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Line of Business Director, General Liability
Zurich Services Corp.
Schaumburg, Ill.

No, that's not a misprint. Ashutosh Riswadkar of Zurich Services Corp. is paid to think small, very small.

At Zurich, risk engineering is known by one of its long-time engineers, Ashutosh Riswadkar, the father of what is sometimes referred to internally as "Rish Engineering."

Riswadkar, who has worked at Zurich for more than 22 years, is paid to think large and small, in this case very small. He was instrumental in developing Zurich Nanotechnology Exposure Protocol (ZNEP), a proprietary algorithm that takes into account the different risk characteristics of exposures to very small particles.

ZNEP, launched earlier this year, includes a Web-based tool designed for use by risk managers and risk management directors to help them track as much data as possible about exposures to nanotechnology.

In addition, a database, which is constantly updated, gives Zurich underwriters the ability to price coverage more accurately to reflect the risk.

"So far, no other insurance company has such a focused assessment protocol around nanotechnology," said Riswadkar, who serves on the Technical Advisory Group of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Riswadkar's challenge was to pull out the equivalent of a powerful magnifying glass and look at nanotechnology's unintended consequences--good and bad--and find a way to develop standards to guide Zurich, its clients and the broader public as the field develops.

The goal is to have the protocol considered by ANSI as the organization drafts standards related to technologies that operate on scales equal to one billionth of a meter, far smaller than the thickness of the human hair.

Exposure data on a dozen or more variables--from the solubility of particles to their chemical structures--needs to be collected and analysed, and Riswadkar enlisted the help of a nanotoxicologist and other experts within Zurich and its outside business partners.

In the near term, the core model of the nanotechnology protocol has applications for the chemical and biotechnology industries, he said.

Like a ship's lookout spending his days high above the deck in the crow's nest, Riswadkar is responsible for keeping the Zurich insurance enterprise abreast of trends just over the horizon so that underwriters and senior managers are prepared.

"This is just a very sharp guy, a very humble guy," said Tom Coll, business development manager for Zurich Services Corp.

"They know him from Switzerland to London to anywhere in the United States." And if they don't know him, they certainly know of him through his prolific publishing schedule--more than 50 publications at last count.

Riswadkar's function is important, as it has a bearing on what resources the carrier will bring to bear when evaluating general liabilities for which the company and its clients must be prepared.

"He sets that strategic direction for risk engineering," said Coll. "Where do we focus the resources, and that becomes a service to the client and the carrier." In the past few years, Riswadkar has sounded warning bells on water shortages and the aging workforce.

"He's in constant communication with professors on technology," Coll added. "They are into selling a product, but he's representing the insurance industry and he's looking at the tail on this stuff and the methodology we can use to flesh that out."

Scanning the horizon for the next general liability risk is sometimes akin to looking for a needle in a haystack, Riswadkar admitted, but once you know what to look for there are plenty of resources available through the Internet to at least get started.

At other times, knowing what the needle looks like is the easy part. Fighting for the C-suite's attention is the hard part, as Riswadkar's managers balance conflicting and competing interests. Even when a looming liability risk is obvious to Riswadkar, there's no guarantee C-suite executives will concur.

Riswadkar's approach to his work demands collaboration and copious doses of humility as he solicits input on emerging liabilities from, and then distills and disseminates the essence of these exposures to, all corners of Zurich's global footprint.

"Getting information and putting it in a form that everybody can understand, that 's probably a bigger challenge," he said.

One, it seems that demands a little "Rish engineering."

--By Cyril Tuohy

Vice President, Director, Technology and Life Sciences Practice
IMA Inc.
Denver

Broker Mark Ware reminds us all that sometimes doing the basics, but doing them very well, is plenty innovative.

One of the most vexing enemies of risk management in this day and age and perhaps always is technology and the speed with which it moves.

Just try and throw an off-the-shelf insurance product at an exposure created by Internet-related risks, or at the complexities of financial trades or at the risks related to the advanced field that is the life sciences.

If you settle for off-the-shelf products, you're probably not managing your risk very well. Not only is there no simple, standard product with which to hedge against such risks, but in many cases there isn't even a shelf.

That's the world that Mark Ware, the Denver-based vice president and director of the technology and life sciences practice for IMA Inc., was looking at a few years back, as he stared into the complex and sensitive world of human cellular and tissue products companies.

The people that run organ donation companies, cord blood storage companies, sperm banks, eye banks and other concerns in this area are sophisticated buyers who do not have a lot of time for someone who cannot grasp the sensitivities of their exposures.

"We don't claim to know everything that they're doing," said Michael Brown, an account executive in Ware's group. "What we try and do is help them understand that if something doesn't go exactly right this is what can happen."

The first thing that Ware did in developing this space as a broker was striving to learn the businesses of these companies inside and out.

"They expect you to be as sharp as they are and unless you are providing them with solutions that are unique and different they get frustrated," said Ware. As he has progressed in his knowledge of the life science world, Ware has come up with several innovations that merit his mention in this issue.

The most recent is his formation of what he and his teammates at IMA call the Risk Solutions Alliance. The alliance, which is getting its first market use specifically with cell and tissue companies, brings together a team of consultants and other risk management experts to address the risk management needs of medical device and life science companies.

The alliance includes a crisis communications piece, a regulatory consultation piece, a risk management piece and an insurance product piece.

"When we first got involved with dealing with one of the largest tissue banks in the United States in taking over their account, I realized that there was a need here beyond just insurance," Ware said.

Ware has also been instrumental in the development of the TechAssure Association Inc., a nonprofit consortium of brokers dedicated to providing better insurance and risk management service to the technology, life sciences, digital media and venture capital industries. He chaired the group in 2007-2008 and was the motivator for the group to hire its first executive director.

"He is a professional that knows his trade very, very well," said Mark Osmanski, the vice president and CFO of the Minneapolis-based ATEK Companies, which owns as a part of its portfolio a medical device manufacturing facility.

"He won't counsel you on your business but he will learn your business enough to be able to tell you the aspects of risk that you would want to get coverage for and then the aspects of risk that are just inherent in your business and you need to get comfortable with from a risk returns standpoint," Osmanski said.

"He just knows his insurance products so well and he is so meticulous and he comes up with what seems for us to be the right answers," said Bonnie Gillette, a Denver-based risk analyst for Gambro, the global medical device company.

--By Dan Reynolds