In the absence of a national licensing body for adjusters, Canadian insurance claims adjusters are making do with patchwork solutions to improve their mobility across the country.
With more than $8.3 billion in insured natural catastrophe losses counted thus far in 2024, Canada’s national property and casualty insurers and independent adjusting firms needed help to close the file on more than 228,000 NatCat claims arising in just one month this year.
But Canada’s adjusters are licensed by province, and the licences they get in one province are not necessarily portable to other provinces.
And so, even if a national licensing body is not in the cards for adjusters in the near future, a national licensing exam would help, counsel said at an insurance media roundtable held in Toronto last Wednesday.
“When you think about fair treatment of customers and good public policy outcomes, and having claims dealt with in a timely manner and properly, one would think that [a national licensing body for adjusters] would be taking a step in that direction,” said Marisa Coggin, partner in the insurance group, and co-leader of the corporate group, at Dentons LLP in Toronto.
“We have already surpassed 2023 claims losses, with the wildfires, with the Calgary hail,” added Laurie LaPalme, global insurance sector leader at Dentons. “We have to have a claims solution that maybe a national regulatory body [for Canadian adjusters] would be allowed. Or a national exam, so that if you pass this one exam, you’re licensed across the country.”
“Get the equivalency expedited, in other words,” Coggin said. “Make sure people can do what they need to do from a technical perspective and turn [the claims adjustment] around faster than six to eight weeks.”
National adjuster mobility has been an issue for decades, with Canadian Underwriter reporting on calls for a national adjuster licensing body as far back as 2007.
Related: P&C industry urges changes to adjusters licensing
National independent adjusting firms across Canada have had to rely on U.S. and European support to adjust Canadian claims, industry sources have told CU. For Canada’s P&C industry, it’s actually easier to bring in adjusters from the U.S or internationally than it is to move a Canadian adjuster from one province to another because of the national licensing restrictions.
Some provincial jurisdictions have come up with temporary measures to relax the licensing restrictions, and allow adjusters licensed in other areas to adjust insurance claims for Cats within their jurisdictions.
An example would be Nova Scotia’s decision to extend its temporary adjuster licensing program from 60 days to 120 days so that insurers could bring in extra help to adjust damages caused by Hurricane Fiona in September 2022.
Ontario’s innovation sandbox offered by the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, which licenses the province’s adjusters, produced another temporary claims licensing solution this year, LaPalme said.
“People think innovation has to be tech-based,” LaPalme said. “It doesn’t. One of their initiatives that went through the innovation branch that changed the [regulations] was, how do we deal with the Toronto floods?
“We had all these floods [in the summer of 2024],” she said. “We didn’t have enough adjusters that were licensed, and so [FSRA’s] innovation group looked at it and allows for unlicensed Ontario adjusters that may be licensed [elsewhere in Canada] to come into Ontario without an Ontario licence, boots on the ground, to adjust the Cat risks. So, clients are getting their payouts quicker, instead of waiting for that. They put that non-tech solution through their innovation group.”
In Quebec, the province’s language laws add complexity to the adjuster mobility issue, said LaPalme.
“And then you add the Quebec element, that they have to service in French,” she said. “And you’re in a Cat risk [situation] in Montreal [in the summer of 2024], but they [insurers] couldn’t go to the adjusting companies, because there was nobody who spoke French. So you were limited to [help from] Northern Ontario adjusters and some New Brunswick adjusters who were capable to manage the Cat and the flooding in Montreal [arising from remnants of Hurricane Debby].”
But while Cats seem to bring the focus back to the issue, politicians’ focus seems to wane once all of the claims are adjusted, counsel observed last Wednesday.
Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/pawel.gaul
