Daily Claims vs. CATastrophe claims adjuster

Should I work from home as a new IA?

Matt:

So today I’m chatting with new adjuster Chrissy Dotson from Oklahoma and she has some really, really good questions about storm deployments, pay, IA firms etc.

Christie, why not give everybody a brief overview of where you're at in your independent adjuster journey.

Christy:

So I stumbled on this about nine months ago, and I just dove right in. One of the first things I saw was on of your videos which really pointed me in the right direction.

[In terms of my journey so far] one of the other major things I've done is got my New York license, and that's been, a really big hit. But I still have a lot of questions and unknowns and would just really appreciate your insight.

Getting deployed on your first storm

I got the call from multiple IA firms, what do I do?

Christy:

If I'm on 50 different IA firm rosters (and I'm getting close to that) and there's an event [like a hurricane or major hail storm] and I have 50 different people calling, areen't the 49 that I have to turn down going to get irritated and stop calling?

Matt:

Whether you're brand new or you've been doing this for a while, firms already know know that your phone is going to be blowing up if there’s a major storm event. They're gonna assume that you've got calls from at least two or three or four other firms saying “Hey, we want you to go to the Gulf to help with claims. Can we put you on standby?”

Standby, if you don’t know is when there’s a big hurricane or wildfire or hailstorm—something like that—the carriers (or insurance companies) will call the IA firms (the people that provide independent adjusters to the insurance companies) and say “Hurricane Katrina just hit and 75% of that market is our insureds. We are going to need at least 500 adjusters.”

The IA firm is going to say ‘yes, we can totally do that’—because otherwise the event is going to go to some other firm.

The IA firm will then look at their roster and see that they have 647 people available who aren’t currently deployed to other events with that particular firm. They will start contacting all those people in a panic to put them on standby to make sure they can properly staff this storm.

They know that they will need ‘x’ number of adjusters to handle ‘x’ number of claims to avoid a scenario where a homeowner who just lost their house calls their carrier (insurance company) and is told that they won’t have an adjuster available to get out there for 6 weeks.

They want to be able to send someone out in the field within 24 hours, or at most, within the week.

As far as how a firm contacts adjusters on their roster to ask to put them on standby, many times they will send out a mass text asking you to reply YES or NO commit.

If you are on the first call list, or the core roster of IAs being used all the time then they will probably call you in person, and even give you some sort of assurance as to the total number of claims you can expect to be handling before asking you to commit.

So if multiple firms are asking you to commit, do you say yes to one or to all?

If you say yes to all of them, and then the first one that calls you back is the one you end up going with, will the rest of the firms be mad?

So this is a little bit of gray area. If you asked the firms, they would tell you that your yes is a yes—they want to know that when they call, you’re already walking out the door with your bags packed.

But the reality from the IA side or perspective is that you can’t just reply ‘YES’ to one and ‘NO’ or ‘STOP’ to everybody else.

If you’ve never worked claims for a particular firm, you aren’t even really on their radar. They’ve already called their core people and gotten commitments from them and now they are just reaching deeper and deeper into their reserve roster.

So whoever calls first, say “YES” to them—no matter who it is—because that might be the only call you get.

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Matt:

So are you really on 50 rosters?

Christie:

I’m on a lot of rosters—the New York license really shot me to the top.

Matt:

So even if you were on just two dozen rosters, you’re probably not going to get a standby notice from all of them. You might get half a dozen from the biggest IA firms like Crawford, Pilot, Alacrity, Pacesetter, Renfroe, CCMS, Sedgwick, etc. especially the firms that have a State Farm account.

Don’t wait for your first choice firm—you’re not really going to know who first choice is at this point. You could probably develop a relationship with any number of companies and really hit it off with their management team where the next person might not. They might actually butt heads with them.

It’s hard to sit here and say “so-and-so firm is the best” or “so-and-so firm is the worst” because it really is who YOU end up clicking with. And you’re going to figure that out as you go.

So go ahead and say yes to being on standby with as many firms as reach out, but then go with the first firm who calls back to offer you an actual deployment opportunity.

You might even text or call the other firms back to let them know that you are no longer available. You don’t have to say why. Just, “thanks for your consideration. I was put on standby but I’m no longer available. My adjuster number is ________ and I just wanted to let you know that you can take me off standby. Hope to see you on the next storm.”

Nobody else is taking the time to do this and by doing so you’re helping the companies plan. With these big storms, there’s so much chaos, even with the biggest firms and carriers. Everything is up in the air.

So you’re not truly deployed until you have claims in your hand.

A couple years ago—during hurricane Florence and Michael I think—they found out after they had deployed a bunch of adjusters that they had overstaffed it.

It turned out not to be not a very big storm and people got zero claims…or they got 10 claims and that was it.

There were some sore folks…let’s put it that way.

Which is totally understandable, but you can’t really know until the storm makes landfall and the claims start coming in. So what I would tell you with hurricanes and big deployments like that, I would say be more proactive than reactive.

