What We Do

Le Chéile is a speciality niche boutique insurance advisory service in the truest sense of the word. Le Chéile provides key data and state of the art information not readily available in the marketplace on insurance markets and how to manage your insurance risk, bringing around your policies and claims.

Based in Dublin, Ireland, and with a network of professionals around the globe, Le Chéile can give you insurance information on what is affecting your business and how to solve the issue with a true solution that works all the way through your organisation. Le Chéile and its global associates and network are at the heartbeat of the insurance market globally.

Claims Management

Le Chéile advise on all matters in relation to the investigation of loss. Our role is to get the claim paid as efficiently as possible and on the best possible terms in minimising a claim against you or indeed maximising a claim for you under your physical damage, business interruption, uninsured losses and recoveries. Lots of brokers do not know where and how the ‘Trigger’ mechanism of a policy starts or indeed finishes and that is where we win for our clients. If you find yourself in that position, get a new broker, and Le Chéile can advise you here also depending on your jurisdiction.

General Business Claims

All claims vary in nature and different documentation is required depending on the claim in question. However an indication of the documents required will be discussed once we engage with you and get a clear picture of the claim and our solution to close it out successfully.

Forensic Audit

Le Chéile provides forensic insurance analysis on your policies and risk responses not insured. Through Le Chéile ’s vast network, globally we can research your business needs from a risk perspective to give you complete transparency, evaluating your existing policy in its policy terms and premium cost.

We all regularly get a medical examination on our person which is common sense, however in business we tend to ignore or not pay enough attention to our company’s assets, instead relying on our broker to advise fully. Sometimes your broker may not give you the peace of mind “or indeed he has never been tested to perform the hard work of getting insurers to pay losses”.

For your peace of mind to have an independent insurance audit, there is no downside as we work on a "no foal, no fee" structure.

Le Chéile ’s expertise can clearly analyse where savings can be made or different structures are more appropriate. In the large corporate sector, Le Chéile can advise on Captive structures and why with the advent of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 and Basle III the swing in the pendulum arising from capital adequacy, stress testing and market liquidity risk has placed clear onus on Chief Financial Officers’ globally. As a result Group’s are moving to discretionary mutuals where there is intrinsically more value to be achieved, not just in the avoidance of IPT (Insurance Premium Tax), but the fact that capitalisation, release of capital is affected.

Why Insurance Claims & relationships go wrong

The broker never understood your business in the first place. Always pay attention to the broker who strives to understand your business and your exposures for you. Poor policy forms. Lack of claims attention and relationship management with insurers. The broker does not keep you away from lawyers; the broker should always try and keep your legal team in the background until you have the ‘gun’ ready to fire.

How do we do it?

  • Having been at the forefront of commercial insurance for 30+ years, the firm led by Stuart Reid can forensically examine the policies of a client in an efficient and timely fashion to identify the key areas where improvements in structure, premium, risk management and self-insurance contracts can be achieved.
  • What are the real issues for a large company paying €2mil or more per annum and how they manage their risk, self-insurance deductibles?
  • What are the alternatives and who controls them?
  • Well to start with, Captives are controlled by the insurance brokers, Captive advisors and indeed insurers, reinsurers and hedge funds.
  • In essence the key issue for companies is to be able to trust their advisor or insurance broker to deliver a transparent insurance contract that embeds real long term value. Providing and driving innovation and foresight to your business needs into the future are key.

How do we measure this?

Employ Le Chéile to assist in the roadmap you require identifying all the options and pitfalls.

What is the worst position for a company paying €2m+ a year?

The answer is simple:

  • No self-insurance

  • Lack of risk management

  • Retail composite policies

  • Trading into a composite insurer with no control over future costs

How do you deal with this as a Chief Financial Officer or Financial Director?

Well the key issue is to understand the complexity of the problem and to agree a road map. Le Chéile can advise you on the template you need and the advisors you should work with.

Some key issues for a Chief Financial Officer :
1. The right broker for your area
2. How to manage that relationship
3. Get you out of the retail market and into the wholesale market.
4. Create complete transparency on fees + commissions, fronting changes and insurance premium taxes.

If you get just two of these right you will save a lot of money. If you can get all four then that will be a great result.