Latest / The Art of Adjusting® Podcast / Episode 106 - The Next Generation of Investigation

Transcript

Episode 106 - The Next Generation of Investigation · The Art of Adjusting® Podcast

• 0:06
  William Auten: Hello, I'm Bill Auton of Augin Claims Management.
• 0:09
  Chantal Roberts: I'm Chantel Roberts of CMR Consulting, and welcome to the Art of Adjusting podcast.
• 0:14
  William Auten: Today we're going to talk about life as an insurance adjuster from the perspective of property, auto, liability, or workers' compensation adjusters.
• 0:22
  William Auten: Our goal is to bring interesting topics in the world of claims adjusting to people who are working as an adjuster now and to people who are considering a career as a claims adjuster.
• 0:31
  William Auten: Hey Chantel, how are you?
• 0:33
  Chantal Roberts: Good, thank you.
• 0:34
  Chantal Roberts: How are you?
• 0:35
  William Auten: Oh, I'm okay.
• 0:36
  William Auten: I'm sporting a little bit of the very uh very white kind of voice today.
• 0:43
  Chantal Roberts: Gravelly voice.
• 0:44
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, you you've uh been sick a little bit.
• 0:46
  Chantal Roberts: So a little bit.
• 0:48
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, we we hope you get uh better soon.
• 0:51
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, so yeah, we're getting there.
• 0:53
  Chantal Roberts: Good.
• 0:54
  Chantal Roberts: So we're talking about the next generation of liability investigations, and we had teased a little bit about talking about some of the generations that are in or are hopefully coming into insurance.
• 1:12
  Chantal Roberts: And then I think we can also talk about how the technology that we use is is changing because you and I have talked about this before.
• 1:23
  Chantal Roberts: You and I both remember originally taking 35 millimeter cameras and then digital came out, and we were like, oh my god, this is so cool! Yeah, and and and then we both remember fax machines that had the thermal paper that would erase itself after so right.
• 1:43
  William Auten: They'll leave it in the sun, yeah, yeah.
• 1:46
  Chantal Roberts: So um it's kind of interesting to to see how everything changes.
• 1:52
  Chantal Roberts: Um and when I was a kid in school, grade school, we had ditto machines, you know, and it smelled like walk up a hill hill and barefoot because you were I actually had to walk over a bridge that went over the New York State throughway.
• 2:10
  William Auten: Oh, so it was quite a trek.
• 2:14
  Chantal Roberts: I'm sorry, so you were walking to school up a hill in the snow, both ways, barefoot, yeah.
• 2:22
  Chantal Roberts: Dodging traffic, you know, it was the Darwin awards back in the 70s.
• 2:26
  Chantal Roberts: Like, this is the thing that the the that this generation doesn't understand.
• 2:31
  Chantal Roberts: Like we rode in the back of pickup trucks, we we had concrete playgrounds.
• 2:38
  Chantal Roberts: If you fell and busted your head open, well, then you're stupid, right?
• 2:42
  William Auten: I remember the the bridge over the throughway that I went to, and New York State throughway is just the interstate highway that runs from north, uh so east to west across the entire state.
• 2:52
  William Auten: And this bridge went over, and it had uh these iron rails that were like this for like a small child could easily fit through.
• 3:03
  William Auten: And and and I was third grade walking to school with my my little brother and sister, and uh they I remember somewhere around sixth or seventh grade, they put these giant chain link fences over them so no nobody could throw a kid out out the through the fence.
• 3:22
  Chantal Roberts: Well, that's disappointing because I mean that would have been a really good thing to do.
• 3:26
  William Auten: No, I mean there was a kid that was throwing rocks and bowling balls off of onto cars, and they it wound up.
• 3:34
  William Auten: I think the story went that somebody got killed from that.
• 3:38
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:39
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 3:40
  William Auten: So yeah.
• 3:41
  Chantal Roberts: So anyway, great topic to start off with.
• 3:44
  Chantal Roberts: Um the question uh you know that we that we've got isn't um necessarily which generation is is better or whatever or which technology.
• 3:55
  William Auten: Well, everybody knows which generation is best.
• 3:58
  Chantal Roberts: Well, yes, it's the one that always gets forgotten whenever anybody talks about generations, and that would be generation X.
• 4:05
  William Auten: X.
• 4:06
  William Auten: Yeah, we're we're loud enough.
• 4:08
  William Auten: I don't think anybody uh forgets about us.
• 4:11
  Chantal Roberts: You know who forgets about us is the media and everything.
• 4:13
  Chantal Roberts: Like I read the New York Times and they go boomer to millennial, and I'm like that's true.
• 4:20
  Chantal Roberts: I have seen that where they but there's a whole generation that you have missed anyway.
• 4:25
  William Auten: And the boomers right now are really quiet folks because they're in their 70s.
• 4:30
  William Auten: I think they're tired, and they're just they're like just into retirement.
• 4:35
  William Auten: Stay well, they're already well into retirement now.
• 4:39
  William Auten: I mean, we're we're creeping up on uh on that age.
• 4:44
  Chantal Roberts: I don't know.
• 4:44
  Chantal Roberts: I know a lot of 70-year-olds that are still working, and you're like, go away so I can move into your position.
• 4:52
  Chantal Roberts: Um anyway.
• 4:55
  William Auten: Okay, so and they have think of all the changes they've seen.
• 4:59
  William Auten: Oh gosh, um, in in terms of generational changes, uh, but also technology and all the things we're gonna talk about today.
