Her freight train winds and tidal surge caused widespread destruction and left more than 70 percent of the state without power. Irma moved on to cause additional damage in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and the Carolinas. In FCCI’s nearly six decades of business, we’ve weathered quite a few storms. These experiences provide a deeper understanding of what’s important to our customers, and that knowledge has not only honed our disaster preparedness but the way we operate our business to maintain long-term stability. Catastrophe planning is a never-ending activity at FCCI, and it covers much more than the immediate response to an incident. Strong underwriting discipline ensures we cover risks appropriately and plan for things like Category 5 hurricanes. Geographic diversification, predictive analytics and conservative investing ensure our financial strength is more than adequate to keep our promises. And a proactive claims philosophy carried out by teammates who truly care about helping others ensures that we put people before business. For FCCI’s Florida Region, Hurricane Irma was a very personal event. Our teammates were All In, responding in a manner that reflects both our company values and their own strength of character. “We are proud of our team’s dedication and the extra work they put in to make sure our policyholders’ needs were taken care of so they could get back to business as quickly as possible,” said David York, Senior Vice President of the Florida Region. In the time leading up to Irma’s landfall, FCCI’s catastrophe (CAT) planning team continuously monitored the storm. Unlike previous hurricanes, the damage from Irma would not be localized to a single area. Adjusters had to be prepared to travel up, down and around the state to reach our policyholders. The CAT team met several times a day, ran countless models, and communicated across regions to ensure that additional claims adjusters could be quickly deployed. Once the danger had passed, FCCI’s field team mobilized claims adjusters to the most heavily affected areas within 24 to 48 hours. Although many FCCI teammates in the Florida region were personally affected by the storm, they never hesitated to put our customers’ needs first. Fortunately, our Florida Region had backup. FCCI property adjusters responded immediately, traveling from Indiana, Georgia and Mississippi to ensure claims were attended to as quickly as possible. “It was gratifying to witness the support that our teammates readily provided to each other and the willingness to work hard to help their colleagues and our customers,” said David. This spirit of camaraderie also prevailed within FCCI’s offices. Teammates across all business lines put aside their usual work activities and lent a hand in making calls to policyholders and agents to assist in handling claims. As a result, each policyholder who reported a claim was contacted within 24 hours. In total, FCCI handled 553 claims resulting from Hurricane Irma. An amazing 99.4 percent of those claimants reported that they were “Very Satisfied” with the service they received. While satisfaction surveys aren’t what it’s all about, those results let us know that all the plans, preparations and practices we’ve put in place to support our customers are working. “While we can’t prevent the storms from happening, we can prepare for them,” said David, “and serve our agents, policyholders and communities with wholehearted dedication.”