Supply Chain Disruption: The Insurance Conversation Worth Having

The supply chain problem doesn't stay at the operations level. It flows directly into claims, and the impact is bigger than most businesses expect until they're already in one.

Business interruption cover is particularly vulnerable. Indemnity periods and sum insured levels were set against a very different economic backdrop. With costs rising and claim durations increasing, policy limits and indemnity periods that looked adequate at inception may no longer reflect what a business actually needs to recover.

This is where the conversation gets important for brokers. The ANZSIC code submitted to the market tells underwriters what a business does, not how resilient it is. It doesn't capture whether a client has one supplier or ten, whether their BCP has been reviewed recently, or whether a second location could absorb the load if the first one went down.

That gap between assumed risk and operational reality is where businesses are most exposed right now — and it doesn't look the same across every industry.

A manufacturer relying on imported components faces a fundamentally different exposure to a retailer managing last-mile logistics. The risk is real across the board, but it isn't uniform, and understanding that distinction is what separates a well-placed risk from one that gets found out at claims time.

Brokers don't need to have all the answers. But asking the right questions is important  to open a conversation that genuinely changes how a client thinks about their risk. Here are six topics worth raising at your next client touchpoint.

It's also worth prompting clients to review their buildings, contents, and stock sums insured. The cost to repair and replace has shifted significantly, and declared values that made sense a year ago may no longer reflect what it would actually cost to recover today.

Prevention is always cheaper than a claim, but prevention requires visibility. The Mitti platform helps businesses build the habits that reduce risk — regular inspections, asset checks, BCP documentation, and operational checklists that keep the right people across the right things.

Supply chain risk doesn't look the same in every business or every industry, and the conversations brokers need to have are becoming more specific, more operational, and more valuable as a result.

If this article raised questions about how well you really know your clients' risk profile, our next UAC webinar was built for exactly that.

Preventing the Preventable: Inside Industry Risks takes the next step — exploring the real operational risk profiles across hospitality, manufacturing, and retail, and how brokers can use that understanding to deliver tailored, industry-specific advice that goes well beyond policy placement.