IN FOCUS / TRANS-WEST INSURANCE BROKERS
TAKING A CONSULTATIVE APPROACH TO INSURANCE Having the right insurance broker on your team can make all the difference. Sam Sofi, managing director, and Pieter Versluis general manager, Trans-West Insurance Brokers, share with Cranes and Lifting how to run such a brokerage. FOR TRANS-WEST INSURANCE BROKERS, the most important aspect of the business is the experience they have in their team. “When you’ve been in the insurance business for over 44 years, we would like to think we have a reasonable amount of experience to comment about the crane and lifting industry. Most of our employees have been with the business long term and this experience leads to a stable organisation. “Of our team of 30 plus we have employees who have been with the organisation for 10 years, 15 years and a number who have been with us for over 20 years. Experience counts in this industry,” Sofi said. Pieter Versluis goes on to discuss his view about what a crane hire business should be looking for in an insurance broker. “The importance of having the right insurance broker on your team cannot be underestimated. An insurance broker has to have a clear understanding of the clients’ business and how they think. I believe too many brokers want to insure the crane and insure the work done, but they don’t address the greater business issues. “We take a consultative approach with our clients. We don’t take a fixed set of questions and operate with a tick and flick approach. ‘Fill out this form and we’ll be able to give you a quote or provide us with this information and we can assist you” he said. 58 / CAL September 2021
“When we have gathered information about the business, our team can then examine the risks which may occur and seek to insure them and to establish a risk management plan.”
“We visit the yards of our clients, we talk to their management team, and we talk to their operators, riggers, dogmen and other staff about what they do in the business. The only way we can be of assistance to any client is to have a clear understanding of how they run their business. It is not our job to tell them how to run their business, but it is our job to respond to how they run their business. “When we have gathered information about the business, our team can then examine the risks which may occur and seek to insure them and to establish a risk management plan. There is plenty of regulation around mobile plant and construction equipment including cranes and it is really a case of identifying the risk and then putting a suitable framework in place,” said Versluis. “In our experience, crane hire businesses often under value the risk they face and undervalue the cost of a replacement crane, if something goes
wrong. Cranes are complex pieces of equipment, and take a long time to repair or replace, depending on the severity of the incident. More often than not cranes will have lease costs attached to them and many crane hire companies fail to see how or why they should insure against this. If a crane is damaged in a significant incident, it can be off the road for six www.cranesandlifting.com.au