• 5:07
  William Auten: Right.
• 5:07
  William Auten: Uh, the job is, I mean, there's a lot of about the job that's the same, but there's so much that's different.
• 5:13
  William Auten: Um, it's it's actually crazy.
• 5:16
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, so uh I'm not sure where to start.
• 5:20
  William Auten: You have a nice outline here.
• 5:21
  William Auten: I should probably stick to that, otherwise, I'm gonna ramble on here.
• 5:24
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, I think maybe it would be good to talk about technology starting off with, and then you know, maybe get into and we can have a whole podcast about the millennials and Gen Z.
• 5:40
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, and and maybe we can get a few guests and and maybe do a panel, which I think would be would be kind of cool.
• 5:48
  William Auten: Uh actually, you know who's volunteered already is um Miss Riley over here.
• 5:53
  William Auten: Oh she's not here today, but very good.
• 5:55
  William Auten: But um um she has she wants to have an episode where we discuss the comic book that she found.
• 6:03
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, yes.
• 6:04
  Chantal Roberts: We we totally need them in new year because we're getting really close to to the new year.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, yeah.
• 6:10
  Chantal Roberts: So okay, so technology.
• 6:12
  Chantal Roberts: Let's talk about technology.
• 6:14
  Chantal Roberts: Uh you know, there are tools that save adjusters time um or or reveal something that they miss.
• 6:25
  Chantal Roberts: And of course I say this and everybody automatically goes to AI.
• 6:29
  Chantal Roberts: Uh and I've talked about this in the white paper about how AI, again, it's a tool, but it can be misused, and and that's one of my concerns is that we start relying on it too much when it when it makes the wrong decision and it kind of compounds these these problems.
• 6:47
  Chantal Roberts: But anyway, um what are some of the tools that you are seeing now um out in the field?
• 6:58
  William Auten: Well, I I would suppose the tools relating to um uh narrative and document creation, um stories, the storytelling that we have to do for these claims.
• 7:12
  William Auten: Um our reports tend to be fairly detailed, uh, especially at the outset when we're first you know introducing the client to this situation and trying to get the whole story mapped out.
• 7:24
  William Auten: Um doing uh in the past I've done like almost like a storyboard thing with sticky notes.
• 7:31
  William Auten: Today you can um you can give uh sanitized details to uh an AI platform and just tell it the story, uh, excluding any private information and and just let it um give you different ways to present that.
• 7:52
  William Auten: And that's been a great tool.
• 7:53
  William Auten: Um, I think it's made our reporting better uh because it's giving us more of a struct of uh an easier to understand and follow structure.
• 8:03
  William Auten: Um because that you know, my main job now is reviewing files.
• 8:08
  William Auten: So it's often the case that I review a file and it takes you down this one path and then drops this bomb at you on you, you know, three pages in that would have been helpful if you knew it you know early.
• 8:25
  William Auten: So um, you know, those types of organizational clarity things have been great from an AI standpoint.
• 8:33
  William Auten: The other thing that AI is really good for here is um uh overall management of of just the business processes.
• 8:43
  William Auten: So um I've never really used Python before AI came because I'm not a programmer, I'm not gonna write Python code, right?
• 8:52
  William Auten: But it will.
• 8:54
  William Auten: You can tell it what you want it to do.
• 8:56
  William Auten: And so now we have all these automations running in the background that just makes things so much more efficient.
• 9:03
  William Auten: Um, I mean, I would say that with all the automations that we've created by using AI, uh it is taking the place of almost a full-time employee.
• 9:17
  Chantal Roberts: Oh wow.
• 9:18
  William Auten: That's pretty crazy because if I took, if I added up all of the things that these automations do for us and had a person doing it, it would take them probably six to eight hours a day, I would say.
• 9:30
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 9:31
  Chantal Roberts: And what are some of those things like entering diaries, uh, you know, for to follow up with or transcribing recorded statements or something like that?
• 9:44
  William Auten: Yeah, so um document handling is a big piece of what happens here.
• 9:49
  William Auten: It's it's the types of documents that that come into this environment.
• 9:54
  William Auten: Um there's, you know, I I would say probably most of the bulk is it would be medical records.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:01
  William Auten: Um AI doesn't touch any of these documents, by the way.
• 10:05
  William Auten: Um the these documents are all uh anything that happens with them on an automation standpoint from an automation standpoint are all local.
• 10:14
  William Auten: And it doesn't really rely on AI at all.
• 10:16
  William Auten: It's just a script.
• 10:18
  William Auten: It's a script that um that can OCR the text.
• 10:27
  William Auten: Look for look uh look for identifying cues in that text, whether it's a claim number, file number, name, whatever.
• 10:35
  William Auten: Um, and you can build some pretty sophisticated scripts that will look for that stuff.
• 10:40
  William Auten: That is um and it it pulls it from our and it it pulls it all from a big database that is included with our claims management system.
• 10:49
  William Auten: So it's it's crazy uh how complex it is, but how easy it was to get done uh by a non-program you know programmer.
• 11:02
  William Auten: Uh so uh that that's been a huge thing um from an AI standpoint because it's helped us to build that stuff out.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:12
  William Auten: Um and if you if you're a business owner, I would definitely explore that um and and learn about just start asking the chat GPT how to help you solve a problem, and you'd be really surprised at what it can come up with.
• 11:29
  Chantal Roberts: I don't know though, because I ask it how to make millions of dollars without really working hard, and and it doesn't give me anything.
