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Hello Adjusters, Before I get into the NY license issue, I’d like to discuss some issues around licensing in general. Here’s a question that comes up in almost every adjuster licensing class I teach: “which state licenses should I get and maintain?” The answer’s not the same for everyone. Rather, it differs according to each adjuster’s situation. Let’s look at some different strategies.  I’ve been reading through a new book: “Quiet Strength” by Coach Tony Dungy. Let me first explain I know nothing about football; rather, I was looking for a good autobiography by a truly successful person and stumbled upon this book (regularly reading about great men and women is, in my opinion, important to personal excellence). Mr. Dungy was the first African American to win the Superbowl, and his rise to this great accomplishment is amazing and inspirational. Well, to the point of this article; Coach Dungy quotes one of his mentors, Coach Stoll: “Success is uncommon and not to be enjoyed by the common man. I’m looking for uncommon people because we want to be successful, not average.” At first read and without context, this quote might be taken as discouraging for us “normal” folks. Perhaps we’re not blessed with great speed, piercing intelligence, tons of charisma or other natural gifts. It’s what Coach Dungy followed the quote with that really stopped me in my tracks: “The truth is that most people have a better chance to be uncommon by effort than by natural gifts. Anyone could give that effort in his or her chosen endeavor, but the typical person doesn’t, choosing to do only enough to get by.”  Coach Dungy Wow. We can become uncommon. How? By doing common things. With uncommon effort. Coach Dungy points out that Steve Kerr of the Chicago Bulls shot five hundred (that’s 500!) free throws per day to make himself uncommon. Coach Dungy was a good athlete, but a great coach. His tremendous success can be directly attributed to this principle; doing common things uncommonly well. He never waivered in this belief, steadily growing and improving his teams, even when others lost faith. And it paid off. I’ve had the privilege to be around the adjusting industry for a few years now. I know quite a few adjusters (in fact I’ve trained a number of them). And I believe that Coach Dungy is right; for the most part, folks chose to do only enough to get by. They learn just enough about Xactimate to write up a basic residential estimate. They know policies well enough to get it right 90% of the time, and count on their claims manager’s mercy for the last 10%. They cobble together a system for time management that gets the job done… but not excellently. And they grumble if they’re not called first for a CAT. On the other hand, I know some excellent adjusters, top-notch people. They’re uncommon, and because of this they have a name in the industry. Not long ago, I was at a large industry event, and had the opportunity to listen in on a discussion between their CAT managers. The topic was what they were looking for in their Adjusters. There were lots of laughs and jokes about the difficulties of finding good adjusters, but then the conversation took a curious turn. Someone mentioned the name of one of the great adjusters on their staff, and said “I wish we had more like Bill!” Everyone agreed, and several more names of top-tier adjusters were thrown out. Then someone mentioned “Janet”, and – although I didn’t know her – it was clear from the response in the room that she was one-of-a-kind, a sort of special forces, “black ops” adjuster who’s sent into handle difficult claims, areas and issues. The consensus was that she could get the job done, and with zero hassle to them. She was excellent. In the adjusting world, doing common things with uncommon attention and effort is an investment. It’s an investment in yourself, and an investment in your career. The uncommon adjusters I mentioned above will never lack for work, and guaranteed they command pay commensurate to their value. The message I’m trying to pass on in this blog post is that you can do this too. Coach Dungy points out that it’s a choice. We make a choice when we do the minimum, and we make a choice when we’re excellent. This choice, by the way, is the ultimate job security. Man – I’m even fired up from writing this! Thanks Coach Dungy! Let us know how we can help you become excellent in your adjusting career. Thank you, - Adam
THE PROBLEM: There’s an elephant in the room, and we’ve been working around it for years. I’m talking about the “wild West” process of hiring a new adjuster. It’s a real problem. This difficulty of accurately assessing a prospective new-hire’s ability, and the lack of a viable, unbiased, meaningful measure of that competency has plagued the industry for decades. Let’s take a look at the claims company’s point of view. When an adjusting firm hires a new adjuster, the company is making a serious investment (and assuming a genuine risk). An adjuster, even an Independent Adjuster, is considered a “fiduciary agent” of the insurance company itself, even if only contracted by the claims company. This position requiring this high level of trust is due to the fact that a breach of that trust can have such serious consequences. Simply put, if a claims company hires a bad adjuster, it can have significant repercussions. Not long ago, we touched bases with a whole slew of the claims companies with whom we do business, and reached out to quite a few other claims companies as well. We were looking to not only keep our records up-to-date, but also to gain deeper insight into the hiring needs and practices of the independent adjusting industry as a whole. What we found was very interesting – buried under all sorts of “hiring requirements” is this bottom-line fact: employers desperately want assurance that a new hire