Public Adjusters Shouldn't Be Demonized

[Guest guest]

http://www.nunews.com/pandc/nuonline/030402/P200209public.asp

March 4, 2002 Edition

Public Adjusters Shouldn't Be Demonized

By Bruce Hillman

My topic this month, in an around-and-about way, is professional ethics, in

large part because March is officially " Ethics Month " in the insurance

industry. (Any other month we can do as we damn well please, I guess. Only

kidding!)

I'm working on the FC & S presentation for the annual ACE Conference and

Exposition put on by our sibling periodical, Claims magazine. Being joined

with the Society of Claims Law Associates' annual meeting, this should be

quite an event this year (in Orlando, Sept. 12-14).

Phil Schreiner, editor of Claims, shared a look at the tentative program for

this year's ACE conference. One of the Special Issues Track session

descriptions (SM300: Mold Claims and Public Adjusters--The Sleeping Giant)

caught my attention. " Combine the unprecedented growth of the public

adjusting business with mold mania, and asbestos claims start looking like a

walk in the park. "

It's the comment about the unprecedented growth of public adjusters that hit

me. It infers that public adjusters are increasing sort of like a plague of

locusts. And about as welcome.

In theory, public adjusters and company adjusters should be the

same--insurance professionals representing the interests of policyholders.

They should be working toward the same goal. Looked at from a certain

perspective, they do the exact same work--assessing loss--and should have

the same result in mind: a fair, adequate and appropriate insurance recovery

paid to the insured for covered damaged property.

But that's where the theory breaks down in the cold light of loss. I think

that company adjusters see public adjusters in much the same vein that I

believe insurance company attorneys see personal injury lawyers--as

blood-sucking leeches they'd be better off without.

Meanwhile, public adjusters see company claims staff as adversarial

opponents in the image of Scrooge. To public adjusters, company adjusters

think nothing is covered and even if it is, it's not worth anything. To

company staff, public adjusters think everything is covered and every item a

precious (and expensive) gem.

This shouldn't be so with lawyers and it shouldn't be so with adjusters. It

is true that there is essentially a different focus in the two types of

claims professionals--the public adjuster strongly advocating for the

insured in the way a personal injury lawyer advocates for the injured party,

and the company adjuster essentially representing the interests of his or

her employer, which is the insurance company. However, at base, they are

after the same result--the right one.

You know, if every claim was settled exactly right every time, it seems

there'd be fewer insurance company-suing personal injury lawyers and

claim-exaggerating public adjusters.

It isn't just greed that gave rise to the public adjuster. If insureds

believed that their own insurance company claims adjuster was truly on their

side and operating in their interests, there'd be far fewer suits and public

adjuster retentions. Therefore, a company claims adjuster doing the job

right can frequently ameliorate the need for a public adjuster--or a lawyer

to sue.

I know that public adjusters are concerned with their image for

professionalism. I was engaged last year to address them at the National

Association of Public Insurance Adjusters annual meeting on how to improve

their industry image. The advice I gave them was the same advice I'd give to

our company adjuster friends at ACE: " Do good, by being good at what you

do. " That they want education is evident. Public adjusters buy a lot of our

technical reference material.

Twenty years in this industry has proved to me that the good guys outnumber

the bad guys (ethically) in the financial services field. Sure, there are

crooks and there have been scandals, but the run of the mill industry

representative is just a regular man or woman out to do a decent job in what

they do for a living.

So, in a lot of situations, ethics comes down to doing the right job and the

job right. Not taking shortcuts, getting the facts, and knowing your field

and how to use its tools (like how to read an insurance policy) is the way

to go.

At the FC & S, we've seen time and time again that the wrong result in a

coverage decision is often due to a lack of understanding about what the

policy actually says and means. We rarely see positions taken out of pure

bottom-line adjusting, by declining the loss simply out of a desire to save

the insurer dollars.

So in this " Ethics Month " of March, give some thought to being good by being

better. Pay attention in the continuing education class, read the FC & S and

our other technical books, network with our peers, and learn from it all.

Ethics isn't just morality--it's also education, attention to detail,

attention to business, people skills, and common sense and decency.

Bruce Hillman, JD, is Editorial Director of Risk and Insurance Markets for

the Professional Publishing Group of The National Underwriter Company, in

Erlanger, Ky. Questions and comment are invited at fcs@....