Gestión de siniestros y su efecto en el EBITDA de centros comerciales

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between claims management and financial performance, measured through EBITDA, in a shopping mall operator active in Colombia, referred to here as Case Organization A for confidentiality reasons. The problem is organizational: when a claim is settled through direct payment instead of the timely and technical activation of the contracted insurance policy, the organization may end up bearing the cost of the same risk twice, eroding its operating margin. Documented claims in shopping centers across Colombia, Peru, and Chile show that this exposure is not hypothetical. This work aims to design a traceability model that establishes, in a verifiable way, the relationship between operational risk management and EBITDA, in order to propose management guidelines from a project management perspective. Methodologically, a mixed-method case study is proposed that, in the absence of formal authorization to use identified internal data, calibrates its model with verifiable public sources: claims statistics from Fasecolda, the regional business risk survey by Marsh, and public financial results from comparable sector operators. The main product of this phase is a financial and documentary traceability matrix that classifies the origin of each data point used, applied to a scenario calibrated with those sources to validate its functioning. The results show that the model correctly differentiates between timely policy activation, direct payment, and late notice, and that each scenario produces a distinct, calculable financial effect. The paper concludes that adequate claims management is a verifiable EBITDA protection factor through a replicable instrument, and that applying the model to real data from Case Organization A, subject to authorization, remains the pending task for the next phase of this research.