• 11:37
  Chantal Roberts: I I mean honestly, I want a castle, I need a castle to buy, I want you know, staff.
• 11:46
  Chantal Roberts: Uh it's it's not very hard.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: You could do it.
• 11:49
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, I know I can, but it's it chat GPT is not really helping.
• 11:53
  Chantal Roberts: Maybe I should go to Claude or co-pilot.
• 11:55
  Chantal Roberts: I don't know.
• 11:56
  William Auten: Maybe, maybe.
• 11:57
  Chantal Roberts: Um, you know what else is really good?
• 11:59
  Chantal Roberts: And and I don't know if I if you have this up in New York or if it's something that's just I mean, I know about it in Arkansas, I know about it here in in Kansas, and it's called neighborhood.
• 12:13
  Chantal Roberts: And uh it's uh a platform where everybody in your neighborhood signs on, and then it's basically a chat board or whatever, a bulletin board, and you can go like, Hey, did you see um or hey, what's going on at blah blah blah in this intersection?
• 12:32
  Chantal Roberts: You know, what's going in and why were the cops going 500 billion miles an hour down this road?
• 12:40
  Chantal Roberts: Or um, of course, I really like to watch the Karen's and all of their comments like there was a white car and it was driving down my car sack.
• 12:54
  William Auten: We we have next, it's called the next store app, and um it that's like that, but actually it's the the one that's the most active would be the the Facebook page for our little town.
• 13:06
  Chantal Roberts: Yes, yeah.
• 13:07
  William Auten: So those, yeah.
• 13:08
  William Auten: I just heard a loud boom, you know.
• 13:11
  Chantal Roberts: Exactly.
• 13:11
  Chantal Roberts: Oh my god, what was that?
• 13:12
  Chantal Roberts: I just heard a loud bam.
• 13:15
  Chantal Roberts: Um, and then I I think it's hysterical because they will go, there's this white car driving really slow down the cul-de-sac, and then of the very next post will be there's a white car driving really fast down the cul-de-sac.
• 13:26
  Chantal Roberts: But the the the point is not only do you get to make fun of Karen's, which is tons of fun, but um, this like neighborhood or next door or Facebook, uh you can look in them as a claims adjuster and find out what's going on in that you know particular neighborhood.
• 13:48
  Chantal Roberts: Um, a lot of these people here, they have those uh doorbell cameras, yeah.
• 13:54
  Chantal Roberts: And they will go, is this your kid?
• 13:57
  Chantal Roberts: Because they need to stop.
• 13:59
  unknown: Right.
• 14:00
  Chantal Roberts: Like, I'm there.
• 14:01
  Chantal Roberts: Uh uh, I think there's some privacy issues there with a kid with a minor, but I mean, neither here nor there.
• 14:07
  Chantal Roberts: Uh but you you can get some of the same things that uh the police have, like the surveillance footage.
• 14:17
  Chantal Roberts: Um, and um of course, speaking of the police, you've got the dash cams, uh and something that I don't know if a lot of adjusters know about, but uh it's been in a lot of the news lately is these flock cameras.
• 14:36
  Chantal Roberts: And there the insurance industry actually uses not flock itself, but there's another one, and I forget what it's called.
• 14:45
  Chantal Roberts: I think it begins with an M.
• 14:47
  Chantal Roberts: However, the insurance industry uses it, and it it is truly a license plate kind of uh deal.
• 14:57
  Chantal Roberts: I think they take pictures of a side of a truck or something like that, but it's used for finding missing cargo or finding stolen trucks.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh interesting.
• 15:08
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, and I cannot remember the name of it, but I think I went down a dive uh on D flock, which list all where all the flock cameras are and uh began finding what kinds of cameras there are.
• 15:27
  Chantal Roberts: And that was one of them.
• 15:29
  Chantal Roberts: But just FYI guys, if you're needing to to find your cargo, there's a lot of technology you can use, um such as the cameras from the the the city, and I think we've had a guy here about the FOIA.
• 15:48
  Chantal Roberts: We called him FOIL, but um, yeah, talking about the FOIA.
• 15:52
  Chantal Roberts: And so look up that episode where we were talking about getting that freedom of information and getting those city footage uh from the you know uh lights.
• 16:07
  William Auten: For sure.
• 16:08
  William Auten: Uh we've used um or we've made photo requests for police cameras that we knew were um in the vicinity, and uh sometimes they um provide us with good information, other times not.
• 16:22
  William Auten: Um body cameras have been uh amazing for evidence retention and and uh and really you know it's one thing to say evidence retention is important, it's another thing to really recognize that that evidence gives you information that you might not ever be able to get otherwise.
• 16:42
  William Auten: Yeah, it it can really think that goes without that that gets ignored sometimes in the whole evidence um um collection process.
• 16:51
  William Auten: Is that you just start grabbing things and and not really understanding why you need it?
• 16:56
  Chantal Roberts: It it really does.
• 16:58
  Chantal Roberts: Uh social media, we we we did talk about Facebook, social media, insta, tick tock, all of those are great for evidence.
• 17:10
  Chantal Roberts: Uh and and and sometimes criminals are not bright.
• 17:15
  Chantal Roberts: And I say criminals because insurance fraud is a crime.
• 17:20
  Chantal Roberts: Depending on how much it is, it could be a misdemeanor, it could be a felony.
• 17:26
  Chantal Roberts: But uh uh, you know, my husband has used Facebook and and and found people literally lying.
