As commercial real estate firms work to navigate the numerous challenges associated with the global economic downturn, Marsh, the world's leading insurance broker and risk advisor, has developed a cost-effective Web-based risk management information system that gives real estate owners, managers and developers the ability to identify, quantify, and manage risk across an entire portfolio.

The system, known as RealSTARS™, helps real estate organizations centralize risk information; plan, control and measure related mitigation efforts; manage information about property values, exposures, and insurance; and improve enterprise-wide risk visibility.

"In the current economic environment real estate firms need the ability to access real-time information about their risks, property values, regulatory compliance practices, and vendors, and to make adjustments quickly and efficiently," said Jeffrey Alpaugh, a managing director of Marsh and leader of the firm's Global Real Estate Practice. "RealSTARS provides a number of critical risk management tools in a single, global resource that can save management and staff time and help manage costs."

RealSTARS has comprehensive features for tracking and managing a real estate portfolio, including a robust COPE (construction, occupancy, protection, exposure) module to track loss prevention and loss control information for each asset. In addition, RealSTARS has tools that streamline the process of gathering and consolidating values and an intuitive, location-based interface through a proprietary feature – Risk Goggles™– that displays information via Google Earth. Marsh's system also has property and facility audit capabilities, and tools for tracking third-party property managers and other vendors.

"The Web continues to provide opportunities for us to build new capabilities into our industry-leading risk management information system that meet the specific needs of individual industry sectors," said Bill Diaz, president of CS STARS. "We have developed a number of breakthrough features in RealSTARS that give real estate executives the resources they need to track and manage their exposures and risk management initiatives globally on a real-time basis. That should go a long way to helping their firms save costs by managing risk both more effectively and efficiently."