EW or whatever other aliases you go by:
There's something about hiding your identity that leaves you with no credibility at all. I'm really not trying to start a back and forth battle with you over this one issue, for if you answer that way, I will not respond to you. However, I'm providing my answer to your questions raised in this post.
#1. If you have truly been a "commercial claims adjuster" for 9+ years, you're not very convincing by the statements you have made. You can bet your rear end that all the IA firms for cat adjusters know what the AIC designation means to them and their principals.
#2. I see that you have found the aicpcu.org web site and picked up a little something about these insurance subjects of study as to how many you need to "successfully" complete through examinations to be awarded the AIC designation. However, my experience is that the required courses to complete for AIC are easy and less time-consuming compared to the courses required to receive the CPCU designation. I also note that you implied that these are "underwriting" courses of study. I found they are just as valuable to the career claims adjuster as to the underwriter or a producing agent.
#3. The American Insurance Institute is well established in this field and their insurance courses are accepted for transfer credits to several leading business universities in their post graduate fields requirements. So, what we're talking about here are "college-level" educational courses of higher learning. The INS and AIC courses are "step" courses to the more demanding CPCU courses. I would recommend to the newbies out there that are really serious in claims adjusting as a career, that they first enroll in the INS course study before going to the AIC and CPCU studies, respectively, because the completion of the AIC course will waive one or two of the CPCU courses. (If not, then just attend all those costly seminars away from home where one can learn a limited amount of insurance knowledge to just be capable enough to handle the basic type of weather-related property insurance claim and apply the deductible correctly. [Yes, there are many different deductibles that require some understanding of their purpose, in order to apply them correctly, and are too varied to discuss here].) But the point is, the more accomplished one is in self-education, the more money they can earn by receiving more complicated claim assignments, whether in daily or cat claims. Furthermore, the designation is "proof" to the carrier that you are somewhat "knowledgeable" about the correct claim handling process that you will be entrusted with.
#4. Successful completion of the CPCU courses is also accepted by several states' insurance departments to grant one a waiver of testing for state licenseing. Another positive! Just doing the course completions will also count as "continueing eduction" credits as required by most states.