It wasn’t just four consecutive Cats occurring within 24 days that put adjusters on their heels trying to keep up with claims (though it was the prevailing reason).
As recovery got underway for customers impacted by the Toronto floods, Calgary hailstorm, Jasper wildfire, and flooding across Quebec, adjusters worked 24/7 to handle a record number of claims over a one-month period.
Customers filed more than 228,000 claims for the four events in July and August — more than double the number recorded by that same time last summer (113,000) according to Insurance Bureau of Canada.
Simultaneously, the ongoing challenges adjusters face — licensing restrictions, claims capacity, and talent scarcity — are most noticeable when cities flood or burn.
That means claims adjusters, both in-house and independent, must prepare in advance before NatCats events hit, without knowing exactly if or when they will.
“Each successive event creates a new challenge,” says Greg Smith, president of Crawford & Company Canada. “It requires us to redraw the battle plan and reallocate some of those resources.
“All the while, [we’re] making sure [claims] people are properly licensed,” he adds. Plus, “the claims we were handling before the catastrophes occurred are still there; they still need to be serviced. There’s been a lot of work in the background to make sure we’re balancing claims intake with adjuster capacity.”
Clock’s ticking
For some catastrophe events, getting claims teams on the scene as quickly as possible is top priority.
In some instances, it may be a game of hurry-up and wait. For example, residents in Jasper, Alta., remained evacuated for more than three weeks. Those restrictions kept claims response on hold until residents returned to the townsite to assess the damage.
“The time factor [in Jasper] is a bit different than [for] a water event in Toronto, when you’re fighting the clock [to help] people [who] have water in their basement,” says Etienne Berlinguet, Intact’s senior vice president of claims.
Such events mean in-house claims teams must triage when necessary, but also make sure no claim, or team member, is left behind. “Even though the first few hours matter, you need to make sure that as a team, you cross the finish line at the same time,” Berlinguet says.
Even when they don’t have immediate access to a disaster site, adjusters use the time waiting for first responders to secure the scene and prepare ways to handle incoming claims.
For example, independent adjusters work with insurance carriers to identify existing risks within the community. During this process, they proactively tell customers what their losses might look like; this helps ease the stress of waiting and not knowing.
“We can provide them with some management of expectations, just based on our previous experience with incidents that are similar in places like Fort McMurray or Slave Lake,” says Smith.
In Quebec, July’s flooding caused an influx of over 70,000 claims and counting — that’s more than 10 to 17 times the usual volume, according to Insurance Bureau of Canada (Quebec).
It required Quebec insurers to lean on talent, both veteran and green, for help.
“Insurers have reallocated their internal resources to meet demand. Some called in retired employees and students to help,” IBC Quebec’s public affairs supervisor Anne Morin tells Canadian Underwriter.
Leveraging resources
When adjusters are busy in the field, it’s all-hands-on-deck at the office.
“We also leverage some non-adjusting resources — some of our administrative support staff, as well as potentially students — to do some of that back-office work and to make sure that we’re making our adjusters as efficient as possible,” says Smith.
Still, experiencing a loss is often harrowing for clients. And the lack of time to rest between catastrophe events can also be hard on claims professionals.
“Dealing with customers that are in very distressing situations can be [challenging],” says Berlinguet. “I would say that at this stage, people are quite busy, but we have a clear line of sight on what’s happening. And I would qualify the volume as being manageable.
“For sure, this is putting pressure on the operations, but we were ready for this Cat season, and considering we’re starting from a good position, and considering all of the additional resources injected in our system, that’s how we’re able to weather the large spike in volume.”
This article is excerpted from one appearing in the October-November 2024 print edition of Canadian Underwriter. Feature image courtesy of iStock.com/gedzun
