You Can't Manage a Risk You Haven't Identified

Every business carries risk. The challenge is that some of the most significant risks aren't always obvious—and they aren't always found on an insurance policy.

At Eastman Insurance Solutions, our approach begins by understanding your business before recommending how to insure it. We look beyond applications, classifications, payroll and revenue to understand how your company actually operates, where exposures exist, and how those exposures could affect your people, property, operations, reputation and financial stability.

Identifying risk is the foundation of the EIS risk management process.

Before we determine what should be insured, we first work to understand what could go wrong, why it could happen, and what the potential impact could be.

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Risk Starts With Understanding Your Business

No two businesses operate exactly the same way—even when they share the same industry classification.

Two electrical contractors may have similar revenue and employee counts while having dramatically different risk profiles. One may primarily perform commercial tenant improvements with a stable workforce and limited fleet exposure. Another may perform industrial work, operate a significant vehicle fleet, subcontract portions of its work, and regularly enter contracts containing substantial insurance and indemnification requirements.

On an insurance application, those businesses may initially look similar.

From a risk management perspective, they are not.

That's why our process begins with conversations and discovery rather than immediately shopping insurance policies.

We want to understand how your business makes money, how work gets performed, who performs it, where it happens, what assets are exposed, what contractual obligations you assume, and what has caused losses in the past.

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What Does EIS Look For?

Depending on the business, our risk identification process may examine areas such as:

Operations & General Liability
What work does your company actually perform? Where is the work performed? What could result in bodily injury, property damage, completed-operations claims, or other third-party liability?

Employees & Workers' Compensation
What jobs are employees performing? What tasks create injury potential? Are there patterns in prior claims? Are workforce practices contributing to preventable losses?

Vehicles & Fleet Exposure
Who is driving? What vehicles are being operated? How frequently are they on the road? How are drivers selected and monitored? What happens after an accident?

Contracts & Contractual Risk
What obligations are you accepting when you sign a contract? What insurance requirements must you satisfy? Are indemnification, additional insured, waiver of subrogation, or other provisions transferring risk to your business?

Subcontractors & Vendors
Who are you relying upon to perform work? What risk are they bringing into your organization? Are appropriate insurance requirements and risk-transfer practices in place?

Property, Equipment & Business Income
What physical assets are essential to your operation? What happens if a building, piece of equipment, inventory, tools, or other critical property is damaged or unavailable?

Cyber & Technology
What information does your company possess? What systems does it depend upon? How could a cyber event, fraud, system interruption, or data compromise affect operations?

Management & Employment Practices
Where could decisions involving employees, customers, management, or organizational governance create liability or financial exposure?

Claims & Loss History
Past claims can tell a story. We look beyond individual losses to identify trends, recurring causes, severity concerns, and opportunities to prevent similar losses in the future.

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Insurance Policies Don't Tell the Whole Story

One of the limitations of a traditional insurance-first approach is that the conversation can quickly become centered around limits, deductibles, premiums and carriers.

Those things matter.

But they come later.

A company can have excellent insurance and still have poor risk management. Likewise, purchasing more insurance doesn't necessarily solve an operational problem that continues producing losses.

Our objective is to develop a clearer picture of the company's total risk profile before deciding how individual risks should be addressed.

That leads to a fundamentally different question.

Instead of simply asking:

“What insurance does this business need?”

we begin by asking:

“What could materially hurt this business?”

Once we understand that, we can begin deciding what to do about it.

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From Identification to Action

Identifying a risk doesn't automatically mean buying insurance for it.

Once an exposure has been identified, we can evaluate the appropriate response.

Some risks can be avoided.

Some can be reduced.

Some can be controlled operationally.

Some can be transferred contractually.

Some can be intentionally retained.

And some should ultimately be transferred to an insurance company.

That is why Identify Risk is only the first part of the EIS process.

Identify Risk → Mitigate Risk → Transfer Risk

The objective isn't to eliminate every possible risk. No business can do that.

The objective is to understand risk well enough to make deliberate decisions about it.

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Risk Management for California Businesses

California businesses operate within a complex environment involving employment exposures, workers' compensation, commercial auto, contractual requirements, litigation, regulatory obligations, property risks and industry-specific hazards.

EIS works with businesses throughout California, with particular experience serving trade contractors, commercial and home service companies, and health and human services organizations.

Our role is to help business owners move beyond simply purchasing policies and toward developing a more intentional strategy for protecting the organization they have built.

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Start With the Risk, Not the Policy.

Before we talk about transferring risk, we need to know what we're dealing with.

That's where the EIS process begins.

Identify the risk. Understand the exposure. Then determine what to do about it.

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