Beazley insures itself against Crisis Impact with FortressAS

Founded in 1986 by Andrew Beazley and Nick Furlonge, Beazley is a specialist insurer that provides clients with the highest standards of underwriting and claims service worldwide. All of its insurance businesses are rated A (Excellent) by global credit rating agency AM Best.

The company is a proud participant in the Lloyd’s market, the largest and oldest insurance market in the world. Through the Lloyd’s broker network and the market’s trading licences, Beazley is able to access a wide range of insurance and reinsurance businesses from around the world.

Beazley’s values – what it calls “Being Beazley” – inspire the way the firm works and how it treats its customers and people. This approach sets the company apart and over the past three decades, it has grown from five people in a London office to over 2,000 across five continents.

Recognising it is critical to continue providing uninterrupted service to its customers worldwide, whatever unexpected events may occur, Beazley invested in state-of-the-art Work Area Recovery facilities from Fortress Availability Services.

With thousands of customers and brokers worldwide depending on its services, Beazley needs to provide a continuous service, no matter what disruptions might strike. Businesses today face numerous threats including fire, floods, IT failure, denial of access due to protests or police cordon, and terrorism but, in addition to these traditional risks, cyber-attacks continue to rise. Having a well-rehearsed business continuity plan in place has never been more important and this is especially true for Beazley.

Downtime for whatever reason would have serious consequences for Beazley. As well as reputational damage and loss of revenue, as a regulated company it could face sanctions and financial penalties. Linda Anderson elaborates: “The insurance market is very deadline-driven as it’s regulated by the FCA, which sets strict regulations for reporting and renewals. Consequently, timings are critical.”

Beazley realised that while in the short-term its workforce could ‘muddle through’ with a combination of working from home or out of a local hotel or coffee shop, should disruption last more than a few days teams would need a central workspace to work together productively. This is particularly so in the event of IT failure when critical technical staff need to gather in one place to collaborate on fixing the problem.

Recognising an outage could potentially cause it to lose business if customers couldn’t access its vital systems, Beazley took the decision to invest in a purpose-built alternative workplace.  Having scoured the marketplace to evaluate suppliers, it opted to partner with Fortress Availability Services (FortressAS).

According to Linda Anderson, there were many reasons for choosing FortressAS:

“Firstly, the recovery suite is outside the security cordon for the City of London’s Square Mile, yet still easily accessible.

Secondly, we found FortressAS to be extremely knowledgeable and professional, which gave us confidence.

And thirdly, the solution they offered far outweighed that offered by our previous provider.”

There’s a reason for that, as Andrew Lawton, MD of FortressAS, explains, “When designing our facility we effectively had a blank canvas.  We could therefore create a Recovery Centre based on what customer told us they want today. So we created an environment that’s more in keeping with what City staff are accustomed to. We didn’t want them to have to waste time or energy getting used to the Recovery Centre, at the same time as having to deal with the disaster.”

Alternative Workspace

Beazley contracts 80 workplace positions at FortressAS’ newly-built Work Area Recovery Centre at Crossharbour in London’s Docklands.

Equipped with the latest technology, this bright, airy and modern facility gives Beazley’s staff a convenient place to work in the event its own premises are unavailable.

FortressAS prides itself on having the fastest recovery times in the industry with two-hour access Service Level Agreements, image recovery within eight minutes and immediately available telephony, including DDI numbers.

Its aim is to provide an office environment that staff will immediately feel comfortable and relaxed in at what can be a stressful time.

FortressAS has made a public commitment to be the most helpful and effective Business Continuity Service Provider, bar none. In his company’s Customer Charter, founder Andrew Lawton promises, “The most important thing we can do is listen and take notice of our customers. So, this is what we commit to do, always.”

Linda Anderson believes, “FortressAS offers a simple solution to a complex business requirement.”

“They helped us throughout the process and we found setting up the contract straightforward. All the people we dealt with were very accommodating when it came to our approach and timescales. They were approachable, easy to contact and responded quickly to our requests.”

While Beazley has not yet needed to invoke its contract, it conducts annual system tests – incorporating user testing – and the FortressAS facility passed with flying colours.