Meaningful Adjustment

David Porter, incoming president of the Canadian Independent Adjusters’ Association (CIAA), wants to give claims adjusters opportunities to advance their skills and to reach a point where CIAA membership is viewed as essential to being the best adjuster possible.

A claims professional for 25 years, Porter contends one of the most important skills of his trade is the ability to let claimants know exactly what they should expect. “Probably the biggest thing you’ve got to do is manage people’s expectations properly,” suggests the vice president, western region for Granite Claims Solutions.

“You’ve got to work with people to let them know what they can and can’t expect, and then deliver that. To deliver that, you need the technical knowledge, you need to know where to find your answers,” Porter emphasizes.

Currently CIAA’s 1st vice president, Porter officially takes over from outgoing CIAA president Marie Gallagher, also with Granite Claims Solutions, at the association’s annual general meeting and conference, scheduled for August 21-24 in Quebec City.

Porter, who has a law degree and has previously founded his own independent adjusting firm, says his overall vision for the coming year is to ensure that adjusters “value their membership” in CIAA “almost to the point where they think it is necessary to be a good adjuster.” 

SERVE AND EDUCATE

Porter would also like to improve CIAA’s services to members. “I want to centralize our membership offerings, make it a little more streamlined, make it so that our members get to meaningful courses and meaningful skill development tools faster and easier than they ever have,” he says.

One of CIAA’s mandates is to promote insurance education among members. Another CIAA mission is to explain to regulatory bodies – as well as to the insurance industry and to the general public – “the ramifications of matters of direct interest to its members in their conduct of the adjustment business.”

As part of that mandate, CIAA officials have been working for several years to make it easier for adjusters to work in multiple provinces.

“We have done lots of work on it, but I don’t look on it as the main priority,” Porter says. “It would be much more effective if we developed our own program that created a standard of professionalism whereby adjusters, to maintain that particular CIAA designation, have to achieve 16 hours of continuing education, and it shows and proves that they are the most qualified of professionals.”

Currently, each province and territory has its own licensing requirements for adjusters. In most jurisdictions, requirements for adjuster licences “focus on” the claims professional series of courses offered by the Insurance Institute of Canada in its certified insurance professional (CIP) program, courses such as essentials of loss adjusting, advanced loss adjusting and practical issues in claims management.

In Ontario, note details on the Institute website, adjusters must complete five additional CIP courses (including property, auto and liability claims), while in British Columbia, there are three levels of adjuster licences.

Beyond the discrepancies among jurisdictions, companies often send adjusters out of province to handle claims arising from major catastrophes. In the June 2013 floods in southern Alberta, for example, Granite Claims sent its catastrophe response team, which included adjusters from B.C., Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.

“When a large event occurs, regulators want to be able to get people in and help the consumer as quickly as possible,” Porter says of adjusting firms. He acknowledges that companies can get “temporary licences pretty quickly” for adjusters working in provinces where they are not licensed – regulatory bodies, for the most part, are recognizing licensing from other bodies – but the system is not perfect.

“For example, our guys, when they want to work in Alberta, they still have to have a full-fledged licence in Alberta,” Porter says. “It is a little bit cumbersome.”

Porter suggests he would like CIAA to develop a designation that “exceeds the highest regulatory standard” and could be accepted by all of the regulators.

“You would go into the regulators and say, ‘If I develop this program, will you recognize it for licensing purposes?'” 

STEP BY STEP

Porter, a former president of the Insurance Institute of B.C. (2001-2002), is from Vancouver originally. He began his insurance career in 1988 in the mailroom at Canadian Northern Shield Insurance Company, where he stayed until getting work as an adjuster at Lofting & Associates the next year.

“An opportunity came up to be a trainee, I took a stab at it, and I have enjoyed it.”

Porter then worked for Lindsey Morden Claim Services (now known as Cunningham Lindsey) from 1994 until 1996, and then for Pritchard & Associates Ltd. another four years.

In 2000, he founded Advance Claims Service Ltd., which had nine offices in B.C. when it was acquired by Granite Claims in 2011.

With the acquisition, Porter was named to his current position. His specialty is liability claims – including construction, general and professional liability and marine losses – but he says the scope of his duties has expanded beyond adjusting.

“I am now involved more on the business development side,” Porter says. “I handle some large complex-type losses, I do a little bit of appraisal and I help out when claims go off the rails for whatever reason.”

Between the time that Advance Claims Service was founded and acquired, Porter attended law school full-time at the University of British Columbia from 2006 until 2010. “I thought at one time that maybe I would want to practice law. It’s another really enjoyable field and I wouldn’t rule that out in the future, either,” he says.

As CIAA president, though, Porter is hoping to give independent adjusters opportunities to advance their skills and get others to understand the true value of adjusters. Over the past 20 years, “we, as adjusters, have let our profession get watered down by some of the little splinter services that have popped up, such as contents evaluations, building and scope evaluations and simple business interruption calculations,” he suggests. And this watering down is another issue he hopes to help address.

“If I could achieve one thing, it is to enhance what adjusters do, enable them, give them opportunities to enhance their skills, so that they can be valued in the marketplace more than they are,” Porter says.

“My priority is to get those professionals who are not part of the association to recognize that to be a professional you have to belong to a professional association,” he says. “Our job is to make that professional organization something meaningful and something that actually serves and assists in their work. We need to be a viable body that engages our members and is of value to our members. We have to become stronger or it’s going to go away.”

And for those who like being a claims adjuster, “there is no better profession,” Porter contends. “It’s a job with a social aspect, where you are helping people, it taxes your brain and makes you think. “