• 17:35
  Chantal Roberts: Like they've turned in a claim.
• 17:37
  Chantal Roberts: It was a it was a youth sports thing.
• 17:41
  Chantal Roberts: Uh they turned in a claim for like missing batting cages.
• 17:45
  Chantal Roberts: Date of loss was let's say Monday.
• 17:48
  Chantal Roberts: They took a picture on Tuesday of the batting cages.
• 17:52
  Chantal Roberts: And true, true, that that could be an old picture, but this is when you pull it up saying this is the date, Mr.
• 18:00
  Chantal Roberts: and Mrs.
• 18:00
  Chantal Roberts: Insured.
• 18:01
  Chantal Roberts: Can you explain that?
• 18:03
  Chantal Roberts: And I want to see the original picture because I want to get the metadata in there for the technology aspects.
• 18:10
  William Auten: Yeah, that the metadata is um actually super important.
• 18:15
  William Auten: Um, we often get photographs of the conditions of place that was supposedly taken at the time of the incident.
• 18:25
  William Auten: Come to find out that metadata shows that it was taken three months later or what, you know, whatever.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:31
  William Auten: Um, it happens a lot.
• 18:33
  William Auten: Uh and you know, when you dig through all of the facts and all the evidence that you can find, and you discover that there's some shenanigans going on, it makes you a little cynical.
• 18:48
  William Auten: And you know, for all of the distrust that the that the public has for insurance companies, you know, you gotta cut us a little slack here.
• 18:58
  William Auten: We see a lot of uh we there's a lot of reasons for us to be qu asking questions, uh, I'll put it that way.
• 19:05
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 19:06
  William Auten: Um yeah, you know, not every case is a fraud case.
• 19:09
  William Auten: I'm not saying that.
• 19:10
  William Auten: We have plenty of legitimate cases here.
• 19:12
  Chantal Roberts: Absolutely.
• 19:13
  Chantal Roberts: And and so adjusters pay what you know you owe when you know you owe it immediately.
• 19:19
  Chantal Roberts: Don't wait for the whole thing.
• 19:20
  Chantal Roberts: That's very bad.
• 19:21
  Chantal Roberts: Don't wait to get everything, you know.
• 19:23
  Chantal Roberts: If this means you cut 15 checks, you cut 15 checks, but at least you can't be uh getting me involved saying, Oh, you know, there's bad faith, they didn't pay on time, you know, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:35
  Chantal Roberts: Because again, that is one of the good faith claims settlement practices, which we always go over, like our New Year's Eve resolutions.
• 19:45
  William Auten: Yeah, and and um, I I would temper that statement a little bit because um you still have to verify, you know.
• 19:55
  William Auten: Oh, of course.
• 19:56
  William Auten: And and I said you you know you owe it.
• 19:59
  William Auten: Yeah, you have, but knowing can be different from different perspectives because you'll have an attorney barking on the phone that you screaming that you owe it.
• 20:10
  William Auten: Yeah, when when we really don't have enough information to say that we owe it yet.
• 20:15
  Chantal Roberts: I say you don't know you owe it by that point.
• 20:18
  Chantal Roberts: I I'm talking about when when you have the proof in the file that there is coverage, that there is liability, that you know you don't know.
• 20:30
  Chantal Roberts: But you know what the insurance is.
• 20:31
  Chantal Roberts: Not because the insured says, you know, I've paid premiums for 15 years, you owe this to me.
• 20:37
  Chantal Roberts: Not because the agent did it, not because the plaintiff attorney has done it.
• 20:40
  Chantal Roberts: No, you have the evidence to back it up, right?
• 20:44
  William Auten: Right, and we have so many tools to verify that stuff now.
• 20:48
  Chantal Roberts: Yes, and actually, I was gonna do this, and it's all about claims being objective, which was our last podcast.
• 20:54
  Chantal Roberts: So if you want to go to our last podcast and listen, be sure to like, subscribe, subscribe, share, give a thumbs up, make a comment.
• 21:03
  William Auten: Thumbs up, yeah.
• 21:04
  William Auten: All of that you're gonna put you're gonna put a card in the in the no, I don't even know how to do that.
• 21:09
  Chantal Roberts: Geez, oh really?
• 21:10
  William Auten: No, you should do it this way.
• 21:12
  Chantal Roberts: This is why we need money and like have a producer.
• 21:16
  Chantal Roberts: Um yeah, yeah.
• 21:18
  William Auten: We need to we need to hire um uh an admin to help us uh manage these podcasts.
• 21:23
  William Auten: So but we can't we can't do it without your help.
• 21:26
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, so we totally need you to give us 50 billion dollars on our Patreon.
• 21:31
  Chantal Roberts: Um that's let me give you my bank account.
• 21:35
  Chantal Roberts: Um so so we're talking about uh all uh body cams, all of this kind of stuff.
• 21:42
  Chantal Roberts: And it also goes into documentation.
• 21:45
  Chantal Roberts: I think something that gets overlooked a lot of times, especially by new adjusters, and I would encourage you to do this, is to do a scene locus uh L O C U S.
• 22:00
  Chantal Roberts: and uh take pictures of that scene.
• 22:06
  Chantal Roberts: Either a slip and fall, trip and fall, you know, let's look at what they're doing.
• 22:11
  Chantal Roberts: A um T-bone.
• 22:15
  Chantal Roberts: Let's look at the intersection.
• 22:18
  Chantal Roberts: And especially if you can get someone out there really soon and you can see the debris still, that's great.
