At a time when continued rises in insurance premiums are commonplace and a key contributor to underlying inflation, it comes as something of a surprise that many university protection costs actually fell this year.
Unimutual CEO Geoff Henderson said that contributions fell for the first time in four years for its Members, as a result of a better than expected reduction in reinsurance costs and continuous improvement in approaches to managing risk.
Unimutual is a Member owned Mutual for nearly 70% of Australia’s universities and visits international insurance houses each year to present on the steps its Members have taken to reduce risk.
“Our reinsurers love the story that we are able to tell about continuously improving the management of risks and that flows through to pricing for protection for universities,” Mr Henderson said.
“Some Universities are able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year by addressing risk – which means putting plans into place to avoid problems, and to better manage foreseeable issues such as flooding or fire danger.”
Unimutual visits every campus of Members at least every three years to conduct comprehensive risk assessments and have just signed a partnership with the Risk Management Institute of Australasia (RMIA) to provide more resources to universities seeking to manage risk.
“There are a lot of commonsense solutions that can help universities continue operation as usual, but also avoid major catastrophes. For example, if you have had a building significantly damaged in a flood zone and want to rebuild in the same spot, our experts look at the best way to engineer the new building to minimise risk. It might mean putting carparks rather than expensive research equipment on the bottom two floors, so that there is less impact next time a flood occurs.
“There are a whole range of things universities can do to reduce the likelihood of issues – and reduce asset protection costs. For example, if you store wooden pallets next to walls, it increases fire risk, placing a whole lot of fuel next to your building, so they need to be moved. When you have hot work permit process on a building site, for example doing some welding, the biggest fire risk is within 30 minutes of the work being completed, so monitoring that area for half an hour after work has been completed significantly reduces fire risk.
“We have two full-time staff who have learned a lot from past incidents in the Higher Education sector and by sharing what we have learned with Members, as well as providing resources and information from the RMIA, we can contribute to making universities safer while also reducing protection costs.”
Unimutual will provide Members with access to webinars, whitepapers, accreditation opportunities and professional development through the RMIA partnership.
