Keeping History Alive

Celebrating its 75th year of existence, the Ontario Insurance Adjusters Association (OIAA) has produced a DVD of the association’s history and is planning to distribute copies of the DVD free of charge throughout the 11-chapter, 1,700-strong OIAA membership.

In this spirit of remembering the past, OIAA President Stephen R. Martin found time one day after the organization’s Dec. 14 Christmas bash – attended by 1,265 people – to outline a synopsis of the OIAA, its membership, and changing events that have guided the lives of Ontario adjusters for the past several decades.

The professional history of Martin’s family has followed the fate of adjusting for about 50 years. Martin’s father, Harold, was an adjuster for almost 40 years and retired in 1994. Son Stephen Martin followed his father’s footsteps – notwithstanding a brief, three-year career stint with the CIBC – joining his father’s company, the Underwriters Adjustment Bureau (now CGI), as a trainee in Sault Ste. Marie in 1980.

“I grew up in the industry,” Martin, an adjuster who is licensed in all lines, says. “I’ve been in the business for 25 year now. It’ll be 26 in January. It’s actually a great business to be in. You meet a lot of different people.”

One influential person Martin met was Ed DeLong, with whom Martin worked between 1986 and 1996. During this period, DeLong actively encouraged Martin to attend OIAA membership meetings.

“When I worked for a national company, we were a block away from where the [OIAA] meetings were held, but nobody in that company or that office really showed interest in going to them,” Martin said. “I got my membership and I got my magazine, but because nobody else really went, you just didn’t think of going.

“And then I went to work for De Long’s. He asked: ‘Do you go to the meetings?’ and I said, ‘No, I’ve never been to one.’ That’s what started it.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

In 1996, Tom Eddy, a former president of the OIAA, recruited Martin to work at what is now Eddy/O’Hearn Insurance Adjusters in Belleville, Ontario. Shortly before, Martin helped found the OIAA’s Thousand Islands chapter. Martin was never the president of the Thousand Islands chapter (he was the treasurer), and for three years another person acted as chapter delegate. But when she left the industry, Martin began representing the chapter in 1997.

“I really enjoyed it,” Martin said. “At the beginning, when you’re an independent adjuster, it’s a way to network with other people. A lot of the claims departments were downtown then….It was just a way of meeting your peers.”

Martin takes special care to point out that the “peers” in OIAA are not all independent adjusters. The OIAA has a healthy representation of adjusters who work in companies. “I think that’s a misconception that OIAA stands for the Ontario Independent Insurance Adjusters Association – and it’s not.” Martin said. “We represent the company people, too.”

Several industry trends have made the OIAA’s mixed membership of independent and company adjusters an interesting one, Martin said.

OWNERSHIP CONCENTRATION

Within the insurance industry, ownership concentration presents theoretical roadblocks to signing up company adjusters as new OIAA members. “Obviously as companies merge, or if they close a branch down and they move the office into the GTA, we potentially have lost that individual as a member if they don’t stay in the industry,” Martin observed. “We almost lost [the] Windsor [chapter] a couple of years ago, because they had a hard hit, with companies closing down. Now they’re actually becoming a little stronger and that’s good to see.”

Martin noted that when fewer company adjusters take on more claims with smaller departmental budgets, the result is that the adjusters are hard-pressed to volunteer what little spare time they have to attend regular meetings. “We were talking about trying to get company people out to our seminars,” Martin recalled. “And this is one thing that was brought up: As much as the claims manager [in a company] will let [the adjuster] go to the seminar if they think it’s a good topic, that individual [adjuster] may not want to go because they are busy with their own workload. [For the adjuster], it just means they are gone for a day and no one is there to pick up the slack, so they’re now a day behind.”

DECLINING CLAIMS

Independent adjusters in the OIAA are also feeling the squeeze of industry trends – particularly the ominous trend of declining claims, Martin said. “I always remember my Dad saying that it’s a good business to be in because people are always making claims, and now it’s not that way,” he said. “This has always been a cyclical business. You’ve always got your peaks and your valleys. I just feel it’s been more of a valley in the last couple of years than it has been a peak.”

When people don’t make claims – or if brokers tell clients not to make a claim for under a certain amount – then claims do not get reported to insurance companies, Martin noted. When that happens, insurance companies don’t report claims to the adjusters.

“I was talking to a fellow in London [Ontario] and I think they have two adjusters in their office,” Martin said. “And I think he was getting a little worried because where did the claims go? He was an older gentleman, and he said: ‘What am I going to do now? Do I go and work at Wal-Mart, or do I stay in the industry?'”

But Martin is optimistic about the future. He says two trends will keep adjusters ahead of the curve on claims and keep the OIAA’s membership healthy.

“I think what’s going to happen now is that we’re going to be kept busy because more catastrophe losses are going to become available,” Martin said, referring to damage losses related to increasingly frequent weather storms. “You look in the last three to four years, Peterborough was hit twice and Toronto was hit this past year. And so that’s when the adjuster will [make up for the reduced number of claims]. It’s feast or famine. Hit a certain area, and [if] there aren’t enough adjusters or company adjusters in that area, they will have to call people in.”

HEALTHY MEMBERSHIP

As for keeping the membership number healthy, the OIAA’s membership fee is $40 – among the lowest of any insurance association in the province. Martin said the OIAA also makes a concerted effort to keep its education seminar fees down to between $40 and $45 per member. In Toronto, the OIAA holds two education seminars each year. The local chapters, which typically meet once a month, each hold one or two education seminars annually. And where the local chapter needs help funding, the OIAA has the budget to subsidize its local chapters.

Martin said the seminar fees are so low, he wondered at one time whether they were inadvertently contributing to low turnout. “That last seminar we had, in November [2005], was on changes to the upcoming SABS legislation. It was only $45, but we were utilizing all the same experts that other associations would use – it’s just that they charge more money for it. People have this (idea) that if it costs you more, then you’re probably getting a better product quality. And I don’t think that that’s the case.”

Recent auto legislation seminars – dealing specifically with the proposed elimination of Ontario’s Designated Assessment Centres (DACs) – have been a big draw, according to Martin. When asked about the impact of the proposal, Martin offered his own personal opinion as an adjuster: “I think it could help us a little bit. We could become a little busier by the changes.” But the OIAA as an organization would be keeping the same course, he predicted.

Martin said one of his biggest challenges is to select seminar topics that will be of interest to the entire membership. “When you look at our industry, it’s not just a situation where you’re handling just one type of claim, so you have to be able to present a seminar that will attract everybody to come out to it, ” he said. “It’s a topic that everybody will find interesting…In May [2006], we’ll be doing a seminar on mediation. It’s really preparing your file and the 10-point checklist. Mediation could apply to all classes of insurance, so it’s something that will get a good draw.”

And of course, the association members do find time to socialize.

OIAA EVENTS: PAST AND FUTURE

The association held its 75th anniversary gala at the Westin Harbor Castle in Toronto in October. Approximately 350 people watched comedian Ron James perform at the event, which doubled as the OIAA’s past-presidents’ night. And of course the Christmas event and the annual golf tournament have become very popular as well.

The next big event on the calendar is the OIAA’s Claims 2006 conference, featuring keynote speaker George Cooke, the president and CEO of the Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company. Claims 2006 will be held Jan. 25 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre (Constitution Hall).

Not bad at all for an organization that has only one paid staff member, Martin noted with pride. The rest is all volunteer work.

Martin is clearly proud of the work his organization has done and will be doing. He will be passing his current OIAA hat over to Marie Gallagher in mid-2006, when she is slated to take over the president position.