News
Specialty Markets: N.G. Williams & Associates
Published on July 1, 1998 by Gary Durrant
Nigel Williams has seen his share of unusual risks during an insurance career which has spanned 47 years, and admits that not much could surprise him now.
"Over the years, we've had a real chuckle here and there," he laughs as he recalls some of the more memorable risks to come his way. "I remember one time, a female wrestler was going on a tour of the Far East. It seems that part of her act included the use of a 12-foot-long python. What she did with the python was never made exactly clear, but she did need insurance for it. We were eventually able to provide the coverage for the snake."
While this example of a hard-to-place risk isn't entirely commonplace, it's not totally unexpected for N.G. Williams and Associates either. The specialty market company, based in Vancouver, acts as an intermediary by providing market support to brokers, enabling them to write difficult risks without a contract. "We have quite a mixture of business actually," Williams explains. "For the most part, we are involved with heavy equipment - logging trucks and that sort of thing. But we handle overseas projects as well as inland marine."
Examples of offshore business the company has handled over the years include the construction of several schools and gymnasiums in Russia, power stations in Cuba and insurance coverage of several tree farms in Chile.
"A lot of our business consists of fairly mundane things, but we'll tackle virtually anything that is unusual," Williams explains. Last year, we provided the coverage for the equipment used by the Canadian Mount Everest expedition. Our business comes to us from both big and small brokers across the country but mainly from the western provinces."
"A broker from Calgary, for example, will call us and say "Listen, we've got an oil company here that is interested in a project in Russia near the Caspian Sea," Williams says. "This situation actually occurred a couple of years ago, and we were able to provide the coverage for the equipment that was going there. This was pretty wild stuff back in those days - they had to have armed guards riding shotgun on top of the train.
"Most of our business - probably 90 per cent is set up with various facilities we have with Lloyds of London," he says, but we have also had excellent support from the Ecclesiastical, Kingsway and Chubb."
Specializing in providing coverage for logging trucks, hotels, sawmills and truck cargo liability isn't the extent of the services Williams and Associates offers. "We are always looking for innovative programs, and have been involved in a number of interesting things over the years. For example, I believe there is a very real need for coverage to protect against product recall.
"Not long ago, one of our accounts, a chocolate manufacturer, was forced to recall all of its product. It seems a disgruntled former employee had fired off a little note to the company's customers and the media saying the product had been tampered with. The end result was the company had to recall all of its product, and by not having the appropriate insurance, it went out of business. The company later re-surfaced under a new name, and needless to say, now has this kind of coverage.
Another thing which I think is going to become a major product in the future is coverage for standing timber."
At one time people would say why would you want to insure trees - there's so many of them. But nowadays, with Banks and other financial institutions getting involved and putting up big money for work in the forests, they realize they have got to get the trees insured.
"This was brought home even more forcefully as a result of the damage caused by the ice storms in Eastern Canada. We currently have facilities for this type of risk, and, in fact, we've provided coverage for half a dozen projects in B.C. already."
Williams, now 65, makes no bones about the fact that he is slowing down his pace. In 1989 his son Glen joined the firm, and is now taking over from his father. "We are also fortunate to have Joerg Schneider working with us. He's been in the insurance business almost as long as I have.
"As a matter of fact," he laughs, "I recently moved my own office to the back corner so I would be able to slip out the side door whenever I want to take a break. So you could say that I'm starting to wind down."