Food, Beverage and Agriculture

One global team offering wide insurance market access

Our global food, beverage and agriculture practice brings together all our specialists from around the world in one networked group.

We can help you find the most suitable insurance coverage and risk management solutions anywhere in the world through our broking expertise in 120 countries via a single hub.

End-to-end risk management

Our team includes specialists in risk engineering, data and analytics, multinational client service and policy wordings.

With this combined knowledge and experience, we can help you:

• Understand and mitigate your unique risks
• Build resilience across your supply chains
• Manage the cyber risk that comes with increasing automation
• Address emerging geopolitical challenges
• Protect against environmental and climate risks
• Reduce the overall cost of risk to your business

A focus on sustainability

We’re both an insurance broker and a consulting firm. Our ESG and sustainability specialists can help your organization address ESG and sustainability issues and incorporate them into all you do.

The growing adoption of ESG standards has pushed environmental issues up the boardroom agenda.

Our ESG and sustainability team can help your leaders and board develop a coherent ESG strategy that addresses your role in environmental stewardship.

Multidiscipline approach

When you partner with us, you gain access to WTW’s vast network of specialists. We can help you address more than traditional risks facing the food, beverage and agriculture industries.

We understand the emerging threats, from growing automation and digitalization to the impact of conflicts and climate change on food production. We also understand the changes in how businesses operate and work is done. Our human capital teams can help you address your people issues, too.

Sophisticated risk analytics and loss modeling

Everything we do is underpinned by risk analytics. Our sophisticated loss modeling capabilities, including catastrophe and climate risks, can help you predict likely risks years ahead and plan effective risk management strategies to deal with them.

Insights on emerging risks and trends

Our multidiscipline teams can provide you with regular, in-depth insights on emerging risks and trends affecting the food, beverage and agriculture industries and the insurance marketplace.

Whether your concerns are environmental or geopolitical, we can help you understand how they may affect your business.

Our goal is to help you stay ahead of events by looking beyond the headlines to help you implement the right risk solutions for your organization.

Cost control

Our evaluation and analysis of your risk exposures can provide insights that help to minimize the total cost of risk to your business.

Addressing geopolitical risks

The food and beverage industry faces increasing geopolitical risk. Conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and Africa have exacerbated those risks, impacting markets well beyond those operating in the region.

Simultaneously, several other geopolitical trends, such as tariffs and other trade barriers, are also impacting the food, beverage and agriculture industries, highlighting the need to understand global and local political risks.

At the same time, several other geopolitical themes, such as tariffs and other trade barriers, are also impacting the food, beverage and agriculture industries, highlighting the need to understand global and local political risks.

Our geopolitical risk team can help you address your exposures to such conflicts and keep you aware of developments beyond the headlines.

Navigating supply chain disruption

The food, beverage and agriculture industries face a growing number of challenges, from natural disasters to political problems, trade disputes and human and animal pandemics. It also faces traditional risks like product recalls, factory and warehouse fires. Any of these threats can interrupt production and delivery, which could devastate a business that operates on tight schedules and margins.

Managing these supply chain risks has become a top priority, with just-in-time methods facing increasing scrutiny.

You need a partner with a deep understanding of supply chains. We have multiple teams across WTW that can help you, including:

• Marine
• Transportation and logistics
• Pandemic response and resilience
• Non-damage business interruption

Addressing environmental exposures and climate risks

Public and political awareness of business’ impact on the environment has increased pressure on the food,beverage and agriculture industry to improve environmental standards and reduce pollution leaching into rivers and seas.

Our environmental team can help you address these environmental risks.

Meanwhile, the sector is acutely affected by the changing climate. Extreme weather events, like droughts and floods, are already affecting property risks, and how and where food and beverage producers source raw materials.

Furthermore, the transition to a low-carbon economy is creating significant changes in economic activity, asset values and profitability across the world.

These shifts mean both identifying and executing optimal choices on low-carbon transitions are increasingly complex. We offer a wide range of climate consultancy services and tools that can help food, beverage and agriculture businesses address these challenges:

• Climate Quantified analyzes all of your climate risks to show how they affect your operations and assets. It also evaluates the impact of climate risks on your supply chain partners and customers, bringing a new level of clarity to your decision making and how you communicate managing climate-related risks.
• Climate Diagnostic can assess the likely risks at particular locations over time, based on future climate trends and scenarios.
• Our Crop Risks and Opportunities Platform (CROP) uses layers of geodata, such as soil pH, salinity and temperature, to model the suitability of growing a crop in a location in different future time horizons and climate scenarios.

Protecting your automation from cyber risks

Automation and digitization continue to revolutionize the food, beverage and agriculture industries, giving businesses the opportunity to optimize processes through new technologies, leading to increased efficiency, flexibility in production and sustainability.

But with increased automation comes new cyber risks, such as ransomware and cyberattacks that can disrupt your operations.

Our cyber risk team can help you ensure your digital systems are resilient, whether through cyber security tools or cyber insurance.

Managing reputational risk

Your reputation is a valuable asset, but thanks to social media, it can easily be damaged. Social media provides a platform for dissatisfaction to reach an audience of millions within seconds and can lead to lost sales and market cap.

Food, beverage and agriculture businesses face unique reputational risks, including recalls that sicken customers, labor issues, animal welfare and environmental stewardship.

Furthermore, your suppliers’ or partners’ practices can impact your brand.

While the claims cost to recall, remove and replace products in the food and beverage industry can be high, the impact of a consumer boycott on a brand’s reputation is equally high.

Both our product liability and contaminated products teams and our reputational risk team can help you address such a scenario.