Claims Magazine June 2010
Cover Story
Disaster Season Is Here
As you prepare for this year's hurricane season, there is one rule that is true time and time again: "Expect the unexpected." Use our guide to help you anticipate as much as possible.
Features
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Handling Specialty Contents Claims
Whether a loss is large or small, specialty items may often be the culprit behind snags, delays, and points of contention.
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Ensuring Auto Claim Compliance
With a number of recent regulatory changes impacting the area of automobile claims, insurers should take stock of the requirements to help ensure they continue to remain compliant.
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Divining Bodily Injury Claims
Inaccurately assessing bodily injury claim severity at first notice of loss (FNOL) creates various pitfalls that hinder resources and escalate costs. Get help with predictive modeling.
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Measuring for Meaning
By simply managing to the numbers, claim managers and supervisors risk losing a vital sensitivity to the complex interplay between people and processes that only comes through using more qualitative instruments.
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Finding Common Ground
Several years ago, a study was funded by a collision repair group and several industry suppliers. They sought to identify and quantify repairers' perspectives on one of the most hotly debated claim programs of our time: DRP.
Columns
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Avoiding the Slick
Insurance claim professionals would do well to remember that anticipating disaster and preparing for response are two recipes that don't call for slick talk.
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Recession-Proof Your Career
Being as prepared as possible is the best way to improve one's chances of being on the safe side of a reduction in force or getting a needed job offer if a layoff becomes an unexpected reality.
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When Bugs Bite
If an insured brings bed bugs home from a hotel, is there coverage?
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Ma Nature's Next Hissy Fit
There really is no season of disasters, but it does seem that spring and summer, from mid-March to the beginning of fall, is when we receive the most "gifts" from Ma Nature.
Departments
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I.I.I.: Oil Rig Losses Insured Up to $1.4 Billion
Companies with exposure to the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico are insured for losses totaling about $1.4 billion, according to initial reports from the companies involved in the incident.
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Questionable Claims Up 46 Percent
A report from the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) shows that staged accident questionable claims increased 46 percent from 2007 through 2009.
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Nashville Flood Damage Hits a Billion Dollars
The city of Nashville expects total damage from flooding that began in early May to surpass the billion-dollar mark.
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Consider the Customer, Allstate VP Advises
Providing the best possible customer experience while moving toward accurate claim resolution is the resounding mantra of claim departments everywhere.
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Speaking Of: Academic Excellence
Each year, Claims Magazine awards an academic scholarship to a student at the Katie School of Insurance and Financial Services at Illinois State University.
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AAA and Travel Channel Name Worst Drivers
Buckle up for a bumpy ride. From Beantown to the Big Apple, AAA and the Travel Channel are scouring the country to find drivers capable of the most shameless driving infractions.
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Off the Couch, In the Frying Pan for Fraudsters
The promise of a big payoff -- along with bad television, apparently -- compelled two cousins to stage an armed robbery during which one shot the other with a gun.