Christy, you said you got your New York license, which is a big deal and they're probably gonna try to put you on something sooner than hurricane, as peak hurricane season doesn’t happen until later in the summer and you’re valuable, right? You put in a lot of work to get that New York license.

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Matt:

So instead of waiting for the standby calls to come in, if you see something on the news or the weather—maybe 3 1/2 inch hail hits Oklahoma City or smack dab in the middle of the suburbs of Dallas—I'm calling my firm saying, “Hey, I just noticed _____ got some hail. I’m certified for XYZ list if carriers and if you need me, I’m ready!”

They might have been in the middle of making a bunch of standby phonecalls and you just made it easy on them.

Christy:

I'm emailing all the ones I met at NACA every two weeks.

Matt:

For sure. And I would say even add a little piece of value to it. Every time you get a new license, let them know “I just got approved for my Minnesota license, which is a big one.”

PREPARING YOUR Claims Adjuster RESUME

Do IA firms care about certifications? And if so which ones?

Christy:

Is it a waste of time for me to get certification after certification? Do IA firms really even look at that?

I mean, I've got my California earthquake, my State Farm Certification, Hague Wind & Residential roofing, TWIA (Texas Windstorm Insurance Association Certification)…

Matt:

Some of these probably took you a full day or two to complete right? Even it if was online, those are absolutely valuable. It’s been a while since a bunch of people were deployed to California for an earthquake but it could happen at any second, right?

The insurance companies are just sitting there waiting by the phone, and when it rings, it’s all hands on deck. And firms are going to see that you check off on that, maybe even sorting their rosters by which certifications you have.

There’s really two ways to think about these certifications:

The skill building aspect of credentialing yourself.
Take Hague’s certifications for example. You’re going to learn damage identification, and all about roofs so that when you got out on your won in the field, your files will actually look like you know what you’re talking about. You’re not going to rely on some out of date macro that some guy gave you at orientation and hope it covers it. You’re going to know exactly what every line item is and whether or not it actually needs to be on your estimate.
Demonstrating to the firms that you’re all in.
Doing these certifications let firms know you’ve got some skin in the game. When they call to say they have an Allstate Certification or USAA certification coming up, they know you’ll be there to make the most of that opportunity.
And these are such good networking opportunities when these firms start to see your face again and again. When they look at your name on paper, they will know that you spent a lot of time and resources preparing yourself. It says something about you and they are going to want to find something for you to do.
It’s almost like getting a bachelor’s degree. It shows managers that you were able to finish what you started, right? Same thing goes for these certifications. They let the firms know that, you're all in and that you're ready to make the most of any opportunity they decide to give you.

Christy:

I took your advice right from the very beginning, and I’m using this downtime (November through March) as time to just invest in myself and my new claims business.

Mathew:

And it’s a bit of a marathon, not sprint, right?

Especially just getting to the starting line, right? Because it’s out there somewhere, you just don’t know where or when.

You have to have the expectation that it’s going to happen once you can get those first claims in your hand and you have the opportunity to actually close those claims.

You're just gonna start slow, and ramp up as you learn how to be an adjuster, how to be on the road and deal with contractors and homeowners and start to build up speed and reduce your cycle time (the time it takes you to complete a claim from first call to close).

The firms are always looking at your numbers and cycle times—who’s consistently improving that they can be giving more claims to be handling.

Then suddenly 2-3 weeks in, you’re knocking it out of the park.

You hung in there. And not everybody does. Someone with a much more impressive resume than yours might start to feel the pressure once they are on a storm and fold.

So if you take my advice and try to close only the claims you’ve inspected that day, and not scope anymore until you’ve got those closed, even if you have to go sit in the help room to do it, suddenly you’ll have closed more than the competition. And you’ll only get faster, because you’ve already turned in files and had feedback to be able to do it more quickly and accurately the next time.

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Matt:

After an event, the head honchos are going to sit down in a meeting and ask “okay, who were the shooting stars that we want to keep busy in the future…and who are we never going to hire again.”

So bottom line..it takes getting handed those first claims to get in the game. But then every year after that you’ll get either more deployments or more claims assigned per deployment. And certifications are one thing that is going to get you on the board.

Once you get on that first storm, nobody is ever going to look at your resume again (other than to say “we specifically need someone who is XYZ certified to handle a specific event.”)

So to answer that question, yes, certifications are valuable, but there’s probably a point of diminishing returns. The critical ones are those that are going to help you understand construction and damage ID, and the individual Carrier Certifications (State Farm Certification, Allstate Certification, etc.)

If you have the choice between online and in-person I would say go in person for the networking piece.

getting paid as a new adjuster

Should I take an hourly/day rate position my first storm deployment?

Christy:

Should I go ahead and take an hourly position during an event? From what I understand, new IAs agreeing to a lower pay seems like a huge point of contention with the seasoned IAs.

Matt:

I actually got a couple of emails about this after covering hourly positions like doing the scope and photo, saying: “Hey man, I love your videos but these hourly positions are destroying the industry.”

The reality is is that the carriers are the ones pushing for the photo and scope—and some of the IA firms in an attempt to have a little more quality control over the files being turned in.

