WTW announces new crisis management unit

WTW has announced the formation of a new crisis management unit with the merger of SCR and its political violence teams. The unit will sit within WTW’s Financial Solutions Global line of business and be headed by Jo Holliday, managing director of SCR.

The new unit will work globally, delivering crisis management and contingency risk management to multinational clients. The unit covers the following areas:

• Special crime (kidnap and ransom, extortion, hijack, maritime piracy, political evacuation)
• Terrorism
• Political violence
• Accident and health (including personal accident, business travel, contingency, sports and entertainment)
• Active assailant

These coverages will continue to be supported by the risk advisory and crisis support services of SCR’s in-house security risk consultancy and crisis management practice, Alert:24.

“Crisis management and security risk is recognized as an area of concern to many of our clients at board level,” said Alastair Swift, head of global line and business, risk and broking at WTW. “Increasingly, our clients see geopolitical risks as a macro trend, and this was borne out by a recent survey where over 50% of our clients cited security issues and business travel as key risk factors.”

“By establishing a new crisis management business segment, we will be able to provide a specialist global proposition which crosses all industry sectors and geographies,” said Christophe Meurier, head of financial solutions, global line of business at WTW. “The new combined team will provide a highly specialized and innovative proposition which enables us to broaden our client demographic and accelerate our growth strategy in this area.”