Citizens Insurance seeks more post-storm adjuster commitments
The state-run "insurer of last resort," which has 223,000 policies in
The company realized last fall that it had a problem.
As Hurricane Matthew approached
As it turned out, Matthew largely spared
Citizens terminated its contracts with the four adjuster firms and in April solicited new contracts, hoping to secure commitments for 1,500 adjusters. Instead, it got commitments from 12 companies for 496 adjusters, forcing the company to develop a strategy to deploy its entire adjuster force in case of a catastrophe. Before contracts with the 12 new firms take effect
The new solicitation, sent to 11,000 firms across the
Citizens'
Having a sufficient number of adjusters is a vital component of an insurer's ability to respond to policyholders. After Hurricane WIlma caused widespread damage in 2005, Citizens deployed nearly 2,000 adjusters to assess more than 123,000 claims over the following month, according to a published report. Still, customers filed hundreds of complaints about delays getting adjusters to their properties.
During Tuesday's
One of Adams' staff members reached out to several adjusters by phone, Peltier said.
"One recurring theme is that vendors are concerned that they cannot meet the minimum commitment during a [catastrophe event]" and did not want to be subject to fines by Citizens, Peltier said. "This again points to a shortage of [catastrophe] adjusters in the workplace."
Amid nearly a decade without a hurricane making landfall in
Another issue is that national adjustment firms that bid on catastrophe contracts also want to be assigned enough day-to-day, non-catastrophe claims to justify keeping a core number of adjusters in the state, he said.
But because Citizens claims counts have declined as two-thirds of the company's policies were absorbed by private-market insurers over the past five years, adjuster firms know Citizens cannot feed them enough day-to-day work to justify committing to Citizens' desired numbers of catastrophe adjusters, Peltier said.
[email protected], 954-356-4071, twitter: twitter.com/ronhurtibise
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