Background
Grayson’s Hospitality operates in the Entertainment and Leisure industry and are leaders in their field when it comes to a range of separate, but related specialities ranging from the management of “in house” canteen dining and catering facilities, to special event organisation and outsourced hotel management. If you ever want to throw a good party at the top end of the hospitality spectrum, Grayson’s would be the company to approach to manage the process.
To help expand on this important point, the business description helps explain exactly what they do. This can be noted as “Hospitality and Catering Contractors including management of Corporate in-house Catering Facilities, Public Café/Restaurant catering, Event Catering, and Management and Restaurant and Hotel Operators, Catering and Event Consultancy and Property Owners. Destination Management including Venue Sourcing, Event Management, Sourcing Accommodation, Transportation, Entertainment, Team Building and Conferences”.
We very narrowly failed to pick up the account back in 2014, before revisiting as a target prospect when the account came out of a long term agreement. When we first looked at providing the quotation terms, we were more competitive than the holding market, only for the client to allow the holding national broker the opportunity to cut back to retain. Whilst unfortunate, we came back stronger in 2017 with a “tailored” proposition supported by CNA, who not only helped design a customised programme, but also helped lead the discussion with the client.
Challenge
Grayson’s were concerned that their current Business Interruption (BI) programme was insufficient for their requirements as a number of their on-site catering facilities supported very large establishments. They had a standard BI programme which failed to address the variable indemnity limit requirements for their client demographics, ranging from the British Library at the top end through to smaller organisations at the bottom. At the same time, Grayson’s needed to build a BI programme that was cost-effective and responded to the variable needs of their variable client base.
Solution
Working with CNA we designed a customised BI programme with multiple layers of indemnity limits which operated at different levels for different outsourced clients. We identified clients falling into three banks of cover ranging from 48 months, down to 24 months and then for the majority the standard 12 month period of cover.
The gross profit definition was then redefined to strip out “zero hour” contracted labour common in the hospitality industry, but still retain management wage roll within the cover. At the same time, a provision was made for contracted “zero hour” labour that needed to be cancelled at short notice due to an insured event. In addition, we also built in the supporting provision for Additional Increased Cost of Working at a limit of £750,000.
Relationship management
As the level of complexity had increased, our client really benefitted from the face to face meetings with CNA who were able to offer Grayson’s the additional support required to build the “peace of mind” needed to run with such an important change. CNA now attend our renewal review meetings and are an important part in the client/broker and now client/broker/insurer tripartite relationship.
Risk Management
CNA built into their annual terms a risk management fund which Grayson’s used to fund BCARM Business Continuity Planning consultancy from Steve Williams. This involved a couple of days work in our office with their senior management team building a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) which now supports their insurance programme.
Outcome
The Covid-19 crisis had a considerable impact on Grayson’s business but with the support of CNA we just renewed on a six-month basis effectively helping our client steer a path through the crisis.
