Hurricane Katrina also has stirred another insurance sector in Orange County: employee benefits.
A month before Katrina blew into the Gulf, Irvine-based Precept began outsourcing administration of employee benefits to New Orleans-based Universal Sodexho, a unit of French food service company Sodexho Alliance.
Sodexho employs roughly 2,200 in the region, and provides catering and housecleaning services to oil rigs floating in the energy-rich Gulf.
“When Katrina hit, these people lost all of their insurance information,” said Wade Olson, chief executive of FBP Insurance Services Inc., which does business as Precept.
Mutual of Omaha Insurance Co., the insurance carrier Precept was working with on the Universal Sodexho account, allowed Precept to set up hotline numbers that let call center employees in Irvine approve prescriptions and authorize medical visits.
Precept also persuaded the carrier to waive its grace period for the employer to pay benefit premiums for its employees, giving it 90 days instead of 30.
“They couldn’t wire money, phones were down and they were forced out of their corporate offices,” Olson said. “We were able to confirm everyone’s eligibility and give these people care.”
Alison Russen, benefits manager for Universal Sodexho in New Orleans, said her company lost nearly all contact with its Gulf employees for several days immediately after Hurricane Katrina.
The company’s headquarters in Harahan, a suburb of New Orleans, was engulfed by flooding waters. National guard troops kept workers out of the building, where it maintained benefits records on its employees and housed computer servers to run its back office.
“The lesson I learned was not to keep everything all in one place,” Russen said.
,Pat Maio
