The following activities are conducted by our Support Desk:

 

 

Maritime law is constantly on the move. Through new case law, through new laws and through ratification of new conventions. We keep a track on these developments to keep our client base informed and adjust insurance requirements. This information is available on individual request but also on our site www.RaetsCommunity.com.

 

Both Assured and Insurer are benefiting from any claim that can be reduced or avoided. We therefore invest in professionals and tools to adequately assist our clients in providing information on claims analysis and we will support any investigation to prevent risks.

 

In our ‘one stop’ marine insurance approach it will happen that more than one underwriter and various claims professionals are dealing with the clients’ underwriting and claims files. Through our support desk structure we wish to facilitate the best and most efficient approach to our clients in delivering risk management services and managing the overall client relation. Whenever required by our clients we will organize, analyze and manage information and make sure that in communication and personal visits all relevant information and data is available.

 

An active risk management and loss prevention discipline is adding value to the client relation. Reducing or avoiding risks produce better results, both in the commercial venture and in insurance costs. We therefore invest in competent professionals, who do not only have technical skills, but who are also able to manage risk management and loss prevention through communication with our clients. We conduct condition surveys, we do research on quality of ships and management, we make tailor-made risk management programs and we research trends on recurring loss patterns.

 

At RaetsMarine we have always pro-actively managed our worldwide network of correspondents, surveyors and lawyers. It means that our data on available knowledge is constantly kept up to date enabling us to act swiftly and adequately in cases of emergency or just to obtain risk management information.

 

Our Support Desk works on the basis of Service Level Management. We aim at having a Service Level Agreement with each approved provider of services, which in our opinion gives the best guarantees to control costs and the level of services available and being provided.

 

Our clients are best served with claims professionals from RaetsMarine, who are available with a single focus on ‘file results’. We have therefore made our support desks responsible to assist our claims professionals with all tasks in the fringe of handling claims and managing the client relation. On a daily basis our support desk professionals are delivering information, data and intelligence to our claims professionals, which is putting them in the best position to advice our clients on claim or dispute matters without delays.

 

Our underwriting professionals keep a focus on serving our clients with swift answers on any underwriting matters, both technically and commercially. Our support desks assist with delivering data and information on benchmarking, research and actuary enabling our underwriters to understand and manage risk exposures, delivering our clients with the best tailor-made solutions.

 

Our in house RaetsAcademy facilitates a training course on a ‘learning by doing’ basis for new recruits, but also for any person employed by our brokers or clients. During a one month period the candidate will be trained and coached in marine insurance and maritime law. In recent years we have successfully trained young professionals, who are now working in our underwriting, support desk and claims departments.

 

At RaetsMarine we are constantly collecting information about marine insurance, shipping and maritime law. All this information is put in our in house built database, which is fully integrated with our IT systems. It means that information is instantly available to everybody in our head- and branch offices for any matter where we need to give advice or guidance to our clients.

 

Our support desks are bridging any gaps between underwriting and claims in putting information from both sides together. It means that overall client information can be made available instantly, whenever needed.

 

We believe that service level management is an adequate tool to manage the services that we outsource for the purposes of obtaining the best result for our clients. Through service level management you make sure that you have access to the best available knowledge, when needed. Furthermore you can check whether the agreed service level was provided and you have control over the costs of our outsourcing expenditure. Basically we want value for money.

 

An insurance policy is only valid when the premium is being paid. It is therefore important that we are keeping accurate records of our invoiced and outstanding premiums.