St. John’s-based ClearRisk, which provides risk-management software, has won the 2020 RBC Business Resilience Awards in Newfoundland and Labrador in the Community Champion category.

Competing against a range of Newfoundland and Labrador organizations, ClearRisk won the award for offering a pandemic risk management product free to the business community and supporting local community organizations. 

It received the award during a virtual award show Wednesday hosted by the St. John’s Board of Trade.

“This community champion award is a reflection on the culture driven by ClearRisk’s values since we started the company in 2006,” said ClearRisk CEO Craig Rowe in a statement. “Building a successful organization has a lot to do with how people work together and I am so proud of our team today.  In a time of great uncertainty and considerable stress, our team stepped up every day ensuring that we did everything we could to support our customers, our community and each other.”

ClearRisk has developed software that helps clients – mainly insurers – with risk management, business continuity planning and incident management. It has over 150 customers in North America.

When the pandemic broke out in March, the company developed and launched the ClearRisk Pandemic Risk Management Solution to reduce the impact of Covid-19 across organizations. It offered the product to customers and other Canadian groups free, providing not only software but also training and customer support.

Rowe took a leadership role in creating the Covid Response Task Force at techNL, formerly the Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Technology and Innovation. The task force worked to secure programming resources and relief for the province’s tech companies during the pandemic.

The Resilience Awards citation also noted the company’s financial and other support for local community groups before arrival of government pandemic supports.

Examples of these commitments included a contribution to the Closed Door, Open Heart Project. It asked tech companies to share with their peers the equivalent of up to three months of business travel and expenses that had gone unused because of the pandemic. 

ClearRisk also supported such community groups as the YMCA of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Community Food Sharing Association, SPCA, The Gathering Place, World YMCA, NL Eats, East Coast Trail Association, Canadian Mental Health Association NL, Lebanese Red Cross, Black Lives Matter Canada, and the YMCA NL Newcomer and Immigrant Settlement Programs.

“We were determined in March that we would do whatever we could to support our province’s tech sector so that it did not only survive the incredible challenges we saw ahead but thrive,” said Rowe.  “And, we wanted to encourage others to give back and give more to the community sector organizations that do so much for building up our communities.”