Insurers ask for thermography because electrical faults are a leading ignition source in commercial and industrial property, and heat is the one early symptom that can be documented cheaply, from outside, without stopping the plant. The letter is their way of making the fire risk visible before they carry another year of it. Understanding that purpose is the key to scoping the survey — because the insurer did not ask for a PDF, they asked for evidence that someone competent looked, found what there was to find, and that something happened about it.
Read the letter before buying anything.
There is no universal Malaysian requirement here — no regulation that names thermography, no standard interval that applies to every policy. What exists is your insurer's specific condition, and they vary: some letters just say "thermographic inspection report," some name a frequency, some specify a certified thermographer, a few (usually after a claim history) list the boards they want covered. The policy wording and the letter are the scope's starting documents. Where they are vague — and they usually are — the questions below are what your broker should take back to the insurer, and the answers cost nothing.
The scope that actually answers the request.
Coverage that maps to the risk
Incoming supply, main switchboard, the distribution boards that feed it all — and MV switchgear where the site has it. A survey that skips the room where a fire would start is a coverage decision someone may ask about later; whatever is excluded should be excluded in writing, with a reason.
Real load, stated in the report
Heat tracks current, so a scan during a quiet shift understates everything. The survey should run under representative operating load — and the report should record what was running, because a rating without its load condition cannot be verified by anyone.
A name and a credential
Findings someone identifiable stands behind, with recognised thermography certification stated. This is the difference between evidence and a stack of colourful images — and it is often the one element insurers explicitly specify.
Rated findings, logic printed
Each anomaly classified by temperature rise against a stated reference, with the severity bands printed in the report — monitor, planned repair, act now. The reader should be able to check the classification without phoning the vendor.
Paired images, findable points
Thermal and visual image of each finding, labelled to the exact panel and terminal — so your electrician can locate it and a third party can audit it.
Limits — and a close-out plan
What was not scanned and why, stated plainly. Then the part most scopes forget: repairs traced to findings and re-scanned to confirm the fault is actually gone. Open findings with no follow-through are the worst possible content for a claim file.
The minimum-compliance trap.
There is a cheaper way to answer the letter, and it is bought every renewal season: the fastest available scan, timed for whenever the vendor can come (load unrecorded), images unlabelled, every finding marked "monitor," no follow-up. It attaches to the renewal email just as well as a real survey does — and at renewal time, nobody reads it.
The document works differently after a loss. A claims team reading the file sees a survey that could not have found what it was nominally looking for — and findings, if any, that nobody acted on. We will not tell you that voids a claim; that is between the policy wording and the adjuster, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling something. The honest version is simpler: the requirement exists because the risk is real, the price difference between the junk scan and the real one is small, and only one of them is worth having your name on. The same five checks that protect you from a repair-sales report tell you which one you received.
The letter comes back every year.
One more thing worth noticing before you scope a one-off: the renewal letter is annual, which means the insurer has effectively set your scanning cadence for you. That changes the buying question from "what is the cheapest scan that answers this letter?" to "if we are doing this every year anyway, what makes the years add up?" — the same boards, read the same way, become a trend a claims file and a maintenance plan can both lean on. Declared interest: that is precisely what our assessment programme is built around, with the first year as the baseline. Our own published example began exactly this way — an insurer's requirement that surfaced three Danger-rated findings the plant did not know it had. The letter was the reason the camera arrived; the findings were the reason it mattered.
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Published 30 July 2026. AMKA Technologies Sdn Bhd, SSM 202301041763 (1535682-T).