Third party inspector for insurance company

[Donutboy]

Has anyone had a third party inspector make an appointment to come visit your facility? If so, how did it go and what can I expect? This is a company that is coming to our facility on behalf of the insurance company.

Thanks.--

Roy

[daveflintstone]

I had one a couple years ago. As I recall, she said she was there basically to make sure the business existed. She knew nothing of distilling, she just confirmed the space.

[InsuranceMan]

Roy,

Generally speaking the Third Party Administrator (TPA) that comes out to do an “inspection” is there for one of a few different reasons. As Dave said, many of these folks are “inspectors” and they really know nothing of your business or operation but are more there to make sure you exist. Perhaps they are only there to verify your building square footage; Verify that you are a distillery and not a fireworks manufacturing plant or some other such thing the carrier does not want to insure; count points of egress from the building and make sure they are labeled correctly; make certain that there is a fire suppression system if the agent said there is one; Verify placement of fire hydrants, etc; Or they are there to simply take a “walkabout” of your facility and offer any safety inspection tips.

I have had many inspectors go out to very large distillers and I have often accompanied them on the visits and more often than not they want to make sure that the facility is sound and as safe as possible. Are fire extinguishers available, are there devices in place to keep kids from climbing up the ladders or outside grain storage bins, etc. At the end of the day though, these folks are really there to help you and their inspections are very innocuous. As long as you run a clean and safe distillery (which I am sure you do), you have nothing to worry about. They may offer suggestions but if they do find anything “BIG”, well, thank God they point it out to you before something bad happens. 80% of the time though, they will get done and you will think that it was no big deal at all. If you have any other questions I can assist you with just let me know.