Dave Giddings and Barbara Hall
Date: 7/14/2006Contact: Joan Barrett/800-690-0070
Dave Giddings and Barbara Hall…destined to work together.
Both Dave Giddings and Barbara Hall’s roots go deep into the insurance business. Their roots took a circuitous route, however.
Dave joined the Coast Guard and developed a deep appreciation for all things nautical during his seven year stint in the military branch. Dave’s grandfather started Giddings, Corby and Hines Insurance and Dave’s father worked there until his retirement. His father suggested that he might find claims work interesting and knew some folks at GAB that Dave could talk to about a position. GAB was happy to welcome Dave to the fold and he moved to Bakersfield after attending the famous GAB “Boot Camp”, the training for new hires. He spent several years in Fresno and several more in Modesto with the company before joining Western Marine Insurance. He has recently moved to Escalon, a situation he describes as “more Mayberry” for his family.
.
Barbara started with CalFarm in the Marysville-Yuba City area after moving to California from Utah, where she worked as a secretary to the claims adjusters in the Yuba City office, moving up the career chain along with her mentor who ultimately became House Counsel for CalFarm after passing the bar. Steeped in all the claims information that flowed through her and from her typewriter keys, it wasn’t a great stretch for her to take on multi-line field claims with a draft book and a policy manual in hand. Barbara was a multi-line adjuster in her territory, Butte County, handling liability, property, farm equipment, theft, and any manner of loss that the agriculture claims covered. Each sales office in a good sized town had a claims desk and Barbara would travel the territory in a route that she can recite to this day, picking up the claims that came in during her absence and scheduling appointments to do site inspections.
Barbara was with Sequoia Insurance in Modesto and met Dave while both were active in the Modesto Claims Association. When Western Marine Insurance Company asked her for a reference for a claims person, she thought of Dave. Later, it would be Dave’s turn to return the favor. Dave attained his independent adjuster’s license in 2000, after joining Western Marine Insurance Company as a Vice-President in 1993 in order to handle the claims that had previously been outsourced by the company. For a long time, he was the sole adjuster for the newly formed Marine Claims Services and worked tirelessly to get the fledgling division off the ground. Barbara Hall was at the top of his list of dream employees with her experience as an adjuster and litigation specialist, but she was working at Magna Carta Companies in Southern California. Dave and Barbara met again at the CCC golf tournament a couple of years ago and kept in touch. Late last year, they began a series of conversations that would have Barbara looking at and purchasing a house in Modesto before serious negotiations to come aboard MCS took place the following day. It was a positive match for them both, Barbara had been in charge of the boat program at Sequoia Insurance when she lived in Modesto and was the adjuster in charge of the office she left to Terri Joyner when she was transferred to Southern California.
Barbara’s daughters and their families live in Modesto and it was a blessing for her to be able to return to the people and the town that she loves. Her eldest daughter just gave birth to another son and that brings the total to 3 grandsons and 1 granddaughter for Barbara.
Anything to do with recreational craft is appealing to Dave, he has both power and sailing boats; his children race go-carts and he is rebuilding a Triumph TR-6 to conform to his idea of how the car should be…now powered by a V-8 engine. He owns and has owned multiple RV’s and enjoys talking with the boat owners in their nautical language. Barbara is a passive sailor, she provides ‘ballast’ as she puts it, but understands the vessels and their workings and the language of boating.
Both Barbara and Dave feel that they are fortunate in their experience in the claims arena in that they were able to learn many aspects of the claims business. The problem with specializing as Dave sees it is that “adjusters tend to burn out quickly in the segmented, assembly line processing. They don’t get the satisfaction of seeing a claim completed when they only get to work on a tiny portion of the total claim, so there’s no job satisfaction and no way to keep people stimulated and involved in the process. At MCS, where the claims people have the ability to cross over; we’ve tried to create a place where multi-line adjusters can prosper. If they do want to specialize, they can focus but they must have the drive to learn other things.” Barbara notes that “the rules of coverage and the laws that govern them are so old that there is inevitable crossover into other areas, and that’s natural.”
Dave and Barbara are sincere advocates of joining and participating in claims organizations and have many years of volunteer service between them. Barbara is still on the board for CCC, the Combined Claims Conference of California, and served as a chair for the CCNC in the past. Dave has belonged to MVCA, Vintage Claims and the California Insurance Adjusters Association. They both attend Mid Valley Claims Association regularly and applaud the group for the excellent educational opportunities that are presented monthly. Barbara makes the point that it is infinitely smoother to negotiate a settlement with another adjuster when you are personally acquainted with the opposing adjuster and you can approach the situation from a friendly, rather than an adversarial, position.