It is never a good sign when the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is in your hometown, and a hurricane is on the way. Cantore is in Tampa. Hurricane Milton is on the way to Tampa or somewhere close by. I am in Miami at the Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters (FAPIA) Fall conference and need to get back home to Tampa and prepare for Hurricane Milton.
Ashley Harris and I were supposed to give a speech on Tuesday about preparing National Flood Insurance Claims. They have moved the speech up to this morning so I can leave early. Ashley and her husband, Corey Harris, went to North Carolina to check on their damaged home. They decided to ride out Hurricane Milton in North Carolina rather than return to Tampa. So, I will be giving this speech by myself.
Ashley Harris was my primary attorney following Superstorm Sandy, assisting our team with over six hundred National Flood Insurance claims and lawsuits. She learned a lot, and her absence will be missed. National Flood claim preparation and lawsuits are a nightmare. There are many traps, and it is easy to prepare these claims the wrong way and not be able to challenge the government about an underpaid claim. I hope public adjusters pay close attention to what I am about to say.
My speech, “What Does Your Client Think of You? Are You The Weakest Link?” kicked off a great day of lessons and presentations. One of my points to public adjusters was to be wary of “pretender” insurance educators who often teach wrong methods and philosophies of adjusting. These usually non-credentialed and somewhat less experienced public adjusters often teach and suggest that handing hard cases over to attorneys (who are usually supporting these teachers) is the proper way to adjust claims and represent policyholders. This is simply wrong and policyholders retaining public adjusters deserve better.
The point was driven home later in the afternoon by public adjuster Frank Altieri and attorney David Murray in their presentation, “Dancing With The Desk Adjuster—Learning The Steps.” Murray was sharply critical of public adjusters who just give up or flip cases to attorneys when the adjustment becomes difficult. They explained how strong interpersonal skillsets are a key factor in successful public adjusting. Professional and skilled dialogue and negotiation can avoid the need for a policyholder to retain legal counsel and further increase costs to obtain full recovery. Their presentation put a lot of meat on the bones of the point I made about the need for public adjusters to continually hone their emotional intelligence and find ways to effectively negotiate in a professional manner with the insurance company’s claims teams.
Public adjusting is a lot more than just reading a policy and measuring the loss. The best public adjusters are highly skilled professionals and have an uncanny ability to resolve the most difficult claims without taking huge discounts or pennies on the dollar.
Merlin Law Group attorney Steven Bush has been a bit of a celebrity at the conference. His role in helping shepherd courageous whistleblowing independent adjusters to investigative journalists with CBS 60 Minutes was highlighted at the conference.
Doug Quinn of the American Policyholders Association and Steven deserve a lot of credit for this. As a result, we are receiving much more proof about altered estimates, and many others are coming forward on what is seemingly a widespread practice by some insurers to unilaterally alter estimates made by field adjusters to wrongfully underpay policyholders. This is not just a one-time story; it has unfortunately been going on since Hurricane Ike, with TWIA claims officials doing the same thing.
I finished up last night with a promotional pre-launch party of my new book, which I co-authored with Lynette Young of Claim Wizard, “Claim Your Success: The Ultimate Guide to Starting and Running a Public Insurance Business.” Lynette and Dave Young of Claims Wizard have approximately 13,000 subscribers to their software and have consulted with over a thousand public adjusting firms. They are far and away the most experienced people on this planet at dealing with public adjuster claims and business issues.
I am fortunate that Lynette wanted me to join her in writing this book. She has worked with and witnessed how the most successful public adjusters operate their businesses and how they overcome issues. She has also helped many public adjusters start their businesses from scratch and grow into mature, successful businesses with talented people helping policyholders. She has worked with excellent, good, average, and the worst of public adjusting firms.
Lynette is finally sharing some of that knowledge of how to be successful in this book. I am privileged to co-write it with her.
Thought For The Day
He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.”
—Christopher Voss, author of Never Split The Difference
