The threat of things like billion-dollar catastrophes, and the prospect of an avian flu outbreak, weigh heavily on corporate bosses but something more fundamental is proving a fret when corporations go to buy insurance, according to buyers answering a recent market study.

Risk managers, hired by corporations to handle insurance needs, are being kept awake at night by a chronic delay in the time between when a policy takes effect and when their final contract arrives in the mail.

Consumers generally expect some final proof of purchase at the time of a sale. But the reality for many large corporations is paying a sometimes million dollar bill, and are routinely required to fork over payment without a final contract in hand.

The body that represents US risk managers reports that only five percent of those surveyed had received a final insurance contract within a month of a policy?s start date.

Worse, many still didn?t have completed documentation three to four months later.

The findings, from a study conducted by the Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc., was unveiled as risk managers and insurers convened last week in Honolulu, Hawaii for the association?s annual conference.

?The issue is getting an insurance policy out that is the final document? and ideally before the policy takes effect, said Roger Gillett, chairman of the Bermuda Insurance Development Council, which sponsored a panel discussion on the issue.

Mr. Gillett said the numerous insurers in the Bermuda market had standing policies in place to ensure contracts were delivered on time. And the IDC has plans to broaden that to a market-wide effort to promote what is referred to as ?contract certainty? in industry parlance.

?The intent is to (gather) major brokers and companies to set realistic standards to which we can commit,? he said. Diane Labrador, risk manager for computer chip maker Intel Corp. said she?s personally driving her division?s effort for timely delivery from the 15 or so insurers that provide insurance coverage for the company?s global operations.

She?s devised a system to spur the process on, including charting where negotiations on an insurance contract stand, incentive for reinsurers that deliver on time, and a system of e-mail reminders when an insurer misses a deadline.

Controls were tightened, she said, after a final contract policy to protect Intel?s directors and officers from liability still wasn?t in hand more than eight months after the coverage took effect.

In the current heightened climate of corporate governance ?we should have contracts to show that for the money we have paid we have some value,? she added.

Ms Labrador said the wire Intel manufactures for its chips is ?one one-hundredth the width of a human hair. If we can do that, gee can?t we get policies issued on time.? Ellen Vinck, president of RIMS, said risk managers have to drive the effort to fix the issue. ?Are underwriters willing to have a 50 percent deposit and then final payment when the document is delivered,? she asked, raising the prospect of greater financial incentive to get a contract finalised on time.

The London market already has the goal of so-called contract certainty in its sights.

?The Lloyd?s market is working extremely hard to speed up the process,? said Julian James, director of Lloyd?s Worldwide Markets.

Lloyd?s and other markets each year waste millions of dollars on legal fees from disputes arising out of incomplete contracts. ?Tighter contracts will reduce that,? Mr. James said.

UK regulator the Financial Services Authority has given the London market until year end to root out what it calls the ?deal now, deal later? culture of the industry.

David Cash, president at Bermuda-based Endurance Specialty, a global seller of insurance and reinsurance, predicted the US insurance sector could be the market that continues to lag the most in achieving contract certainty.

A move to US federal regulation needs to come first, he said. ?That would absolutely change the playing field: Now we have interlocking, opposing forces that make it difficult.?

The American system of state-by-state regulation compounds the problem because a nationwide policy has to take into account the differing legal and regulatory requirements of each state.