Fifty years in the property insurance claims business is an extraordinary accomplishment. Staying relevant, respected, successful, and willing to share what you have learned over those five decades is something even more worthy of recognition. Doug Branham has done all of that.

I have known Doug professionally for about thirty years. We have not always agreed. In fact, I can assure you that we have had our share of disagreements about claims, coverage, adjustment practices, and how flood losses should be handled. I represent policyholders. Doug built his career as an independent adjuster working within a very different part of the insurance claims world. If two people with those backgrounds agree about everything, somebody probably is not doing much thinking. Yet, disagreement has never diminished my respect for Doug Branham.

There is a difference between disagreeing with somebody’s conclusion and questioning whether that person knows what he is talking about. With Doug, I have never had much doubt about the latter. His reputation as an expert regarding flood losses preceded many of our conversations, and my own experience with him confirmed that reputation.

Over the years, Doug and I have spent long hours discussing the intricacies of flood insurance law and flood adjustment practices. Flood insurance is deceptively complicated. People who do not work with it regularly often assume it is simply another form of property insurance. It is not. The rules, policy language, deadlines, causation issues, proof requirements, estimating practices, and administrative requirements can create traps for even experienced insurance professionals. Doug understands those nuances.

More importantly, he could discuss them at a level showing that his knowledge did not come simply from reading a manual or attending a seminar. It came from experience. Lots of it. There is a tremendous difference between knowing the words in an insurance policy and understanding how those words apply after buildings have been flooded and people are trying to put their lives and businesses back together.

I have also always believed that Doug acted in good faith in his professional dealings. Good faith and agreement are not the same thing. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of true professionalism is the ability to vigorously disagree while still respecting the knowledge, integrity, and intentions of the person on the other side. So far, that has been my experience with Doug.

There is another part of Doug’s legacy that deserves recognition. He did not simply become an accomplished adjuster. He became a successful businessman and leader.

Building and running a strong independent adjusting operation for decades requires an entirely different collection of talents. Knowing how to adjust a loss is one thing. Recruiting people, training them, deploying them after catastrophes, maintaining relationships, meeting client expectations, managing cash flow, developing systems, and keeping an organization moving forward through enormous changes in technology and the insurance industry is something else entirely. Doug accomplished both.

Perhaps his greatest professional legacy, however, will not be measured by the number of claims he adjusted or the success of the business he built. It will be measured by the people he taught. Thousands of property insurance adjusters have been influenced, trained, mentored, or given opportunities through Doug’s work. Think about the multiplier effect of that. An experienced claims professional who takes the time to teach younger adjusters does more than improve one person’s career. Those lessons are carried into thousands of future claims involving families and businesses desperately needing competent people to help them through a loss.

Knowledge passed from one generation of adjusters to another is how a profession maintains its standards. I sometimes worry that our increasingly automated claims world undervalues that type of accumulated experience. We have remarkable estimating programs, artificial intelligence, aerial imagery, drones, sophisticated weather data, and more information available instantly than adjusters fifty years ago could have imagined. Those tools are valuable.

Still, there remains no shortcut for decades spent looking at damaged property, studying insurance policies, learning from mistakes, arguing about difficult issues, teaching others, and developing the judgment to recognize that every claim presents something a little different. Doug Branham has fifty years of that experience.

Doug is also a horseman and has long had a passion for thoroughbred horse racing. There is something fitting about celebrating his insurance career through that lens. Anybody around horses knows that success seldom comes from one spectacular moment. It comes from breeding, preparation, patience, discipline, experience, setbacks, persistence, and showing up again for the next race. A fifty-year career is much the same.

You do not stay in this business for half a century without taking some bumps along the way. Markets change. Companies change. Regulations and laws change. Catastrophes arrive. Clients come and go. Competitors emerge. Technology makes yesterday’s practices obsolete. And occasionally, lawyers representing policyholders probably make your life a little more interesting than you would prefer, if we are doing our jobs correctly.

One of the privileges of my remaining in this profession for a long time is that I have obtained enough perspective to appreciate people with whom I have crossed paths repeatedly. I remember the disputes, but I also remember the conversations. I recognize the people who know their craft, care about it, built something worthwhile, and helped others become better at theirs. For me, Doug Branham is one of those people.

So, Doug, congratulations on fifty years in the claims business. Congratulations on building a successful enterprise, developing generations of adjusters, becoming one of the people our industry turns to when the conversation involves flood claims, and earning the professional respect of people who sometimes sat on the opposite side of the table.

We have disagreed plenty. I hope we have a few more disagreements left in us.

Happy 50th anniversary, my friend. You are running one heck of a race.

Thought For The Day

“A horse gallops with his lungs, perseveres with his heart, and wins with his character.”
— Federico Tesio