Being prepared for a natural disaster is the best thing any insured can do for themselves. Many organizations in the insurance industry offer countless tools to do just that. One, in particular, is the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS)'s OFB-EZ (Open for Business-EZ) business continuity toolkit. Demand for IBHS's free, eight-module risk management program has expanded to the Hispanic business marketplace, prompting IBHS to create a Spanish edition of the OFB-EZ toolkit. "As IBHS observed the trend of an expanding Hispanic small business market, we also identified the need to assist business owners whose primary language is Spanish to help them better prepare for disasters and other types of business interruptions," Gail Moraton, IBHS business resiliency manager, said in a statement. "The new Spanish version of the OFB-EZ accomplishes this goal and will be a valuable resource that property & casualty insurance carriers and agents can share with their commercial insureds." Related: Learning from Hurricane Irma: Properly insuring & protecting your business

Pack your toolkit

In 2017, Hispanics owned and led 4.37 million firms generating over $700 billion in revenue to the U.S. economy, according to a U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Business annual report. But, as climate change continues to intensify natural disasters both in frequency and scale, businesses that might've once been considered safe are now feeling a ripple of effects ranging from business interruption to property damage. Moraton says "ever since I started here, I always got requests for it [OFB-EZ toolkit]" but notes that demand has surged since Hurricane Irma. Demand for the mobile app, OFB-EZ Mobile, has increased 64% year-over-year since Irma. The toolkit will help business owners identify the business activities that are essential for continued operation during a disruption, deal with risks their organization faces and create an easy-to-use recovery plan tailored to their business. With this in mind, here's a breakdown of the OFB-EZ business continuity toolkit. The toolkit can be found on the company's website. For more coverage like this, explore our Hurricane prep Instant Insights page.

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Denny Jacob

Denny Jacob is an associate editor for NU PropertyCasualty360. Contact him at [email protected].

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