Cjengo,
I cannot comment on the CAT adjusting route as I am chained to a desk, but I would happy to shed some light on the internal workings of a boiler room large carrier’s claims office. Prior to working claims, I worked for a now defunct national mitigation company; I lived in Florida for the wild 2004 season. That experience and being in the right place at the right time has served me well. My carrier counted my mitigation experience year for year when calculating my initial wage and I have done well.
You mentioned needing some flexibility due to your child’s needs, insurance (benefits for your family), retirement, and wanting to help people. All these needs will be met working for a large carrier. Here is some free advice regarding your potential future career as an adjuster. My advice is based on my personal experience in my claims office.
Stress / Pending: Being an adjuster can be stressful. The carrier needs you to handle as many claims as you can as quickly as you can. You have to handle them fairly, paying what you owe (no more, no less). You will constantly be dealing with people going through a very stressful time; many of them are also completely unable to emotionally cope with adversity, and will take it out on you. On the same claim you will have to deal with the insd’s vendor who will have wildly inflated the scope and convinced the insd you (the adjuster) just want to cut corners and save the carrier money. It took me a few years before I stopped taking this behavior personally (I still get mad when being blatantly ripped off). A perfect example you can see right now on this board would be the thread where the “adjuster” wants to know how much to pay to have a tree removed.
Be aware that the claims keep rolling in whether you settle yours quickly or get involved in long drawn out fights with the vendors and insds. You will be under the customer service microscope; “The insd gave me bad marks because I was following the carrier processes” is not an applicable excuse for a bad review. Having an insanely high work load is also not an excuse. As an adjuster, you will most likely be on salary and a desk job is not a nine-to-five job. At times you will leave work emotionally drained, exhausted, and depressed.
Wages / Compensation. The carrier will pay you a fair market wage for a person who has no claims experience (not a whole lot of money). I personally know of agency staff that made the leap and were not credited for any prior experience. In most cases you will be earning a lot more than you take home when you factor in benefits, 401k matching, retirement, paid time off, short term disability, etc. Those benefits will not pay your rent or put gas in the tank so often times you could feel like you are earning less than you are. If you survive your first year in claims, you will find the raises are not commensurate with the work you do. The average raise throughout my company has been 2.5% for the last few years. It was made known that the office has a fixed amount for raises, if you get more than the average, one of your friends gets less (I can tell you this is bittersweet). If you survive and thrive in your first five years, you will find that you are being paid below the market value for a 5 year adjuster. This is because your raises have not kept pace with your value as an adjuster, and you started off with a low wage 5 years ago. You have to be careful here because on one side you can go to a different carrier and make more but if you do this more than a very few times, you will be labeled a “job hopper” and will not get more interviews. If possible do not leave prior to your 5 year mark; this is not hard because time flies when you are slammed with work 100% of the time.
More Stress. You do not have to dig deep on this forum to see that large carriers are trying to save money. The independent adjusters are concerned that the carriers are using satellites, “drop out” sub contractors, and contractors to write estimates and cutting the independents out of the loop. I would agree that the pendulum is deep in “cut expenses” territory and is not considering the savings of having skilled adjusters on the case. I fully expect a collective, “oh crap” from the carriers regarding severities in the near future. What does this mean for the desk adjuster working in a corporate claims environment? Out sourcing. Whether the work is sent to large unskilled express offices or overseas, either way, you are out of a job.
Realistically, you are doing all the adjusting from behind a desk with minimal outside adjuster input. Why pay you $60k a year when they can pay half that? On complex claims, currently, the carriers cannot maintain customer service, comply with state regulations, and generally not butcher the claims process. My carrier is pressing forward though, and I imagine one day I will be on lunch listening to Bloomberg Radio and hear that my carrier just closed their local claims offices and are sending the work to India. Towards the end of 2008, I actually heard about a round of layoffs in one of our financial services subsidiaries on Bloomberg before my carrier notified us in claims.
In closing, I do not think a career in catastrophe claims would be right for you if you have to care for your child. You will be on the road for weeks at a time (my company is 10 days on, 4 days off). I have a good friend who loved being on the CAT team but his family could not handle it. He is back behind a desk now. If you do pursue a career in claims I wish you the best; you are in for a wild ride. You will have an enormous opportunity to help people when they need it the most. They may not always appreciate the coup or other amazing feat of adjusting skill you pull off for them but you will always know you helped them and that goes a long way.
Lastly, if you do take a job in claims, make sure you select the long term disability benefit. Feel free to ignore everything else I said but take the long term disability benefit.