Citizens Insurance finds 315 more post-storm claims adjusters

Aug. 04--Citizens Property Insurance Corp. has found another 315 claims adjusters to deploy after the next major hurricane -- hopefully reducing long waits for customers who will be eager to get paid and start making repairs.

Ten independent claims adjustment firms responded to Citizens' latest solicitation with commitments to provide about 30 adjusters each.

On Wednesday, an internal evaluation team recommended the company's Board of Governors approve contracts with the 10 firms. The company hopes to have the adjusters available for post-storm work before the peak of hurricane season in September, Citizens spokesman Michael Peltier said.

Once again, fewer companies responded with fewer adjuster commitments than hoped for by state-run Citizens, South Florida's largest insurer with 223,000 residential and commercial policies.

Citizens solicited 11,000 companies across the U.S., hoping for commitments of 1,500 new adjusters.

The solicitation, which went out June 21 with a July 13 response deadline, was the second this year by Citizens. A similar request in April resulted in agreements from just 12 firms to provide 496 adjusters. Citizens had hoped to secure 1,500 adjusters from that solicitation.

A shortage of available catastrophe adjusters came to light last October as Hurricane Matthew threatened South Florida. Estimating Matthew would generate 75,000 damage claims, Citizens contacted four companies under contract to provide 2,048 adjusters on demand. The company requested 624 adjusters but got just 279.

Jay Adams, Citizens' chief claims officer, said in December the company "would have certainly failed as a claims operation" if Matthew generated 75,000 claims.

Citizens levied fines against the four companies, terminated their catastrophe adjusting contracts, and barred them from responding to the May solicitation for catastrophe adjusting services.

The Hurricane Matthew failures have been forgiven. Fort Lauderdale-based Bradley Stinson & Associates, one of the four terminated firms, was not barred from responding this time and was ranked highest among the 10 newest respondents by a Citizens evaluation committee. This time the company would commit to providing only 35 adjusters, rather than the 600 promised under the previous contract.

Citizens' catastrophe response strategy now involves deploying up to 973 adjusters contracted to working the company's day-to-day claims and lawsuit-related claims before turning to the 811 adjusters contracted solely for post-catastrophe work. The strategy would make 1,784 adjusters available overall, Peltier said.

To convince catastrophe adjusters to respond the next time they are needed, Citizens removed a requirement that they first travel to Citizens offices and undergo training to use its claims management software.

Adjusters will now be allowed to use industry-standard software to feed claims data to Citizens from the field, the company said.

[email protected], 954-356-4071, twitter: twitter.com/ronhurtibise

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