Risk Surveying At IUM

With the reducing capacity in the insurance market due to severe preventable fire losses over the past couple of years, insurers needed to adapt and change their process when underwriting risk. New and available technologies allow us to help clients prevent major catastrophes from occurring.

It made sense therefore, that we needed to provide a service where it is easy to assess, analyse and identify risks and then assist clients in implementing solutions to reduce and mitigate those risks.

The IUM Surveying department is a free, dedicated resource, available to all IUM clients, that allows IUM to survey additional locations outside of the target location.

Survey requests are submitted by our underwriting team to our surveying department, based on new business or a renewal in terms of the policy.

Once received, the request is allocated to one of our professional surveyors who then contacts the client to set up an appointment to visit the site in question.

When on site, our surveyor is able to do a comprehensive risk assessment which includes full fire and electrical reticulation, structural integrity, and occupancy details for an accurate risk evaluation.

Assessments are further done via thermal imaging to detect possible heat sources that increase risk exposure, as well as the employment of measuring tools which look at storage practices.

High-tech drones are deployed for an overview of inspected risks and to carry out structural inspections of hard-to-reach locations, such as roofs and silos, for example.

An added advantage to our surveyors is the ability to create real-time, on-site reports using our bespoke In-Syte system which speeds up the administrative side.

Once back at the office, surveyors can complete the report for risk requirements and recommendations, with added visual evidence which was recorded on site. This report is sent for verification and once verified and approved – it is sent back to the underwriting team to complete the cycle.