David R. Leng, CPCU, CIC, CBWA, CRM, MWCA

David R. Leng is Chief Risk Officer, Executive Vice President and a partner at Duncan Financial Group in Irwin, Pennsylvania. As a partner, he can commit the firm’s people and resources to a client without waiting on anyone else’s approval. He has spent more than 35 years in commercial insurance and risk management. His work connects how a business operates with the losses it has, the risks it keeps, and how insurers judge it.

That idea became his Risk Profile Improvement Process. It finds the risk factors inside a business that drive cost to the bottom line and drag on productivity, then controls and reduces them before they show up in the loss history. Since 2004 his clients have saved more than $70 million in premiums and overcharges.

He holds a B.S. in Insurance and Risk Management from Penn State. He co-founded Keystone CompControl, the nation’s largest single network of workers’ compensation specialists. He is one of only 11 Level-5 Advisors nationally with the Institute of WorkComp Professionals, which named him Advisor of the Year in 2008 and asked him to join its faculty in 2012. He is a contributing Fellow of the Workers Compensation Institute. He is the only agent or advisor serving on the Classification and Rating Committee of the Pennsylvania Compensation Rating Bureau (PCRB), and he serves on the National Technical Affairs Committee of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (the Big “I”).

David writes the In the Workplace column for Borough News, the magazine of the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs, and presents at PSAB conferences. His articles have also run in Construction Executive, Environmental Health & Safety (EHS Today), Construction Today, Commercial Construction & Renovation, Dynamic Business, Working Parts and HRM Update, along with a long list of association magazines and newsletters.

He has spoken to well over four dozen associations and business groups around the country, including the Hardwood Manufacturers Association, the Wood Products Manufacturers Association, the National Workers’ Compensation Symposium, the Pennsylvania Society of Public Accountants, the Manufacturers & Business Association, the Westmoreland HR Association and the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs.

He is the author of Insured to Fail, Stop Being Frustrated & Overcharged, The 10 Laws of Insurance Attraction and Turning Premiums Into Profits. Three reached #1 in Amazon’s business categories. A fifth, A Safe Culture Shift, is in final editing.

How I work

I start with how the business works, what the losses show, and what the current program is built to do. From there we decide what needs to change, and what evidence the underwriter will need to see it.

A recurring injury, vehicle loss or sidewalk claim is a clue. It points to the task, the conditions or the process behind it. I separate frequency from severity, because they need different fixes, and show what the losses will do to future cost. Fix the process, document that you fixed it, then go to market.

The other half is blind spots. Loss runs show what already happened. They don't show a contract that quietly took on someone else's liability, a lease that makes you insure the landlord's building, a subcontractor whose certificate lapsed in March, or the one person who knows how payroll actually runs. I look for those before a loss tests them.

That is the job a full-time risk manager would do. I do it from the outside, alongside the people already responsible for it.

Outside of work

Summers are for boating, winters for skiing. I also do woodworking, play ice hockey, and help design and build the sets for our local high school's musicals. And I write thrillers under the same name, over at davidlengauthor.com.