Nationwide Warns of Widening Gap Between Disaster Risks and Business Preparedness

By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Weekly News -- A majority (68 percent) of small-business owners don't have a written disaster recovery plan - even though about half (49 percent) said it would take their business at least three months to recover from a natural disaster, according to HYPERLINK "https://blog.nationwide.com/news/disaster-recovery-plan-study-results/" nNationwide's Small Business Indicator.

Those findings stem from Nationwide's second annual survey, which was conducted online by Harris Poll on behalf of Nationwide from June 10-23 among 502 U.S. small-business owners with fewer than 300 employees.

"Small-businesses owners are crucial to our economy," said Mark Berven, president of Nationwide Property & Casualty, the No. 1 total small-business insurer[1] in the country. "And they are often the ones impacted the most by a disaster. That's why it's so important for people to start preparing now - especially as we head into the spring storm season."

Since 2007, Nationwide has processed more than 100,000 commercial catastrophe claims. While the number of claims has fluctuated over the past decade, the severity has increased steadily.

Nationwide has seen a 26 percent increase in the average severity of commercial catastrophe claims when comparing the three-year period between 2014-2016 with the seven-year period between 2007-2013. The company has also seen a 14 percent increase in unique commercial catastrophe events that impact a business when comparing those same time periods.

Keywords for this news article include: Nationwide.

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