Some industries bring with them an inherently broad and complex set of risks and exposures. The Mosaic Company, headquartered in Plymouth, Minn., is the world leader in one such industry: the production, distribution and marketing of concentrated phosphate and potash, two primary nutrients required to grow the food the world needs. By virtue of its extensive underground mining operations, chemical manufacturing and global bulk distribution, Mosaic's broad array of risks includes exposures in property, workers' compensation, environmental management, general liability, marine liability and cargo.

With 7,700 people employed in eight countries at 90 locations, Mosaic's risk management team understands the importance of accurately and comprehensively identifying the company's risks and effectively addressing them through loss control, risk transfer and other risk-mitigation strategies. Yet, according to Mosaic's Michael R. Bishop, insurance manager, manual collection of exposure data was restricting the company's ability to efficiently gather information at the high level of detail Mosaic desired.

"We found it challenging and time-consuming to identify and track risks at all locations and in every phase of production and distribution," Bishop says.

On the risk insurance side, the manual data management process made renewals inefficient and fraught with the potential for human error. As a result, answering executive management's mandate to reduce total cost of risk was a challenge for the risk management team.

Prioritizing Exposure Data Management

The risk management team, with the support of executive management, identified a clear need to improve the management of its exposure data across all lines and geographies. "We recognized that enhanced management and analysis of our exposure data would help us achieve the related goals of elevating our strategies in the areas of loss prevention, contractual risk transfer and other risk-mitigation initiatives—in addition to improved marketing of our risk," Bishop says.

To achieve its goals, Mosaic augmented the Aon RiskConsole RMIS with a module that automates the process of gathering, compiling and analyzing exposure data across multiple lines. The system also provides dashboards that keep the risk management team up to date, in near real time, on where each location stands in the renewal-data-gathering process. In terms of reporting, Mosaic generates query reports on multiple topics, including head count, automobile and fleet data, hazardous chemicals, plant profiles, marine liability and cargo risks.

Mosaic began the global exposure-data management project with its casualty, marine and executive risk lines. The company then added exposure data related to property values and business interruption. In addition, it uses the system to track limitations or exclusions in its policies in order to ensure that, if the company has risks that are excluded from policies, those exposures are recognized and addressed through other mitigation strategies.

A Guiding Risk Data Strategy

The global exposure data management project is part of Mosaic's larger, long-term focus on developing a comprehensive risk data strategy. Additionally, the project was undertaken with the goal of establishing a long-term record of historical exposure data that is comprehensive, expansive, accurate and eminently usable in demonstrating the characteristics of Mosaic's entire spectrum of exposures—all of which enables underwriters to position Mosaic for the most favorable coverage at the lowest premiums.