Zurich found new approach to claims in Katrina's wake.

When faced with the unprecedented number of claims from Hurricane Katrina, commercial insurer Zurich took an unusual approach to handling the onslaught.

Christopher E. Barnes, senior vice president of field office operations, said the company knew it needed to get staff quickly to the area damaged by the hurricane. He and Jim York, assistant vice president of risk engineering, asked volunteers from the risk engineering department to travel to the impacted areas to establish contact with producers and policyholders.

Typically, risk engineers help clients prevent losses. In this new role, they initially were deployed as the first line of communication, when phone lines were down.

"We tried to call 800 producers in Louisiana and Mississippi before the storm hit to tell them how to reach us," Barnes said during an interview with Best's Review at the Risk and Insurance Management Society's annual conference in Honolulu. "Those we could not reach by phone, we tracked down in person."

In some cases, risk engineers were able to pick up claims to take back to temporary offices. But more than being couriers, the risk engineers used their expertise to help evaluate claims and oversee independent contractors, York said. They conducted engineering studies of damaged properties to give detailed reports to policyholders on what percentage of their claims would be covered, and why or why not the coverage was excluded. In addition to 250 people at the claims headquarters in Illinois, Zurich had 1,500 people in the field. Also the company still was working to settle claims from the four hurricanes of 2004, Barnes said.