JC Kokaisl at Fireman's Fund
Date: 2/8/2007Contact: Joan Barrett/800-690-0070
17 years ago JC Kokaisl was a new adjuster at Farmers Insurance. He stayed for 7 years and formed fast friendships with the other adjusters and supervisors that have lasted to this day- most of them still adjusting claims as Farmers trained them to do. JC- by the way, that’s not a nickname he chose because he doesn’t like his given name, it turns out that his parents kind of named him after one his dad’s best friends and they called him JC from birth.
So, JC was one of the first to make the leap from the adjusting side of claims to the vendor side and it was shocking at the time. These days those kind of job switches don’t warrant a raised eyebrow, but the relationships between contractors and adjusters were much closer in the days of a much smaller pond in which swam all of the claims adjusting in the Sacramento Valley and the line-crossing rarely occurred. He began to work for John Kunkel, of Kunkel Reconstruction, himself a refugee from adjusting at GAB Business Services. John was very knowledgeable about coverages from his days at GAB and taught JC much about the construction side of claims. At Mark Scott Construction, JC continued his education into the relationships between the contractor and the adjusters and learned most about customer service issues and how to be honest with the carriers and still not lose money on a job. PCT Net, the forerunner of Alacrity, a third party claims management company, was responsible for another layer of experience JC was putting into the mix. He learned even more at Fite Construction where he was an estimator and project manager for 3 years.
In 2003, JC was ready to try a new kind of position with Fireman’s Fund Insurance and joined their adjusting team as a Complex Claims Adjuster. Complex Claims adjusters handle Homeowners, Commercial and Farm and Ranch losses all over Northern California and JC must go where the losses are. His experience with the contractor side of claims helps him deal with the stress levels that adjusters experience. He notes, “these days there is no ‘summer break’ like we used to have in the past. Possibly it is because there are fewer adjusters now, but it seems like you are feeling like your hair is on fire or you’re fully engulfed- never a chance to breathe and recharge for the next wave.” “I don’t feel like I’m going toward a breakdown because of it, but I think it’s a danger for a lot of people.” “I’m fortunate to work for a company as flexible as Fireman’s Fund, they have in-house training sessions that can help turn an adversarial situation into a means to help policyholders.”