When a large loss hits a business operating across several European countries, the risk manager may be in one country, claims coordination in another and the loss in a third. Establishing who gives the instructions, and who has authority to sign off decisions, is an early challenge in coordinating the response.
Niels De Kock (pictured), president, Europe and Middle East at Crawford, spoke to Insurance Business after FERMA 2026 in the Netherlands, his ninth edition of the event. The gathering brings together clients, brokers, insurers and risk managers from across Europe, reflecting the mix of markets and parties that can make multinational claims difficult to coordinate.
"It's generally not on the technical side. It's everything else. It's communication," De Kock said.
Language is part of that, including the practical work of turning a report written in German into something a French insurer can act on. Documentation and regulatory requirements differ too. Even within Europe, expectations vary by market, and local teams handling a loss may work differently from what the risk manager's home country expects.
The programme's structure adds another layer. Those handling the loss need to understand how it is placed, whether a captive is involved and whether there is local retention. Brokers, insurers, reinsurers and captive managers can each view the same claim differently.
Technical expertise is a prerequisite, but rarely the hard part. "Expertise provides the foundation, but the real challenge is coordinating the various parties involved and ensuring work is delivered consistently across locations and disciplines," he said. Risk managers also need reassurance that someone can coordinate the local work and manage expectations across those parties.
Much of that coordination can be agreed before anything goes wrong. De Kock pointed to a claims protocol setting out who to call, who signs off on decisions and who gives the instructions, whether the captive, the insurer or a panel of reinsurers.
Adjusters need to understand how the programme is structured and how losses are insured. The protocol also needs testing, through scenario planning if not a real loss.
Growing complexity makes that preparation more important. De Kock said losses increasingly extend beyond physical assets into business interruption, reputational damage and cyber. Longstanding panel relationships help build the corporate memory needed to keep track of a business as it divests and acquires operations and its programme changes with it. An adjuster may even end up working for a divested business as a standalone client, with that history already in hand.
"No two programmes are the same, and no two companies are the same, and the expectations will be different," he said.
Those relationships still depend on personal contact. Long relationships with people "that you trust and that you've met and you've seen, that you can look into their eyes" still help when a complex loss lands.
Much of the AI discussion at FERMA centred on what it means as an exposure, from incorrect outputs to bias. In claims, De Kock sees it supporting adjusters with policy documents, claims files and translation, while people continue to establish causation, negotiate with the parties and sign off reports.
How far its use extends also depends on the client. Claims are handled on behalf of regulated clients with their own requirements for data, IT security, compliance and privacy. Even an appetite to automate smaller adjusting reports entirely would depend on what those clients permit.
He can understand why some companies that adopted AI too enthusiastically are now scaling back, particularly where it was used in consumer-facing bots or used to replace processes without a backup. For De Kock, the conference itself made the case for keeping people at the centre of the work. "These were not AI agents having drinks with each other at night," he said.
How brokers and claims teams work together has changed less than might be expected, De Kock said. FERMA today does not look very different from 15 years ago, with many of the same names in the room. What has changed is complexity, spanning programmes, exposures and businesses themselves. Risk management has matured alongside it, becoming a core function in multinational businesses.
"Claims are always after the fact," he said. But lessons from major property losses, casualty claims, product recalls, marine and cyber losses help risk managers improve their processes and underwriters adapt their products. Claims protocols need to keep pace as businesses and their insurance programmes change, so responsibility is clear when the next loss occurs.
