RMS charges too much! I can get cover cheaper elsewhere!

Hearing this is sometimes hard to take, but we’ve grown to love it because it gives us the opportunity to explain how our Service works and how we give back value to support and enable the Church’s mission and its good work in the community.

While most Adventist churches only ever see their invoice for property cover, this doesn’t give the full picture of the entire service that RMS provides.

With RMS, your Adventist church and other Adventist-owned sites enjoy the following benefits:

1. More than just property cover – RMS works tirelessly on your behalf to source a multitude of covers that are needed for all the activities of the Adventist church. While a local church treasurer may only see a bill for property cover, there are also covers for General Liability, Volunteer Personal Accident, Corporate and Short-Term Travel cover, Marine Cargo, Workers Compensation, Professional Indemnity, Directors and Officers Executive Protection Cover, Business Interruption and Motor Vehicle. Imagine a volunteer church treasurer trying to source all of those covers each and every year! We do this negotiating on your behalf so your volunteers aren’t swamped with admin – they have lives too!

2. Better terms, and cover for the un-insurable – Having the negotiating power of a Group as large as the Adventist church organisation means we can sometimes obtain coverage in areas where insurance cover is extremely cost prohibitive or even unavailable. It also allows us to negotiate better terms and conditions than if you sourced cover on your own. Policy terms and pricing vary widely, as the old saying goes, “you’ve got to compare apples with apples.”

3. Internal Loss Pools – From decades of prudent investment management we are able to manage some internal loss pools (aka self-insure) for things like Employee Relocation cover, and property cover for the Pacific Islands – this wouldn’t be possible without every Adventist site participating in the Group policy, meaning your dollar is invested and the interest is put to good use by supporting ministry and mission in the Pacific and other regions where cover is often difficult to obtain.

4. Access to Cover you can’t easily get here – Our close working relationship with Adventist Risk Management, Inc. (USA) allows us to access some types of cover that you can’t obtain in some countries, including Australia.

5. Manageable excesses and deductibles – For some lines of cover, where the deductible (excess) is very large – far greater than one Adventist site could fund – RMS administers an under-deductible loss pool which your Adventist site contributes to. This means that when a loss occurs you pay a much lower and more manageable excess.

6. We protect your time. We read every policy’s terms and conditions. RMS purchases over 30 different insurance policies for the Church, some of those policies are huge 70+ page documents. Our team spends hundreds of hours trawling through these documents on your behalf, negotiating better terms whenever and wherever we can, so you don’t have to.

7. Claims management or going to court is our worry. Large property loss events take months, sometimes years to resolve, and our role is to work closely with loss adjustors to ensure the best claims outcome for Adventist sites so that ministry can get back on track. When it comes to a liability claim, RMS manages that legal process with lawyers who represent the Adventist Church. This is stressful work, that if left to a local church officer to manage, would be unreasonable and time-consuming.

8. We look for reasons TO pay. Unlike the common perception that loss assessors look for loopholes and reasons not to pay out on a claim, the RMS loss resolution team look at all the details of a loss event to find reasons to pay. Sometimes that means asking the right questions and going back and forth with our site contacts to extract the info we need to support a claim payout. For large loss events, like a church fire, we work with external loss adjusters who have historically been extremely helpful in restoring and reinstating church property as quickly as possible – and we can prove this time and time again.

9. We don’t have shareholders – Unlike a general insurer we don’t have shareholders to please and there are no ‘Chief so-and-so’s’ receiving eye-watering bonuses. Our insurance program is not about profit (we run at a loss), we’re about providing the best coverage available to protect the resilience of ministry and mission in the South Pacific.

10. It’s our Church too. RMS employs nine staff, all of whom are active and committed Adventists who want to see the Church’s good work keep going until Jesus returns. You won’t get that level of commitment with anyone else. Even at the time of writing, RMS is working closely with our brokers to find new ways to help our churches manage the rising cost of property cover.

11. Expert knowledge on tap. Have you ever had a question about your church’s building risks but didn’t know who to ask? Our risk controllers have extensive experience in building and construction, as well as Work Health Safety requirements. Our team members are directly available to you and willing to answer your risk and safety questions. We also regularly conduct site visits to help Adventist sites review their risk exposures and find solutions to control those risks.

12. We want to help. RMS helps Adventist sites with risk and safety co-funding to reduce the likelihood of claims from property loss or injury through risk mitigation projects. If your Church hasn’t accessed this beneficial program, please get in touch with us. Less claims equals lower costs.

So, there’s more to RMS than just a big insurance bill. Next time you see your property cover invoice – and for your church it may be a large chunk of your running costs – remember that it is only the tip of a very large iceberg of meaningful support from RMS.

We definitely do not see our relationship with you as merely transactional. We encourage you to contact us regularly with your questions regarding insurance, risk and safety – we’re ready to help.