• 22:26
  Chantal Roberts: That's that helps because a lot of times it's a he said she said kind of deal and you can't necessarily prove who did what went.
• 22:38
  William Auten: You can't in a lot of cases.
• 22:41
  William Auten: There's there's question marks that go unanswered in a lot of cases and you've got to make an educated guess as to what's the likelihood that it happened this way.
• 22:52
  William Auten: And just running off of testimony of the people that may have been involved, the defendant the the injured person, it's tough sometimes.
• 23:04
  William Auten: And I I know I'm just focusing on third party here, but the same things uh apply to first party claims when you've got a um you got a fire you don't know how it started um you have to you have to make educated guesses.
• 23:21
  William Auten: Uh we had a this is a long time ago we had a house fire family was all home they had ordered pizza and um they had it set it on the stove and the stove was off so but uh I noticed they had a dog a big dog.
• 23:40
  William Auten: Oh and uh he put his paws up and yeah we think the dog got up there to get some pizza and turned on the burner.
• 23:47
  Chantal Roberts: Okay so animals very dangerous because the husband had a claim with a fire a cat knocked the um that had jumped down from the refrigerator onto the stove and somehow you know tripped the trigger or whatever and um started the fire.
• 24:07
  Chantal Roberts: Drones are used a lot um for roofs claims uh Google satellite stuff Google um earth is in the street view is sometimes really useful in property damage because oh yeah because there's historical images there.
• 24:27
  Chantal Roberts: Yes and so you can see how the house looked before and I was working a house that was supposed to be you know renovated and all this kind of stuff and they the injured was getting like a builder's risk kind of deal but they had basically bought a dump and was not renovating it and and then you know they sell all or or they say they had a copper theft and you go back on Google Earth and you're like dude I can see clear through the winds um you know uh underwriters did you know you wrote this yeah um yeah we we get a lot of cases that um it's a vacant unoccupied house and um uh you know there's a residency requirement on a homeowner's policy there is there is uh if you're not living there uh you may not have coverage yeah and and we've had a lot of a lot of those cases where somebody buys the place and they intend to renovate it or do maybe flip it or whatever but they put it on a homeowner's policy and they live you know five hours away yeah um and they they they think they're protected and then somebody slips and falls on the property and they have no coverage.
• 25:54
  Chantal Roberts: That's not fun drones we're seeing a lot about drones.
• 25:58
  Chantal Roberts: I went I mentioned it previously there's also been some kickback about drones especially with the underwriting which is not what we're talking about because we're all about claims woo um but drones are fantastic to get up on those really steep roofs uh you know they're dangerous or they're difficult to access or something like that.
• 26:20
  Chantal Roberts: They're great that way.
• 26:22
  William Auten: So I'm a certified drone pilot with the FAA.
• 26:25
  William Auten: And I uh I have I have a lot of thoughts about roof inspections and drones um for claims there are I've gotten uh online arguments with folks that you know that they do drone inspections for insurance claims every day all day and they settle claims every day all day uh that way um well the thing is that um you could you could look at a roof and it may look fine from a drone but if you're not actually on that roof feeling the shingles manipulating them uh lifting them to see if there's any real damage getting up close like you can get pretty close with a drone but you can't get this close where you need to actually look at at uh what might be damaged so um I think they're a good tool for certain things but um I wouldn't rely on that solely to make a a coverage determination um without actually getting on getting on the roof or or getting somebody who's uh qualified to evaluate the condition of the shingles and and what may have happened to them.
• 27:42
  William Auten: But from um from my standpoint the the drones um in in our line of work are helpful because sometimes people get hurt in really weird places.
• 27:54
  William Auten: And uh the drone makes it easier to kind of see um I mean a bird's eye view uh yeah of of the space or to be able to see you know somebody falls down a cliff you're not gonna go down you're not gonna rappel down there but you can get the drone up and and uh you are not gonna check it out to your job I'm just gonna say I'm just gonna say not committed to your job.
• 28:17
  William Auten: Right they just had one in a swimming pool and uh it was a there was a defect at the it under the water in the swimming pool and she uh she checked in with me she said I they don't expect me to put my bathing suit on and go in there do they because I said no it's a nice summer day this is the commitment you give to your insurance company.
• 28:43
  Chantal Roberts: This was like yesterday it's not so new sunny weather um no no no no but you know it's it's it's good stuff let's talk real quick about drones adjusters because you want to make sure that your independent adjuster outside your failed adjuster has like the fa because it is I believe if you're using it for personal use you don't have to be correct me if I'm wrong you don't have to be certified with the FAA but if you're gonna use it for commercial use you do need to be certified uh you know and you can't get it above certain levels and you're not supposed to fly over other people's homes like no spying on the next door neighbor who is going underneath the swimming pool to check out a leak or whatever.
• 29:33
  William Auten: Um yeah um so the airspace above homes is completely free and clear you can fly you know within the the height regulation of uh uh um of drones you can fly over any space unless it's um a federal park or some other uh some other uh governmental restriction on flights um and a lot of times those areas have like a the electronic lock so when you fire the thing up it won't even fly um so if like the military airports around here if you're in that zone within a certain radius of that airport um the the drone won't even operate so but um yes you have to have um you have to have your your license and you've got to um be insured too because you're this is an important thing for whether it's personal or commercial your standard policy is going to exclude incidents from aircraft and it's not going to cover the drone itself and it's not going to cover any damage you do if that drone crashes into somebody or something.