will be able to perform. It’s as simple as that. But that’s huge. And “perform” doesn’t just mean being able to competently complete a claim. If, for instance, the adjuster has poor judgment, character issues or bad communication skills, he/she can throw the claims manager, the claims company and even the insurance company into a huge lawsuit that can cost millions or even lose the entire carrier account for the claims company! In other words, claims companies finally don’t care if you are 21 or 81, male or female, brand-new or 40 years in the business. They need to maximize the risk of getting a performer and minimize the risk of getting a dud. So they do things that they don’t really want to do. Once such common hurdle is requiring new hires to have “a minimum of x years of experience”. In fact, a number of the companies we talked to now want verifiable proof of adjusting experience, via references or some other method, to weed out folks who merely say they have experience. They do this because the “experience requirement” is one of the only currently available litmus tests they know of to ensure the new hire has the necessary skills to do the job. Other avenues, such as mentor programs or other on-the-job training options have their own risks and involve significant costs and hassles. Claims companies almost universally confirm that they continually need new adjusters, and they know restrictive hiring guidelines costs them many highly-qualified newer adjusters. Yet because the cost of getting a “dud” adjuster is just too high – they simply must set up rigid hiring parameters. This dilemma is at the heart of a ongoing discussion in the adjusting industry that goes all the way up the chain. Adjusters, independent claims companies, carriers, state governments, FEMA and the Federal Government have all been grappling with how to establish a meaningful, uniform means of establishing adjuster competency in order to protect claimants, while simultaneously maintaining the rights of all parties. Most everyone in the insurance adjusting industry acknowledges this serious deficiency and the need of a uniform, unbiased measurement of competency. The establishment of a reliable, unbiased certification program is an issue we’ve been concerned about for years too. Core to our mission at AdjusterPro is providing the most immediately practical, usable and valuable training and licensing available to the claims adjuster nationwide; training that really prepares you for success in your career. So we’ve been looking for a way to allow our students to have their abilities measured side-by-side with everyone in the industry via a certification/testing program, thereby leveling the playing field and giving employers a truly fair and meaningful criterion for hiring. THE SOLUTION Well, the good news is that the heaviest hitters in the adjusting business – names like State Farm, All State, Pilot and more (see full list here) have taken this need quite seriously too, and have finally done something about it; the Property Technical Certification (PTC). The really cool thing about the PTC is that it’s not the brainchild of some one claims company or handed down from a clueless governmental agency. It’s the fruit of years of hard work by some of the biggest players in the business, specifically designed to meet this one all-important need: a certification that sets a meaningful industry standard. The content is the result of top insurance company and claims company execs, claims managers and adjusters all pounding on this one question “what makes a good adjuster?”, then distilling it into a certification program. Where previous attempts have failed, the PTC has not. Nothing like this has been successfully done before, and it’s set to revolutionize the industry, finally taming the wild West. What is the PTC? A. The Property Technical Certification or PTC is an industry standardization that demonstrates that adjuster candidates are qualified when estimating property damages. The PTC leads to adjuster development and recognition as well as improved job performance by:
Bottom line: The PTC addresses a glaring deficiency in the property claims industry by introducing a universal standard to recognize and measure the technical proficiency of individual claims adjusters. A final note: the PTC not easy; passing it requires serious effort on the part of the student. But isn’t this just what’s needed, a real test of technical capability? If you’re serious about your adjusting career, invest in yourself and get PTC Level I certified. Being ahead of the curve here will be a big advantage, because the PTC will soon be an industry standard. Let us know how we can serve you and your Adjusting career! Thank you, - Adam The historic tornado outbreak of April and May 2011 have resulted in insured losses of around $15 billion, nearly triple the national average for that period. The devastation has been enormous with 6 EF-5 tornadoes wrecking havoc during that period, tying the record for most EF-5s in a year. To put this kind of damage in perspective, consider that only two hurricanes in America’s history surpass $15 billion in damage – Hurricane Andrew of 1992 with $23 billion, and Hurricane Katrina of 2005 with $45 billion (click here for the top 12 costliest hurricanes of all time). Hurricanes Ike, Wilma, Frances, Jeanne, Hugo – all have been surpassed by this spring’s weather. The result is that claims adjusters from all points have been deployed to areas like Tuscaloosa and Joplin to help folks in the process of putting their lives back together. And while such events bring tremendous opportunity to the independent adjusting industry and adjusters old and new, we must strive to maintain perspective in the midst of tragedy. Best of luck to all adjusters working now and soon to be deployed – let us know how AdjusterPro can support you in the field.
