Fashioning a forum: Mike Witka has created a place for Roman Catholic risk managers to share their concerns and methods.

When Mike Witka set up the Diocesan Risk Managers' Forum two years ago for Diocese risk managers and finance people to ask questions and share ideas, little did he know that one of the first questions would go something like this:

A risk manager wanted to know how to cover a church's risk when a funeral home leaves a body overnight in the church after the service. Apparently, it's becoming more common. The church then has the care, custody and control of the body and the exposure should someone steal the body. The solution was to ask funeral homes to indemnify churches by naming them as additional insureds under its professional liability coverage. Fortunately, to Witka's knowledge, no bodies have been stolen.

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Not all topics are that esoteric. The Forum also features a more personal list-serve that meets monthly. "The subjects are what they want to talk about," said Witka. "It's the issues that are important to a particular diocese at that time." Topics have included proper limits, valuation of buildings, 15-passenger van safety and insurance archeology. That last category, sometimes known as reconstructive insurance, involves going through archives to find old policies, say from the 1970s, to see how different coverages were then. "The limits then were very low," Witka said. "Depending on the subject, there could be 15 or 20 people on the phone (or) we could have a couple hundred it everyone is involved," said Witka. "In every diocese not everyone has someone in insurance, so we hear from them only during renewal time," he said.

"The catalyst (for setting up the network) was bringing risk managers together," said Peter Persuitti, managing director of the nonprofit and religious practice of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. "There is no national professional organization for this emerging group, nor a network or list-serve for them to share ideas and communicate," said Persuitti. It made sense for Witka to take the lead because he's a former insurance broker so "he can appreciate that perspective and understands what our job is," said Persuitti.

Witka also "troubleshoots" for other parishes--chief financial officers might call on him to discuss financial or loss control issues. "He's just a genuine good person," Persuitti said.

Network sessions are held every month in either a teleconference or webinar format. Sometimes a third-party expert is brought in to discuss a specific topic.

There are 194 Roman Catholic dioceses around the country, yet only about 30 to 40 of them have risk managers, according to Persuitti. In many eases the finance person or whoever puts together the budget wears the risk management hat too.

That might mean someone with no risk management training might be managing more than 81 billion in property, Witka said. That's all the more reason why that person needs the network.

As the network continues to grow, Witka's next project--working in conjunction with Persuitti--is to develop a program called "Common Ground," which will deal with global insurance practices.