London, 15-16 June 2022. IATA held its first Risk and Insurance Management Conference (RIM) since 2019. I was fortunate to attend.
If you are reading this, you are probably in the field of crisis management or business continuity and you are considering ‘switching off’, with little interest in insurance. But please don’t. So much of the RIM was valid for those working in the resilience spectrum.
The apathy at this meeting was infectious. I even heard, “It is what it is” when clearly the issue that had been raised was ripe for further debate. Many discussion points and questions from the delegates did not belong solely in an insurance forum. It should be for the IATA secretariat to filter these to other IATA work-streams for a cross-departmental understanding. As an example, ground handling and associated risks raised multiple real-world problems that should be taken forward to the IATA Safety Group and IATA Ground Operations Group. If change is needed, the right people need to be part of the debate.
For emergency managers
Come to the next RIM! – there is so much for emergency managers to be aware of – this should not just be for insurance reps.
Things to check with your insurer and internally:
- What does your insurance policy say about unruly passengers? Does the airline have to do anything to be compliant with the clauses? For example, do you have to have an airline process for managing unruly passengers and do you train to that process?
- To what extent can you claim on your insurance policy for support given for ‘psychological damage’ (author: not my expression). There was a suggestion at RIM that there are no settlements for psychological damage. In 2022, I find that difficult to understand but should be checked between airline and insurer.
- Cyber threats or other failures that lead to data-loss result in hundreds of enquiries from the public and media. Many of these are calls to the ‘contact us’ numbers. To what extent is your call centre able to manage such calls, do they have procedures and are they trained. If you outsource call centre activity for emergencies, is data-breach on your list and can the contractor cope?