For those unfamiliar with this type of training, it really does represent the best of both types of educational modalities – online and classroom. You have the super-convenience and low-price of an online course (no driving, no gas tank fill-ups, no hotel) – you just need a phone and a computer with a solid internet connection. But you also have the classroom dynamic of an instructor who can address your particular questions in real-time. And best of all, its really simple. Through desktop screensharing, you see our instructors screen and hear our instructors voice as he guides you through Xactimate step-by-step. Your participation via phone or computer microphone bridges the gap as student communication is a critical element in this informal, conversational atmosphere of learning. And speaking of instructors, each of our instructors is both an experienced adjuster and a Level 3 Certified Xactimate user. You get both real-world, hands-on estimatics wisdom with the highest level of technical proficiency. We are now offering this course on a weekly basis to accommodate escalating demand while keeping class sizes small. Hey Adjusters! I’m picking this post up from my last post on time management for CAT Adjusters (here). Making a break from particulars of CAT management, I’ve decided to write this 6th-in-a-series post on the significance and importance of time management in general. In a CAT, time is precious. Heck, all time is precious! In Dan S. Kennedy’s book “No B.S. Time Management“, he leads readers through a great exercise where he takes a deeper look at what an hour is worth; let’s do it: How Much is an Hour of Your Time Worth? First, you must decide how much you’re going to make, a number called “base income target”. Note: if you don’t have a base income target, you can’t know how much your time is worth, so you can’t make good decisions about the investment of your time (and make no mistake about it, what you do with your time is an investment – of the most precious resource you have, ‘specially in a CAT). Next, how much of your income is inextricably linked to you (for example, say you owned 5 Subway franchises, and you have a manager that manages the stores. If you want $500,000 as a bottom line, investigation might find that $250,000 is directly dependent on you, the other $250,000 on your manager and other employees)? As an Independent Adjuster, it’s almost all on you; i.e. your income is directly proportional to your performance. Once you’ve established a number, you divide it by the number of workdays in a calendar. Here’s where Dan makes a very, very important point; only a percentage of our hours are actually productive! The rest of it involves mindless paperwork, driving, phone messages, cleaning your hotel room, eating, etc. Dan references one study of Fortune 500 CEOs that locked in at an average of 28 productive minutes/day! To make things simple, though, he suggests calculating generously at 1/3 of your time as truly “productive” in the full sense of the word. Now, armed with this knowledge, let’s take a practical example. Let’s say as an Independent Adjuster you determine your base income target to be $150,000.00. Let’s do the math:
Conclusion: if you wish to make $150k/year, your time is worth $255.68/hr! When you realize your time is worth $255.68/hr, it gives you a completely different perspective about how you invest your time. Dan even suggests putting this on a 3×5 card and keeping it in front of you at all times. Some things change (or should change) with this perspective. This number forces you to ask the hard question “is what I’m doing worth $$255.68/hr?” Said in a different way, would you pay someone $255.68/hr to do it? Powerful exercise, huh? Most people randomly spend their time on whatever presents itself to them. Heck, I’ve seen CAT adjusters spend an entire day detailing their truck! Heck, take it to the detail shop on the corner, spend $150, bring your laptop and complete 3 reports while you’re there, then do claims the rest of the day and be $1,000 ahead for the day! Next, it puts a meter on others’ consumption of your time, and forces you to think in terms of “investment” and “expense”, which helps you quantify what’s going on in your life. Living in this perspective is harder than it looks. ”Most people will find ways to avoid confrontative productivity and will waste their time, even if they have to work at it.” (from No B.S. Time Management). For the Independent