• 30:50
  William Auten: Yeah so um you have to have a separate aircraft policy and you want a um a hull policy that will protect the aircraft itself so that if something happens to it um it'll be paid for by insurance it um you definitely want liability limits and you can I haven't done this I actually haven't flown in about a year or two but the uh insurance that I used was on an app on my phone and you would purchase it in blocks of time like an hour yeah yeah yeah and um you give it the location and then and you could get certificates of insurance uh to add you know um to add like the property owner's additional insured if you're required to so um but that's extremely important and it wasn't terribly expensive to do that uh you you you basically bought a policy for an hour I think it was 45 bucks or something like that you know um that's the that's amazing because I've heard of cargo claims where they just do like the one trip uh I knew a guy who was insuring the dinosaur bone that was going from point A to point B.
• 32:06
  Chantal Roberts: So it was only a it was a one-way trip.
• 32:08
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah and that kind of stuff is is is is fascinating to me but great great news and something to for our adjusters to be thinking about um so yeah if you it and I'll uh just say this about the rules you know if if you if you have a drone and you're an adjuster and and you put that thing up in the air and take some photos of a roof the FAA is not going to come screaming down the street with their with their lights and sirens on necessarily um but if you have a pattern of doing this and and you get caught the fines are actually kind of serious there was um there was a guy on YouTube who kept posting drone videos and he was not licensed and he was starting to generate YouTube income they wound up fining him a hundred thousand dollars.
• 32:59
  Chantal Roberts: Wow um wow I was thinking more of again the liability of it you know someone excuse you because you're over their airspace or yeah so I I didn't mean to give I didn't I didn't mean to give a green light that you know if you get one in there and and nobody knows you'll be fine.
• 33:17
  William Auten: That's not what I'm saying.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 33:21
  William Auten: What I am saying is there are some formal rules and you're better off following those rules than ignoring them because bad things will happen if you don't that's why I bring up the example of the YouTube guy in the fines and um and your example of uh if something goes bad and let's face it you know operating an aircraft is not without its risk.
• 33:43
  William Auten: There are birds that fly through your your flight area there are um un um unpredictable winds uh there may be a wire hanging up where you don't know about and once once a rotor gets disturbed on one of those things you've lost all control and you don't know where it's going to go and where it's gonna land and uh they can they can actually if they crash into somebody they could do some harm.
• 34:08
  William Auten: Those those rotors are plastic but they're spinning so fast and I've seen some pretty bad lacerations um that result from that.
• 34:16
  William Auten: So yeah so let's talk about some problems uh besides you know getting lacerations from drones or whatever because when we talk about technology I got it off the internet so therefore you it it because we all know if it's on the internet it's true right yeah um however go ahead well I was the deep fake stuff is is this probably the scariest thing um I I worry about that I haven't seen a case yet where um where we relied so heavily on on photo or video evidence where the risk of it being altered that would you know I I I think that can be that can definitely be an issue um but if you've got a highly valuable case and it's dependent on you know photographs or video uh you're gonna want to do some deep dive to make sure that that is um actual non-doctored uh video and we actually have um contacts for a couple of different uh photography and and videography expert witnesses that know how to um analyze these uh data files and and be able to tell you whether or not it's been manipulate manipulated.
• 35:42
  Chantal Roberts: Right.
• 35:42
  Chantal Roberts: And that also goes back to uh how technology has changed of course because AI can make these things now so incredibly well that sometimes you can't tell uh back in the day when we got the original JPEG or PNG or whatever or even the original Word document we were looking at metadata to see what got changed and and there is this program I know I I think Meta actually ran it to find out who was divulging secrets about it where all of the emails have a special little thing an invisible special little thing uh an extra space or whatever so like if you forwarded it an email they would know who it went to this is not really what we're talking about per se although chain of custody is important when we're talking about that privacy and consent also uh but it is making sure that your material is authentic and so when it is be sure guys that you're you're putting that in your file notes as well and your report like I've looked at the the metadata and I don't see anything weird that's the technical term weird um but it's something like that because just because you got that off the internet doesn't necessarily mean it's real or just because the insured gave you the original file doesn't mean it's not AI or something like that.
• 37:27
  William Auten: Um speaking of your comment about the word weird and that you know it's a technical term it is I'm a big fan of using just common language for things.
• 37:40
  William Auten: I'm not a fan of acronyms I'm not a fan of buzzwords or technical jargon.
• 37:45
  Chantal Roberts: And the reason is that we when we're doing our reports we're communicating to a desk adjuster who may be maybe 30 years in the business and extremely knowledgeable about the industry and a lot of aspects of the industry but if you start throwing around terminology that is not um I mean if if you're talking about uh a policy language uh or you a um a letter from an attorney that's a letter of rep okay we have our own little buzzwords and that's fine but if you're gonna steal some buzzwords from some other uh industry chemistry or programming or automotive whatever um things you you risk um you risk a misunderstanding in the communication yeah no I'll give you an example I was sitting in on uh a gentleman's insurance class because I was watching him teach and his methods and he kept talking about supply chain and the the shortages of supply chains when we have a catastrophe or when we have you know like the pandemic or whatever and he used the example of of the employees who are taken by ICE as being a supply chain and I'm like as a claims adjuster I would not call that a supply chain issue.
• 39:22
  Chantal Roberts: But maybe coming from an agent point of view that could be a supply chain issue in that we need to to know if the insured business model is now going to be ruined by having 50% of its employees gone.