So they will have a person out in the field scoping and taking photos and then they will have someone more experienced at a desk writing it up. As far as pay goes, if you’re offered an hourly rate, you’re going to start earning money the second you show up on the job. Which is great if you’ve never handled claims before.

If you go fee schedule, you aren’t being paid until you’ve actually closed the claims.

So previous to hourly (which is still fairly new) if you showed up on a CAT sit, you could request an advance on your pay. They would probably give you a per diem for two or three days with you are doin orientation and waiting to get your claims. But then after that, you were on your own. You get your one advance for $2,000 bucks and hope you can start closing some claims.

If you’re doing hourly, they may give you a lighter claims load to start.

And when we say hourly, we really mean day rate, right?

They’ll say, “We’re going to pay you ‘X’ number of dollars for seven 12 hour days. It comes out to this much per day.”

They will call it a bunch of different things, but basically, if you’re clocking in and out—that’s day rate.

If you’re an experience, veteran adjuster and you’ve been doing this 3-4 years with a lot of storms under your belt and you’re working daily and someone says to you “Hey, you want to do hourly?”…don’t.

No way. Give me fee bill or give me death, right?

But for brand new people, it’s different. Hourly is a great opportunity for someone who may have a high potential of doing well at this work and eventually benefitting our industry, but for whatever reason are struggling to understand the onsite resources their first storm.

This happens every single Catastrophe event. Adjusters will wash out. They can’t get anybody to answer their phone calls or help them close their first few claims.

If they are a fee schedule, they're not getting paid until they close the claim. And if they can't close the claim, they're not gonna get paid. And if they aren’t getting paid, they aren’t going to be able to pay for fuel or their hotel. So they just throw their hands up in the air and so they call and leave a message with their manager saying “I’m out. Give my claims to someone else.”

If they're getting paid hourly, at least there's a little bit of more support there. They can afford to wait for the help room to get around to helping them.

So I would say to new folks, go ahead and take an hourly or day rate deployment. Go ahead and do photo and scope.

I actually did a bit of photo and scope around 5 years ago as a part of Pilot’s test program, and even back then it paid pretty well.

These days I'm hearing that the pay per photo and scope assignment is actually approaching you would have averaged doing a full claim previously. And scoping and photos is the easiest, funnest part of the whole thing right?

You’re not worried about what has to go on the estimate, and you’re not writing it up or making any coverage decisions. You just get to climb around on the roof measuring some stuff, take some photos, and then hit submit on your app and you're done with it.

And at the the end of the day when the sun goes down and you can’t scope anymore, you don’t have to sit in your hotel room making calls and writing estimates.

Daily claims VS. CAtastrophe claims

Which type of adjuster makes more money after expenses?

(And if a storm hits while I’m doing daily, should I leave?)

Christy:

Considering all of the CAT Field adjuster daily expenses while on a storm, when it's all said and done, does a remote desk adjuster or a daily claims adjuster end up making the same or more?

Matt:

Good question. And the answer is… heck ya, you might make more!

(And here’s why.)

Say you’ve got a couple CAT events under your belt and you decide you want to call the firms and let them know you no longer want to travel and do CAT. You want to stay home and do daily within a 200 mile radius. If you’re close enough to a big city, you should have a lot more opportunities for daily claims.

Toilets don’t care what the weather is doing. They are just going to break. And when they do, they are going to cause damage. And those claims get filed any time of the year.

So when Hurricane Katrina rolls up and all the daily adjusters hear about the giant fee bills people are earning on those things, they are going to drop everything they are doing and run off to go do CAT.

But if you stay put, you’re not only going to get all their claims reassigned to you, you’re also going to earn the firm’s undying love and devotion to you because you didn’t ditch them.

The CAT deployment might even be with the same IA firm but just because a storm hit it doesn’t mean the daily stuff stops, right? It just does what it does, year round.

So I know a lot of people who work daily claims who make way more than CAT adjusters, depending on the volume of claims where they get deployed and how many days of the year they stay deployed.

If you live in an area that’s got large structures or you’re doing a lot of commercial stuff, you can do extremely well.

The caveat I will give you is that a lot of companies are going to prefer you have some experience doing claims before they will allow you to handle daily.

Daily claims can be pretty random—lots of water losses, broken appliances and plumbing, vandalism, fire, theft, wind, etc.

So you’ll really going to flex your ability to dig into policy, write a good estimate, meet a contractor at a house with a truck sticking out the front of it and be able to talk intelligently with that guy about what we’re going to do with this claim.

Daily claims tend to be a bit more complex, require more experience and specialized knowledge. Nobody is going to have ultimate knowledge of everything, but you need to know where to go to get the information you need to handle that claim.

But if you have the opportunity to do daily, I say take it!

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This certification was designed with direct input from several major IA firms with the promise that if you pass certification, and learn all these steps to producing a high quality claim and the exact mindset you need to show up on your first storm with, they will move you to the front of the line and give you priority onboarding for newbie deployment opportunities.

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