Copper & Robbers: Vacant Buildings
Desirable For Thieves—And Insurers
BY SUSANNE SCLAFANE
COPPER THIEVES have fueled an ex- plosion of claims for insurers of vacant and idle properties, but increased loss potential has not deterred
competition in either the residential or
commercial vacant-property insurance
markets, two special-risk experts say.
During a webinar titled “The New
Edifice of Vacant Property: Protecting
Asset Value as Commercial Real Estate
Slowly Recovers” presented by Property-
Casualty360.com, Jeff Shearman, senior
risk-engineering consultant for Zurich Ser-
vices Corp., reports that Zurich saw “a big
spike in copper claims when the price of
scrap copper went over $3 per pound.”
Referring to thieves as “people who
mine resources” in unoccupied buildings,
Shearman describes a case in his town—“a
low-crime area”—involving someone who
climbed up to the roof of a strip mall to
remove air-conditioning units of vacant
tenant spaces in order to get the copper
out of them.
Both Shearman and co-presenter Christopher Zoidis, vice president of the Special
Risk Division of wholesaler/MGA Burns
& Wilcox, say other scrap metals, such as
aluminum, are also fueling a jump in insurance claims from insured vacant buildings.
While outside air-conditioning units
are easy targets, Burns & Wilcox is also
seeing claims where there is entry into the
building to remove copper plumbing pipes
and wiring.
“We have had more than one instance
where the thief actually stayed for a period of
24 or 48 hours and literally stripped out every
piece of copper tubing and every piece of copper wiring,” Zoidis says, noting that there is
typically a lot of damage done to the building
itself as these parts are being removed.
More creative thieves will pose as uniformed maintenance people, rather than
breaking and entering, he says.
A slide displayed while Zoidis was de-
scribing these vacant-property insurance-
claims examples indicated that the dollar
figure associated with the copper claims is
$275,000 and up. In contrast, claim values
for two other common sources of losses—
water damage caused by freezing pipes and
trip-and-fall claims for third parties outside
insured premises—were roughly $75,000
and $30,000, respectively.
E JEFF SHEARMAN E CHRIS ZOIDIS
VACANT BUT VALUED
FOR MORE INFORMATION
J A whitepaper detailing vacant property
maintenance and security guidelines,
outlining potential hazards and providing the ISO standard policy definition of
vacancy is available on Zurich’s website
at
www.zurichna.com/internet/zna/SiteCol-lectionDocuments/en/onlineservices/broker-
helpzone/whitepapers/RECold2Avacantprop-
ertyWhitepaper.pdf
J Articles with advice from Burns & Wilcox
professional are available at www.property-
casualty360.com/topic/vacant-property.
J Links to the vacant property and other
recent webinars presented by Property-
Casualty360.com are available at www.
propertycasualty360.com/webseminars/.
“A few years ago, carriers began to pursue vacant property as a desired class”—
especially on the excess-and-surplus lines
side, he says.
By 2010, both standard and E&S carri-
ers had become “very, very aggressive” in
pursuit of this business, Zoidis says, refer-
ring to carriers’ willingness to liberalize
endorsements to standard ISO (Insurance
Services Office) policy forms that would
have otherwise excluded perils like vandal-
ism, theft and water damage.
