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Atrium is currently one of very few Lloyd’s market insurers to provide Accident & Health cover to individuals and groups entering Ukraine. In the first of our four-part mini-series, we interviewed Dan Kaine of Inherent Risks. Inherent Risks is our chosen risk advisory and emergency assistance partner in Ukraine, retained on an exclusive arrangement for A&H Insurance. The firm extracts people on behalf of private families, recovers assets on behalf of insurers, provides overwatch, assistance and response, as well as risk assessments. Dan and his team have a sensible no-nonsense approach and are heavily invested in the region. Read on to understand what’s involved and how they’ve facilitated the delivery of over £1m in aid for the region.

Global risk advisory and crisis management firm Inherent Risks has now delivered close to £1 million of essential aid, including medications and protective equipment, to Ukraine as it demonstrates its ongoing commitment to support humanitarian work in the region.

This achievement is testament to the effectiveness of the networks that Inherent Risks has put in place so it can work with aid agencies, media and insurers across the country.

The firm was one of the first risk advisory companies to set up on the Polish border, after Dan Kaine, its Head of Risk and Crisis Advisory, deployed after responding to a call barely 24-hours after the Russian’s invaded, and arrived on the ground the following day.

Inherent Risks has established a network of high-level government and military contacts throughout the country and has built its capabilities to include forward operating bases and safe houses in support of client assignments, and for its own business continuity purposes.

Daily operations include checking in with all insureds across the country, conducting risk assessments, media and NGO safety including convoy protection, close protection for HNWIs, damage assessments and asset tracing, and conducting Hazardous Environment Awareness Training (HEAT).

Inherent Risks is also now one of the main suppliers of body armour, helmets, respirators and B6 armoured vehicles for organisations and individuals entering the country.

This infrastructure and these networks also means that Inherent Risks can advise Atrium on which regions of the country are insurable and which are no-go zones.

Kaine says: “We were the first emergency assistance company with our own boots-on-the-ground in Ukraine, and we continue to be the company that others across the industry turn to for advice and assistance.

“We’ve extracted private families, recovered assets, protected media agencies, and provided risks assessments for IGOs and NGOs to enable the flow of aid getting in.

“We have also secured donors and facilitated close to £1 million of essential aid, and protective equipment, including helmets, body armour, cold weather clothing and sleeping bags, and military food rations. It’s all non-lethal aid. No weapons. No ammunition. We established the supply-chains to get the aid directly where it needed to go.”

Inherent Risks is now working with a number of media organisations, IGOs and NGOs, and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence.

As Atrium is one of the few insurers still providing emergency medical and evacuation insurance in Ukraine, the ability to respond through Inherent Risks is vital.

Kaine says: “We take our promise to our clients’ very seriously. We understand that an insurance policy is only as good as the assistance provider named on it. We have been and continue to be the only assistance provider with our own trained and experience staff on-the-ground who can respond in the event of an incident. As clients’ have travelled further into Ukraine, we’ve had to expend our networks and bolster our capabilities.

“Some of the people we extracted in the beginning of the conflict had been on the Russian high-value target list. This definitely increased the risk of the extraction and required an experienced team who were able to monitor and assess the situation on-the-ground without being compromised.”

The firm has also extracted people with disabilities from situations where they have no carer to safety with foster parents in Romania and Poland.

It is Inherent Risks support work that enables aid agencies to do their vital tasks bringing help to the Ukrainian population. However, many of those organisations arrived without having properly prepared, often with no vehicles, no fuel, no security teams and no insurance.

Kaine says: “We’re the conduit. Almost all individuals and organisations arriving had, and still have, the same three questions. Where do I go? How do I get there? What do I do when I get there? We provide the answers.

“We work on percentages, everything we do adds another percent of safety to what people do out here. We’re trying to get people as close to 100% as we can. They’ll never get to 100% but the closer we get the better their chance of success and survival.”

Inherent Risks also supports journalists in the region, including the largest media organisation in the world, as they go about the dangerous task of telling the world what is happening in Ukraine, including Russian atrocities.

Kaine says: “They can’t do their jobs, they can’t tell a story that really does need to be told, without the logistics at the back end. Making sure they have the correct duty of care and travel risk management measures, and equipment in place.

“It’s not just a tick-box exercise. Making sure they have spare wheels and tyres, and that someone knows how to change the wheel. Same with medical packs. It’s pointless having it if nobody knows how to use it. There’s so much work behind the scenes that goes into actually just getting a journalist and media crew to where the story is.

“It goes back to the percentages and all of the things we do in the background to reduce all these risks.”

All of this is made possible by the entire Inherent Risks team on-the-ground who not only support their clients, but support each other in achieving their objectives. They include former British military personnel, medical professionals and intelligence analysts, as well as support staff recruited locally in Poland and Ukraine, including interpreters, drivers and fixers.

Kaine says: “I’ve got an incredible team behind me, we’re all pulling together and we’re very mission oriented. We’re all working towards the same thing and backing each other up.”

Peter Laidlaw, Senior Accident & Health Underwriter at Atrium said: “By partnering with Inherent Risks we can deliver on what we are promising within our policy. Many other insurers will sell a policy which their response provider, who doesn’t have anything like the same infrastructure as Inherent Risks, cannot fulfil should the worst happen. At Atrium we are proud to have partnered with Dan and Inherent as they have demonstrated on numerous occasions that they can evacuate insureds out of Ukraine and do exactly what our policy says it will do.”

Images copyright Gary Ramage https://garyramage.com/

If you would like to donate to the Ukraine Assistance Fund email: Ukraine@inherentrisks.com. Every penny goes straight to those in need.

And to find out more about Atrium’s Accident & Health cover in Ukraine, contact: Peter.Laidlaw@atrium-uw.com or access via the team at hotspotcover.com