Forums

Several years ago I worked for an insurer whose office was in Dallas, we were attempting to telephone handle wind claims for insureds located in the French Cajun country West of New Orleans.

Many of the insureds spoke French. I never closed a claim and finally quit.

I see I made a typo mistake in my previous post. The carrier had brought in 1000 adjusters, not 100. I have corrected the mistake. There were approximately 100 claim per adjuster, not 1000. That would be more than a bit of a stretch, even on cookie cutter hail claims.

The company I worked for had (before I was there) tried something similar, by having an "inspector" go out and photograph the damages and having office adjusters write it up on an Excel spreadsheet. It ended up costing them about half a million in supplemental payments, half a million in fines, and a lot of bad press when the state insurance department sanctioned them. They now use I/As in that state.

Posted By dpadjuster on 19 Feb 2013 05:15 PM
The company I worked for had (before I was there) tried something similar, by having an "inspector" go out and photograph the damages and having office adjusters write it up on an Excel spreadsheet. It ended up costing them about half a million in supplemental payments, half a million in fines, and a lot of bad press when the state insurance department sanctioned them. They now use I/As in that state.

.................................................

Why were they sanctioned by the DOI? Why were they subject to fines and bad press? The actions stated above occur all the time.

Several different reasons, from what I can gather.  All of the homes were grouped closely together in the same area, so apparently the neighbors talked and compared notes.  One of the big ones was that a lot of damage was missed by the inspector, who was not an adjuster.  Amounts of payment were a lot more for anyone who got a contractor and/or questioned the damage.  The state may also have been an issue, as they may have been wanting to make an example of someone.  Also, one of the adjusters in the office was apparently pretty rude to several of the insureds. 

 

Posted By dpadjuster on 20 Feb 2013 05:29 PM

Several different reasons, from what I can gather.  All of the homes were grouped closely together in the same area, so apparently the neighbors talked and compared notes.  One of the big ones was that a lot of damage was missed by the inspector, who was not an adjuster.  Amounts of payment were a lot more for anyone who got a contractor and/or questioned the damage.  The state may also have been an issue, as they may have been wanting to make an example of someone.  Also, one of the adjusters in the office was apparently pretty rude to several of the insureds. 

............................................................................

 Depending on the state (as with almost every other issue), they have different requirements as to who can and cannot inspect a risk. At least in California, you do NOT need to be a licensed adjuster provided you are working directly for the carrier. From my understanding, you do NOT need to be a licensed adjuster to inspect a risk provided you are an employee of a law firm that has been retained by the insured.

Interesting for sure. What state was this in?  Was this a carrier? Recently? (as per your assertion they used excel spreadsheets. Did they not utilize any type of estimating software? )

It was about 10 years ago now. They did not use estimating software, which probably was one of the things that hurt them the worst.