Date: January 2012

We are well known as a leading firm of loss assessors in the UK but, increasingly, we are helping clients across the world.

Working in new territories brings new challenges, not least getting to grips with local protocols and quickly understanding the local insurance market. The most important thing, though, is to hit the ground running

There is no doubt that 2011 has been a year of unprecedented natural disasters with the Japanese Tsunami and the New Zealand earthquakes taking most of the headlines.

Lloyd’s of London has reportedly estimated that the Japanese catastrophe will lead to claims approaching $2 billion and the earthquakes in Christchurch nearly $1.2 billion.

The report in The Guardian went on to suggest that the insurance market as a whole is likely to see the bill of nearly $40 billion for just these two events alone.

Harris Balcombe helped a number of clients caught up in the New Zealand disaster. For instance, we negotiated settlements for the owner of a large shopping centre and office complex situated in the Red Area - the sector in Christchurch that had to be totally locked down following the quake due to the severity of damage in the vicinity.

Owners of another shop and office premises just off the Red Area also received the benefit of our negotiating skills, culminating in a speedy total loss settlement.

The scale of these two events may have dominated the media’s attention, but there were plenty of other disasters that may not have been quite so newsworthy, but were equally devastating for the people and businesses caught up in them.

Early in 2011, Harris Balcombe was asked to represent a client in St Lucia following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Tomas. Our client owned the most prestigious hotel resorts on the island spanning 120 acres.

The team we dispatched, which included a Chartered Surveyor, Chartered Accountant and a Partner with extensive experience of material damage claims, undoubtedly helped the owners re-open much more quickly.

Harris Balcombe is often called in for smaller claims too. We recently negotiated a settlement for owners of a hotel in Spain and additional claims work is also on-going in Holland and Germany.

In almost all cases, the reason clients appointed us was because we have all the expertise in-house to negotiate claims on their behalf.

Can we help you?

When you appoint Harris Balcombe you get access to directly employed professionals, including:

Chartered Loss Adjusters

Chartered Surveyors

Chartered Accountants

If you’d like a free consultation on a claim to see if we can help you e-mail us with some basic details and a suitable time to contact you and we’ll call you back.

Further reading

Hurricane Tomas case study: Harris Balcombe - Hurricane Tomas