Who We Are
Alan F. Shirek, Managing Principal of AFS Risk Consulting International, has built his entire career fulfilling promises made by himself, his colleagues and the insurance carriers with whom his clients have formed relationships. Insurance is intangible. It is composed of a promise to pay and a promise to provide the highest level of professional service.
A Lifetime of Experience
As an insurance broker, Alan was fortunate to work with a broad spectrum of clients from industry, government and institutional backgrounds. Some of the clients included global construction and engineering contractors, manufacturers of high tech and "not so high tech" products, food processors, light rail systems and colleges and universities. The majority of his career was spent working with clients who had revenues of $1 billion or more and many thousands of employees.
The Global Marketplace
"In a thirty-five year career, I saw a lot of things and I helped clients deal with many problems", Alan Said. "It was always new and stimulating."
Alan worked every day in the global marketplace providing assistance to businesses headquartered around the world. He dealt with risks in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. He also dealt with global insurance carriers based in London, Zurich, Bermuda, Sydney, Stockholm, Hannover, and all of the United States insurance centers.
A Problem Solver
"During my career, I helped clients solve problems, both large and small," Alan said. "For the most part, I enabled risk management professionals to better service their clients' who were managers of operating companies around the world."
Some of Alan’s many important accomplishments included:
- Forming one of the first captive insurance companies owned by a Swedish manufacturing company, including the placement of reinsurance behind the company throughout the world market.
- Guiding a major food processing client through a property loss that exceeded $30 million and severely limited its production of sugar for nearly three years.
- Advising a major trucking company on its insurance and risk management programs through successful times and through a bankruptcy that went from reorganization to liquidation.
- Assisting two large hospital chains with their professional liability insurance as well as their property insurance. In once instance, his client set up captive insurance companies to gain access to the global reinsurance marketplace and reduce transactional costs.
A "Player-Coach"
In the process of serving his clients, he also became involved in the management of many of the companies he worked for. He led risk management departments for two of the largest global insurance brokers. He was active in the entire management process from budgeting to organizing sales and service departments. During that time, "I saw 'best practices' become institutionalized throughout the insurance industry. I helped to install servicing and underwriting systems that were designed to reduce errors and improve the quality of product and service that the insurance brokerage community provided. This part of my career gave me an ‘in depth’ look at the best and worst practices in the industry. Most importantly, the experience put me in a position to assess the quality of service and the suitability of products provided by insurance carriers and insurance brokers and agents," Alan said.
The Bottom Line
Thirty-five years of professional experience have enabled Alan to:
- Analyze your risk management programs in order to provide the highest level of service to your operating company clients;
- Determine what went wrong with your insurance placement and develop a strategy to deal with the resulting problems;
- Review your "best practices" and assess whether they were followed in a particular case that may have yielded less than satisfactory results.
We at AFS Risk Consulting International look forward to being of service.