International insurer FM Global is stepping slowly into the Asia-Pacific business sphere, with its 30-year-old business in Australia proving a good stepping-stone. Subsidiary company Affiliated FM is said to be enlivening the local commercial property insurance market with some competitive plays, and now FM Global itself is pushing its profile higher.

Targeting Australia as an “integral market in the company’s global development strategy”, the group is pitching a new business model using “property loss prevention engineers” rather than actuaries to assess the “risk quality” of clients’ facilities.

Last week FM Global CEO Shivan Subramaniam paid a short visit to his group’s Melbourne HQ and Sydney offices. The insurer claims to be the world’s largest commercial and industrial property insurer, and Mr Subramaniam was keen to make the point that one in every three companies would be struggling to survive in a major disruption.

He says despite FM Global research indicating 34% of the world’s leading companies would only have a “fair or poor” chance of surviving, FM Global has been able to expand using the model.

“FM Global’s philosophy is that the majority of all loss is preventable,” Mr Subramaniam said. “Insurance alone is not enough for most businesses to recover from losses.”