Wrongful Claims Practices Which Insurers Recognize that They Should be Punished (Part One)
Don't you think Madoff would agree that society should throw a financial swindler in jail? I imagine most insurance executives think there should be consequences if they do the same thing. Shouldn't they agree that claims management practices which intentionally underpay must be punished by law as a matter of public policy? Who would not agree--unless you were part of a system that wanted cheating of policyholders to be "business as usual?"
Insurance companies do not want to be held accountable for wrongful conduct. "Cheat and get away with it"-- is the mantra of many insurers. This is wrong and it has to stop.
Honest insurers should push for consumer protection laws that hold dishonest insurers accountable. Do they? Not that I have seen. Only crooks and cheats oppose laws that punish cheating--where is the property and casualty insurance industry?
I know most independent adjusters would support these laws. Company adjusters publicly would as well if they were not subject to termination. The property and casualty industry needs to clean itself up. Honest insurers and adjusters should support penalties when others break rules. As Alex Sink suggested yesterday, there needs to be accountability for those that do not honor insuring promises. Who is against that? I suggest that the answer is only those that break those rules.
Yesterday, I tried to teach public adjusters how to prevent otherwise innocent policyholders from wrongfully inflating claims because they believe the insurer will always try to reduce what is rightfully owed. Two wrongs never equal a right. However, many policyholders lack faith in insurance company claims practices and believe they can’t be straight forward and get paid a fair amount. This must stop. Nobody benefits.
As an independent insurance adjuster for the past thirty six years, I cringe when looking at the articles written in regards to Texas claims handling. Here's a state where after three days of being given the answers to the exam questions you get to be a licensed insurance adjuster hired by firms to handle hurricane claims. Then people have the gall to complain about the service.
If better educational and training standards were in place, perhaps better service would ensue. The system is poor, but no one does anything about it.
Furthermore, these poor adjusters are thrown out there by unscrupulous vendors and carriers with specific instructions on what the report should or should not contain. There's hell to pay if you deviate from corporate policy and no pay until the report says what they want.
I fully understand you and your colleagues going against the carrier for redress, but both the adjusting firms and adjusters are under explicit instruction as to how the claim gets handled. Directives are issued and are to be followed if payment for services is to be expected. By suing the vendors and adjusters all you and your colleagues are achieving is ensuring that no sane adjuster or experienced one will work Texas again .
Who the hell wants to be bothered with the frivolity and expense of a lawsuit initiated by an insured who was, although entitled to better, the victim of an insurance carrier with a book of directives and an agenda? If you keep wanting to shoot the messengers, i.e., the adjuster, all you're doing is ensuring the continued lack of experienced people wanting to work in a climate where there's no gain, only pain.
Interested,
I have been doing this for about twenty-seven years, and the Texas adjustments are as "different" as I have been around. I have become accustomed to catastrophe adjusters with little experience, but the claims adjustment delays following Hurricane Ike have been extraordinary and unique.
Texas has some fantastic consumer protection statutes. However, the case law interpreting those statutes and the manner some Texas Courts have interpreted all-risk insurance policies regarding causation and valuation simply invite home office claims management to second guess what field adjusters find.
I would suggest that independents and catastrophe adjusters refuse to accept wrongful requests and report abuse by management to authorities. From the policyholder's perspective, there is little difference between a bank thief and his gettaway driver taking the policyholder's money from the bank, and the company claims manager using an independent adjuster to do the same thing when wrongfully taking money rightfully owed.
Still, your point is well taken. I appreciate you sharing your views.
And, I would suggest most policyholder attorneys will dismiss complaints against those ohterwise honest adjusters so long as they come clean right away and explain the pressures many have spoken to me of in private.