It’s the phone call any director or senior manager dreads — a significant fire at one of our properties had caused extensive damage to our building but had also destroyed the stock held in the building.

“It’s ok, that’s why we’ve got insurance” was our initial response. However, a couple of conversations with our insurance broker and insurer-appointed loss adjuster in the immediate aftermath of the event quickly highlighted that our business was short on experience on how to progress our insurance claim. All of our effort was going into recovering our operating capacity and making sure we continue to serve our customers, which is where our internal resource was best directed. I’ll admit that at first I was reluctant to engage with an external party — we had already paid our insurance premiums and the event was clearly going to stretch us, we could do without additional costs.

However, we quickly decided to treat the recovery from the fire as a strategic project. We had engaged with external organisations before on other strategic projects, why should this one be any different? With this in mind, we appointed Thompson & Bryan as our advisors for our claim, and I can probably say that is one of the best decisions we have made.

Simon Jenkinson’s expertise on the claims process, from the damaged stock to rebuild of property, was invaluable — he took the lead with loss adjusters and insurers, leaving the management of the business to focus on delivering for our customers. I would definitely say that the cost of Thompson & Bryan’s services during our recovery project were more than justified by the fact that we were not distracted from our usual business operations during the claim process, aside from achieving a fair result from the insurance claim itself.

I would have no qualms in appointing Thompson & Bryan if faced with a similar situation in the future, or indeed in recommending them to other organisations in need of their services.

Neil Holland
Finance Director
Wanzl UK & Ireland Group

It’s the phone call any director or senior manager dreads — a significant fire at one of our properties had caused extensive damage to our building but had also destroyed the stock held in the building.

“It’s ok, that’s why we’ve got insurance” was our initial response. However, a couple of conversations with our insurance broker and insurer-appointed loss adjuster in the immediate aftermath of the event quickly highlighted that our business was short on experience on how to progress our insurance claim. All of our effort was going into recovering our operating capacity and making sure we continue to serve our customers, which is where our internal resource was best directed. I’ll admit that at first I was reluctant to engage with an external party — we had already paid our insurance premiums and the event was clearly going to stretch us, we could do without additional costs.

However, we quickly decided to treat the recovery from the fire as a strategic project. We had engaged with external organisations before on other strategic projects, why should this one be any different? With this in mind, we appointed Thompson & Bryan as our advisors for our claim, and I can probably say that is one of the best decisions we have made.

Simon Jenkinson’s expertise on the claims process, from the damaged stock to rebuild of property, was invaluable — he took the lead with loss adjusters and insurers, leaving the management of the business to focus on delivering for our customers. I would definitely say that the cost of Thompson & Bryan’s services during our recovery project were more than justified by the fact that we were not distracted from our usual business operations during the claim process, aside from achieving a fair result from the insurance claim itself.

I would have no qualms in appointing Thompson & Bryan if faced with a similar situation in the future, or indeed in recommending them to other organisations in need of their services.

Neil Holland
Finance Director
Wanzl UK & Ireland Group