• 39:41
  Chantal Roberts: So we need to put in another some kind of endorsement or something saying extra time for me to hire people and train people or you know whatever.
• 39:53
  Chantal Roberts: So I if I may I think that's kind of what you're talking about.
• 39:57
  Chantal Roberts: The guy said supply chain issue it meant two different things.
• 40:02
  William Auten: So yeah uh for sure I when like I said plain language is is the best route for everybody because it's not your your reporting or whatever you're working on is not only going to hit that desk adjuster but it's gonna probably hit their supervisor who may have a completely different skill level or experience level.
• 40:21
  William Auten: Someday it's gonna hit an attorney um and you know attorneys know the law but most of them will admit look I I don't know a thing about cars or chemistry or you know whatever the topic might be.
• 40:38
  Chantal Roberts: That's my next my next thing is um a jury's gonna have to uh parse out what you're trying to say too so um you know if you if you have to use the the buzzwords in the language um just talk to me like I'm five you know um we we have to uh we have to make everything clear and understandable um first and we're not writing novels here either right right uh yeah and on the flip side though we do need to make sure because this was one of our our I think you were out I did a a small little uh episode about claim notes about you have to list your reasons why and and so you put all of that in your claim notes as well you don't have to write a novel but you do need to to write why uh this is the way it is so that someone else like myself as an expert would come in and know about it.
• 41:41
  Chantal Roberts: But having all of this information in there doesn't necessarily mean that you've done a better investigation.
• 41:47
  Chantal Roberts: In fact something that I found and I don't know if you've found this too with your employees especially the new ones is they're sometimes scared to pull the trigger in making a decision and going forward and making that claim payment because they think I just need one more piece of information.
• 42:07
  William Auten: I need one more piece of information I need one more piece of information and I would kind of say you're never going to get all of the information you know yeah um the decisions that we make here are uh we're we're not the deciders because we're independents so but but we are um our job is to furnish all the information so that our clients can make that decision there's other decisions that we have to make that are not whether or not to pay a claim or whether or not something is covered although we do have to we do have to examine those things so that we can communicate it properly to the to to our client um but yeah there's always apprehension when when folks start out because they don't want to make the wrong call whatever that might be and um and it happens still here you know it happens where uh they'll write a report that goes a certain direction and it it shouldn't go that direction it needs to go this other way and they just don't know so I'll correct them as gently as possible you know and um but that's kind of the learning process I I go through this a lot um uh in in determining what can be handed off to someone else.
• 43:33
  William Auten: I mean I've got team members one's been doing this like 18 years I got a couple that are fairly new five years or less right and I've been doing this for 30.
• 43:46
  William Auten: So my perspective on things is gonna be way different than theirs um just because there's this truckload of of history in my head and um it's hard to uh figure out What can be handed off and what kind of guide can be provided to someone new so that they maybe have a checklist to use to, you know, set them down the right path.
• 44:12
  William Auten: Um but uh and that's I think that gap in knowledge is become going to become more and more challenging for the entire industry as time goes on here, because um a lot of folks like me at some point are going to be um on the beach sipping my ties instead of handling claims.
• 44:34
  Chantal Roberts: And um yeah, and that gets us back to the next generation of adjusters and liability investigations, you know?
• 44:44
  Chantal Roberts: Is imparting that kind of information.
• 44:48
  Chantal Roberts: Uh and but I would say that the field adjuster, the independent adjuster is always going to be needed because I always told my field adjusters I was a third party administrator, so I was a desk adjuster.
• 45:04
  Chantal Roberts: Uh you're my eyes and ears, you know.
• 45:08
  Chantal Roberts: So open them up that's our job.
• 45:12
  Chantal Roberts: You know, take pictures, feel things, kind of like that.
• 45:16
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, because that's what I'm looking for.
• 45:18
  Chantal Roberts: I'm not in Colorado or Oregon or anything like that.
• 45:23
  Chantal Roberts: I need you to get all of that.
• 45:27
  William Auten: Yeah, I joke that we're not writing novels, but we are telling the story.
• 45:31
  William Auten: I mean, that's a big deal.
• 45:32
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 45:34
  Chantal Roberts: Absolutely.
• 45:35
  William Auten: Um well, since we're talking about generational differences, let's we've got a few minutes left.
• 45:40
  William Auten: Why don't we do a rapid fire um back and forth about things that you used to do uh back when you started in the industry that you don't have to do or you can't do anymore because of technology.
• 45:54
  William Auten: I'll go first.
• 45:55
  William Auten: Roadmaps in the car.
• 45:57
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, that's good.
• 45:59
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 46:00
  Chantal Roberts: Um okay.
• 46:04
  William Auten: Facts is I'll I'll keep I'll keep going.
• 46:07
  Chantal Roberts: Keep going, man.
• 46:08
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, I already use the 35 millimeter one um cassette tapes for recording.
• 46:14
  Chantal Roberts: Cassette tapes.
• 46:14
  Chantal Roberts: There you go.
• 46:15
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, cassette tapes.
• 46:16
  William Auten: How about kink keeping a stash of coins in the car so that you could stop at a phone booth if you need to make a call?
• 46:23
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, that's that's good.
• 46:25
  Chantal Roberts: See, I never really did that because here's the deal.
• 46:28
  Chantal Roberts: I always um stopped by the post office.
• 46:31
  Chantal Roberts: If I could never find someone, post office.
• 46:35
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 46:36
  William Auten: Well, we had to we had pagers, so we had to call in.
