Learn about EIA – A Risk Management Solutions Company

EIA – A Risk Management Solutions Company

EIA – A Risk Management Solutions Company

The Environmental Insurance Agency, Inc. (EIA) was established in 1997 by Susan Neuman as the first boutique brokerage to provide tailored environmental insurance coverage for contaminated property transactions. Over the years, EIA’s environmental insurance brokerage skills and expertise have meant the difference between the success or failure of numerous brownfields transactions. EIA’s engineering expertise has allowed it to understand, analyze and pre-underwrite the complex environmental documents that are the basis of coverage decisions. Susan Neuman’s legal coverage expertise has ensured that these non-standardized, manuscripted insurance products will be “legally sufficient,” in other words, will withstand challenge in coverage actions. In addition to such “brownfields insurance,” EIA also writes the full panoply of environmental coverages, including for tanks, contractors and consultants, and operational sites and facilities.

However, EIA is more than a highly expert environmental insurance broker. It has become a risk management company with the ability to provide integrated solutions to the knottiest environmental problems. Through its strategic partnerships and teaming agreements with environmental engineering companies and law firms (see links), EIA can offer all available risk management options appropriate to managing any particular environmental problem. These options include, on the risk control side, remediation and institutional/engineering controls management, and, on the risk financing side, environmental indemnity agreements, liability assumptions, and structured settlements.

EIA - Susan Neuman, J.D.

Susan Neuman, J.D.

Susan Neuman is an expert in creating risk transfer solutions to environmental challenges faced by owners and developers of potentially contaminated property. She develops cost effective and innovative risk transfer strategies using her expertise in coverage litigation, product development, risk management, and environmental transactional law.

Susan acquired this expertise through 20 plus years in the environmental insurance field starting with her job as an associate in the Environmental Practice Group of Lord Day & Lord Barrett Smith, where, she litigated and drafted site pollution liability policies for AIG Environmental and other environmental insurers. Later, as head of Contract Development in the Specialty Lines Legal Department of the Home Insurance Company, she reviewed the Home’s insurance products for legal sufficiency and developed and drafted many innovative insurance products including some of the new environmental insurance products, such as the cleanup cost cap policy, that emerged at the beginning of the brownfields movement.

Since the establishment of EIA thirteen years ago, her environmental insurance brokerage and risk management services have ensured the success of numerous contaminated property transactions because of her ability to work closely as part of a team with other experts and to tailor policies (manuscript) to fit site specific risks. She is one of the leading legal experts in the country on the subject of environmental insurance, and has published extensively in the field, including chapters in Matthew Bender’s Environmental Law and Practice Guide and Brownfields Law and Practice. Ms. Neuman has a B.A. from Smith College, a Ph.D. in English from New York University, and a J.D. from Yale Law School.