance Protection, is available in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina and satisfies requirements for two insurance CE credits.
The program will educate insurance distributors and Zurich customers on Zurich’s award-winning PERC methodology, a comprehensive, robust analytical tool designed to help all community stakeholders learn from past disasters to make their communities more resilient. The program will also share lessons learned from conducting 14 post-event reviews of disasters and explain the types of insurance offerings and resilience measures available to businesses and communities.
“This training program is premised on the clear understanding that our customers don’t conduct business in a vacuum,” said Zurich North America Chief Claims Officer Paul Lavelle. “We are all part of communities where we live, work and do business. At Zurich, we see it as our responsibility to share what we’ve learned from studying disasters with the hope of making our communities we serve safer and more resilient.”
Insurance distributors and Zurich customers who attend the training program will gain the following knowledge:
- Understand the history and background of the PERC methodology;
- Learn how the methodology helps communities develop a systematic, disciplined approach to preparing for a disaster before, during and after it occurs;
- Identify the characteristics that resilient communities exhibit that enables them to effectively plan for, endure and recover quickly from a disaster;
- Understand the elements of the PERC framework and how it is utilized to conduct a post-event analysis of a community’s response to a disaster and how that analysis is used to frame “lessons learned” and areas in which the community can enhance its resilience;
- Understand how insurance relates to effective PERC planning, what obstacles stand in the way of securing adequate coverage, the role the industry needs to play throughout the pre- and post-disaster cycle and the range of coverages needed; and
- Review key findings from recent post-event reviews conducted in the United States.
This new training program is based on extensive research conducted by Zurich on disasters around the world and implications for developing and building resilience, including effective insurance programming. It also aligns with the Sustainable Cities and Communities and Climate Action goals that are part of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. Plans are underway to make the training available in additional states.