• 46:39
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, yeah.
• 46:40
  William Auten: If we got pages, we would have to call.
• 46:42
  William Auten: So we we you know, when you're on the road, you gotta and this my first cell phone I didn't get until okay.
• 46:53
  William Auten: Well it was 1996.
• 46:54
  Chantal Roberts: Cell phones that were attached to your car, like they didn't they didn't come with you, they were in your car, and they the horn would go off when the phone rang.
• 47:03
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, uh, you know, and if your car was off or you whatever, like at night, and it really didn't ring.
• 47:10
  Chantal Roberts: My dad's didn't ring, but he had a you know phone attached to the to the car.
• 47:16
  William Auten: Uh how about this?
• 47:17
  William Auten: Um using uh photo sheet with tape and Polaroid photos.
• 47:23
  William Auten: Oh, yeah, or 35 millimeters.
• 47:25
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:26
  Chantal Roberts: Um yeah, we used to uh you know dictate again on tape our reports and have transcriptionists type it up.
• 47:38
  Chantal Roberts: So there were people there that did a lot of typing, uh, and then we moved to like drag and speak or something like that that did the the typing for us as we spoke, or we typed it up ourselves.
• 47:51
  William Auten: We have kind of a hybrid here.
• 47:53
  William Auten: We do have transcriptionists, and um because the the the automated stuff just doesn't get it right all the time.
• 48:00
  Chantal Roberts: It doesn't.
• 48:01
  William Auten: So um it's a it's kind of a mixture to get it right.
• 48:06
  William Auten: And but we also need a we also need a person to format it, you know.
• 48:10
  William Auten: It's just if you just transcribe it, it's just sometimes it comes out and it's just one long sentence.
• 48:16
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, you know, so paper files, there's no paper, you know, they they well, they say there's no paper files, yeah.
• 48:23
  William Auten: I literally two file cabinets right over there.
• 48:26
  Chantal Roberts: Exactly.
• 48:26
  Chantal Roberts: I literally remember uh when my first job at Libert Liberty Mutual, I was not allowed, we weren't allowed as adjusters to go into the filing area.
• 48:36
  Chantal Roberts: We had to give the note to the uh admin assistant who would go and pull the file for us.
• 48:44
  Chantal Roberts: And we can have no more than four physical files at our desk at any given point in time because they didn't want us to just start hoarding all of our files.
• 48:54
  Chantal Roberts: Interesting.
• 48:55
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, so we couldn't find them.
• 48:57
  Chantal Roberts: Okay.
• 48:59
  William Auten: Well, um what else?
• 49:02
  William Auten: Technology has changed.
• 49:04
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, it's changed, but I don't I don't think just because we have better tools doesn't mean that we have better investigations.
• 49:12
  Chantal Roberts: Uh I if anything, it might be we may get have the tendency to be a little lazier because we're like, oh, you know, I don't need to do this and I don't need to do that.
• 49:24
  Chantal Roberts: Uh but you absolutely still do.
• 49:26
  Chantal Roberts: The investigation still matters.
• 49:30
  Chantal Roberts: The the core items still matter, even though the way we get that photograph recorded statement, write a report, or if you're a desk adjuster, just type it in your claims file uh is is changed, sure.
• 49:48
  Chantal Roberts: Uh but what we preserve, what matters is hasn't.
• 49:55
  William Auten: So yeah, the there's still the same content in the photographs, it's just that they're digital now, and there's probably a lot more of them than than there used to be.
• 50:05
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 50:05
  Chantal Roberts: Um yeah.
• 50:08
  William Auten: I mean to today it's it's not surprising to have you know over 50 photos or 75 photos for a claim.
• 50:18
  William Auten: Um where back when it was 35 millimeter, I don't I don't think that we were doing that many.
• 50:25
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 50:26
  Chantal Roberts: So in two weeks, we're gonna be talking about negotiation uh and lessons that you and I have learned from thousands of claims that that we have handled and how to how to work those.
• 50:42
  Chantal Roberts: And and negotiation is both for property damage first party as well as third party.
• 50:50
  Chantal Roberts: Because sometimes you know, you you you and the insured don't agree on what the roof should cost or whatever.
• 50:57
  Chantal Roberts: So there's there's that.
• 50:59
  Chantal Roberts: And I would say be sure to like, subscribe, share with others so um we can continue to give you this great stuff.
• 51:09
  William Auten: Valuable information.
• 51:11
  Chantal Roberts: Valuable information.
• 51:12
  Chantal Roberts: All right, so we'll see you later.
• 51:15
  William Auten: Okay, take care.
• 51:17
  Chantal Roberts: Bye.
• 51:17
  William Auten: Thanks for joining us on the Art of Adjusting Podcast, where we talk about life as an insurance adjuster.
• 51:23
  William Auten: Hit that subscribe button real quick and tell all of your adjuster friends to check this out as well.
• 51:28
  William Auten: For independent adjusting services, go to www.autin.claims.
• 51:32
  William Auten: And for anyone interested in working as an independent liability adjuster, go to the contact us tab to join our roster.
• 51:40
  Chantal Roberts: So this wraps up another Art of Adjusting podcast.
• 51:44
  Chantal Roberts: If you enjoyed this podcast or this episode, please give us five stars and a review.
• 51:50
  Chantal Roberts: It does help the algorithm pick us up.
• 51:52
  Chantal Roberts: In the meantime, you can contact me at theartofadjusting.com for consulting and training purposes.