Small companies at greater risk of experiencing foreign losses than larger companies

Small to mid-size companies are more likely to experience a loss to corporate assets outside the United States or Canada than larger companies, according to a Chubb Group of Insurance Companies (NYSE: CB) 2008 Multinational Risk Survey. “Compared to companies with annual revenues of more than [US]$1 billion, smaller companies experienced at least a 50% higher frequency of foreign losses during 2007 for liability lawsuits, theft of intellectual property/piracy and theft of goods in transit,” Chubb noted in a press release announcing the report. “Smaller companies also experienced at least a 35% higher frequency of losses for crimes against and injuries to American and Canadian employees traveling or working overseas.”Chubb noted larger companies have an advantage over their smaller counterparts because they often have “the resources needed to take the global patchwork of different laws and languages, currencies and styles of conducting business and create corporate risk management standards throughout the world.”Small and mid-size companies that do business overseas need to look to their business partners to help them create standards that will help reduce foreign property and liability losses and injuries to employees, said Kathleen Ellis, the senior vice president of Chubb & Son, and worldwide manager of the multinational risk group for Chubb Commercial Insurance. The survey notes listed “top threats” have shifted from terrorism to economic issues.This year, 212 senior-level executives and risk managers who responded to the survey agreed the top three threats to their business operations or business conducted outside the United States and Canada included currency risk (23%), supply-chain failure (16%) and credit risk (13%). In the 2007 Chubb Multinational Risk Survey, the top three threats were terrorism, natural catastrophes and political instability.