Adjuster, especially working CATs, this perspective is invaluable. A great question to keep in mind, perhaps even taped to your dashboard, your bathroom mirror in your hotel, and your computer screen: “I’m away from my home and family to make money; is what I’m doing right now worth $255.68?” Thankfully, there’s a ton an Independent Adjuster can do to make sure every hour is used as valuably as possible. In the next article in this series, we’ll start to look at some of these tips and principles. Thanks for reading, and see you soon! - Adam Hey Adjusters! Thanks to all of you who’ve written in with with kudos re. our training. We’re glad you’re buried in work, and we’re glad our classes have done a good job of preparing you for the field, but as always, there’s something bittersweet about it, isn’t there? I want to touch on a sensitive topic; lots of CAT claims means that people have suffered tragic loss. I’ve never felt right rooting for tragedy, and I’m sure you’ve wrestled with the same dilemma, namely wanting a CAT because it brings lots of claims, but not wanting to want people to suffer loss. “Hundreds dead from tornados in ________.” “Thousands homeless due to hurricane _______________.” It’s just a fact; the catastrophe side of the claims business is one that thrives when things are bad, and the worse it gets the better it gets. What’s a CAT adjuster with a conscience to do? I’m sure everyone’s got their own way of reconciling these two seemingly opposing desires, but I thought I’d share my own reflections on the issue. I’ll start by being transparent; I’ve been through stages. When I first got into the business, I heard fellow adjusters joking about wanting more hurricanes. I didn’t like folks joking about this. I was a bit sanctimonious. A few years passed, and the CAT business hit a dry spell. Without really noticing it, I’d lost some of my sensitivity. It seems that all it took was some scarcity of work combined with time being desensited to catastrophe and I found myself rooting for weather-related catastrophes. I was a bit callous. Now, several years into my career in this industry, I think I’m approaching something more like balance, understanding and a healthy perspective. Here are two thoughts that I find helpful: - Being a CAT adjuster is like being a fireman, doctor or undertaker; no fires, sickness or death, no business. If there’s no catastrophes, there’s no CAT business. However, like these other professions, We’re in the business of helping people. We have a opportunity to be of tremendous service in times of great need, and we play a special roll in the restoration of peoples’ lives. What we do gives real value to others; the claimant, their family, the carrier, the claims company we’re working for, the town/city/state hit, and the country in general. In this way, we can – with a clean conscience – look forward to the opportunities that are presented to us to be of service to others. So rather than rooting for tragedy, I can look for ways to help. To top it off, when I do it right (i.e. I do a great job), I’m well compensated. - I’m responsible for my success. Catastrophes are inevitable, always have been, and are part of a larger cycle. A few years in the business gave me a better perspective here. If you’re serious about adjusting and you’re in the business to stay, there’ll be be busier times and slower times; it’s all part of the cycle. Rather than rooting for more catastrophes, I’ve turned my attention to growing in my value to the industry. This way – busy or slow – I’m always in demand. I no longer feel desperation and the need to root for tragedy just fades away. It’s part of a life philosophy I’ve been consciously trying to adapt; being in control of and responsible for my life and the results of it, rather than feeling like a victim of circumstance (e.g. busy or slow seasons). One last thing. We’ve all heard the expression “be careful what you wish for”. I’ve noted throughout the years that there’ve been numerous times that thought and/or prayed “please God, that’s enough!” There’s plenty tragic stuff happening on it’s own without my having to root for it. Have a prosperous season, everyone, and look for ways to grow in your value as an adjuster and look for opportunities to be of service! Let us know how AdjusterPro can help. We’ve got new live virtual classes that can get you up to speed in Xactimate in a snap (click here). Best, - Adam
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