There’s no exact date, but claims executives know it’s coming: an insurance adjuster and SIU talent drain. Baby Boomers are approaching retirement, and when they leave the workforce, they’ll take an incredible amount of experience and institutional knowledge with them. Waiting to address that problem until desks are empty will leave few viable options.
A recruiting effort to solve this dilemma won’t be enough. Generation X is not nearly as large as the Boomer generation. That could leave claims departments scrambling for qualified adjusters and ultimately relying on less experienced adjusters and investigators to fill senior roles and handle larger caseloads.
Fortunately, there are some steps insurers can take now to overcome a talent shortage. Among them is the implementation of a system, such as the ISO Claims Outcome Advisor® (COA™) Product Suite, to help adjusters reach a fair settlement quickly, based on a carrier’s claims payment history.
ISO COA ensures consistent and fair claims settlement based on a wide range of factors, including the nature of an injury, the claimant’s age and gender, preexisting conditions, complications, and whether comparative liability applies. By modeling with the insurance company’s historical data, an adjuster can use the ISO COA Product Suite to support a fair claim assessment for a particular case.
The outcomes are significant:
- The carrier and claimant reach a fairer and more consistent settlement sooner.
- Increased caseload becomes less likely to affect adjuster accuracy, thanks to greater efficiency.
- Junior adjusters can take advantage of the institutionalized knowledge of senior adjusters, helping less experienced staff handle more complex cases.
- Efficiency gains offset the lack of senior adjusters, mitigating the effects of the generational talent drain.
Systems such as ISO COA are not substitutes for experience, especially in complex cases with little precedent. What this product can do, though, is make everything else run more smoothly, freeing scarce talent to handle cases and tasks where that knowledge would be most beneficial to the claims department and carrier. Ultimately, ISO COA can help stretch the value of experienced adjusters.