Larry Green on the future of the claims person
Date: 6/3/2005Contact: Joan Barrett/800-690-0070
Growing up in Napa, Larry Green had no plans to enter the insurance industry. “Like most of the other people in this business” he allows with a quiet chuckle. His plan was to become a park ranger and he majored in Park Administration at Sac State. Upon graduation he discovered that there were no full time positions available in the park system and was supporting himself in various stopgap jobs waiting for an opportunity in his chosen field. Sac State’s career center advertised an opening for a field adjuster with Liberty Mutual that sounded promising so Larry became an adjuster. He recollects that the Liberty Mutual training was plentiful and helped him to do a good job and he discovered that he liked the company and the work.
After a few years he changed companies and found himself at Vail Technical training for California Casualty that lead him to New Mexico to head the office in Santa Fe. “I liked everything about Santa Fe”, he recalls “the people, the weather, the work…but after years away from family it was time to return to Northern California. Once a person leaves the California real estate market though, it isn’t easy to return.” In his absence, California’s real estate values had been escalating and CalFarm’s home office in Sacramento was an affordable option for the young family. Dick Miles at CalFarm hired Larry to handle the Claims Technical Division and Larry happily worked there for the next ten years. CalFarm provided lots of continuing education and made Larry responsible for developing training on a variety of subjects to assist the adjusters. Larry worked with Carl Van, a well-known insurance trainer, to develop methods and deliver practical information for adjusters to excel in the insurance industry. Together they pioneered a Team Teaching process that utilized existing talents and the knowledge base within the teams to benefit all of the team members. Unfortunately a new management team entered the picture and created an abrasive situation that in Larry’s view eventually eroded the positive atmosphere that had defined CalFarm.
Unigard, owned by a Swiss financial company, is Larry’s current company and one he intends to stay with as long as possible. The parent company, Winterthur North America provides web training and video conferencing and supports the continuing education of the adjusters by sanctioning attendance at the Claims Conference of Northern California each year. The adjusters are responsible for their claims from start to finish including litigation. The lack of specialization makes it more interesting for the adjusters and is, Larry believes, the main reason for the outstanding record for the retention of Unigard employees.
Larry expressed fears that the current trend toward specialization in the claims field will lead to a lack of general experience that will make it difficult to manage other employees that are out of the area of specialization that they are familiar with. “The general trend of single aspect training has lead to companies stealing the experienced people from one another but the pool of potential managers is shrinking to the point where I can’t see where the future managers are going to come from.” He went on “The upper levels of carrier claims are increasingly staffed with people with no claims experience.” He uses Darryl Voelz, currently Unigard’s Casualty Unit Supervisor, is a case in point. “Darryl is planning to retire in August and I can’t imagine how to replace him” he said “ I am concerned that there isn’t anyone out there with Darryl’s wealth of experience to take the job but I will be actively looking.”
When asked for his thoughts on how long the current low claims volume will continue, Larry notes that profitability is the key to claims attitudes and senses a trend toward more aggressive sales of insurance products. “As the market softens prices will go down and there will be less of a trend to cancel claimants and raise rates. It will take a long time to get the word out, mostly through independent agents, and that will bring claims reports to levels that are more reflective of the real situations out there.” he speculates.
Meanwhile Larry is enjoying the work as the Claims Manager for the largest region of Unigard and his staff of experienced adjusters that handle the claims from start to finish.