Claim Woes Go Both Ways

To The Editor:

Kudos to Cathy Divodi, vice president of ART Insurance Service in Walnut Creek, Calif., for her May 13 opinion piece (“Poorly Trained Adjusters Burden RMs.”) Notwithstanding Ms. Divodi's conclusions, however, adjusters have no monopoly on cluelessness.

Rehash adjuster bloopers and claims people can match you and raise you one with tales of risk manager follies:

Risk managers with no understanding of strict liability.

Naivet? on how juries view cases.

Insistence on denying workers' compensation claims because the claimant was a “bad employee.”

Killing the messenger for adverse claim developments.

Insisting on coverage for “business reasons” for additional entities that aren't covered.

Demanding de minimus reserves on catastrophic cases.

Requests for premium reduction the morning after a trial victory.

Demanding special claim protocols months after an insurance contract has been negotiated.

Some risk managers exude the message that the claims area is beneath them and simply too trivial to waste time on during the exhilaration of deal making. This–combined with gasoline price wars for the lowest insurance bidder–sends a message about the importance of claims to buyers.

Risk managers must put their money where their mouths are. Deals are done, but it later befalls to the claims staff to clean up the mess. Will no one step forward for the beleaguered claims person?

Ultimately, both risk managers and claim professionals need each other. Patronizing each other or chiding over lack of training solves nothing. The flattest pancake has two sides, and Ms. Divodi's opinions must be balanced by realistic perspective.

Winston Churchill once described Britain and the United States as “two nations divided by a common language.” We could say the same about risk managers and claims people. Both need better training to understand each other and bridge the gaps.

Only when insurers view training as an investment and risk managers look beyond the cheapest quote can genuine gains result.

Kevin M. Quinley

Senior Vice President, Risk Services

Medmarc Insurance Group
Chantilly, Va.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, June 10, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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Letter to the Editor: Claim Woes Go Both Ways

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