Latest / The Art of Adjusting® Podcast / Episode #99: Are Multi-Line Adjusters Going Extinct?

Transcript

Episode #99: Are Multi-Line Adjusters Going Extinct? · The Art of Adjusting® Podcast

• 0:06
  William Auten: Hello, I'm Bill Aughton of Autin 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: Well, I'm doing great.
• 0:34
  Chantal Roberts: I have a very raspy voice because I just got back from Barcelona, where I was Barcelona, where I was uh European disco trash and smoking, and that's why I've got the nice raspy voice and everything.
• 0:47
  William Auten: What a fun, what a fun adventure that must have been.
• 0:49
  Chantal Roberts: It was.
• 0:50
  Chantal Roberts: It was a lot of fun.
• 0:51
  Chantal Roberts: It was it was a lot of fun.
• 0:53
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 0:53
  William Auten: Well, that's awesome.
• 0:54
  William Auten: Glad to have you back.
• 0:56
  William Auten: And uh today the topic is uh multi-line adjusters and um uh whether or not they're still a thing.
• 1:06
  William Auten: And I you know, I'm not really sure uh how common it is anymore.
• 1:10
  William Auten: I think it was more common maybe 20 or 30 years ago.
• 1:14
  William Auten: Yeah, I agree than today.
• 1:16
  Chantal Roberts: I agree.
• 1:17
  Chantal Roberts: And uh I encourage everyone to become a multi-line adjuster, and I'm glad we're talking about this because it is something that I think is very important for adjusters.
• 1:29
  Chantal Roberts: It will make you pretty much, I I believe, bulletproof and very hireable, although I believe that adjusters will be very hireable in the future anyway, because really nobody wants to sign up for for this kind of job.
• 1:45
  Chantal Roberts: And uh, but before we do this, let remind everybody to like, subscribe, share, comment.
• 1:53
  Chantal Roberts: It helps the algorithm pick it up and you know, all of that kind of fun stuff.
• 1:58
  William Auten: I wish we had a better forum or a better way for listeners to ask questions as they as they listen.
• 2:06
  William Auten: But my yeah, I listen to podcasts too, and questions might pop into my head, but I'm usually driving when I'm listening or doing something else where I I don't have the the computer in front of me or a way to communicate to whoever put that podcast on.
• 2:23
  William Auten: So um, so if you have a burning question, just find us on LinkedIn.
• 2:28
  William Auten: That's probably the easiest way.
• 2:30
  Chantal Roberts: Um look us up online.
• 2:33
  Chantal Roberts: Yours is Autonclaims or Auton.claims.
• 2:39
  Chantal Roberts: That's it.
• 2:40
  Chantal Roberts: Just dot claims, yeah.net.
• 2:46
  Chantal Roberts: So you can find us that way.
• 2:48
  Chantal Roberts: Of course, you can always Google the art of adjusting and email me that way as well.
• 2:54
  Chantal Roberts: Okay.
• 2:55
  Chantal Roberts: So yeah.
• 2:56
  William Auten: So what I did with this um top uh this topic and this outline is something a little different because we don't get a lot of questions, um, but we do have access to Reddit and different social media.
• 3:13
  William Auten: So um I scanned Reddit for questions about this topic, and uh we'll read some of those questions and um give you some feedback.
• 3:22
  William Auten: So I thought that would be an interesting way to approach this.
• 3:24
  Chantal Roberts: I think that's a good idea.
• 3:26
  unknown: Yeah.
• 3:28
  William Auten: So for the uninitiated, a multi-line adjuster is simply somebody who's um both licensed and trained to handle various lines of insurance.
• 3:38
  William Auten: So you might handle first-party property where you're inspecting damage to roofs or uh damage from fires or things like that.
• 3:47
  William Auten: Um, but you can also investigate a liability claim where somebody slipped and fell, or um, or maybe you can handle auto claims where there was an accident and people got hurt in that.
• 3:58
  William Auten: And um, or maybe you can investigate workers' compensation and uh you can uh you know, if you're you're multi-line because you can do any of those things.
• 4:10
  William Auten: Now, I've often taken the stance and been told that um you you're kind of like a radial tire, you can do it all, but none of it really well.
• 4:21
  William Auten: And um to some extent, I I would agree with that.
• 4:25
  William Auten: Uh, I know I started out in this career as a multi-line adjuster.
• 4:30
  William Auten: I felt very competent and proficient.
• 4:33
  William Auten: Um, but when I would encounter folks that were like a property person who had been only a property guy for 15 or 20 or 30 years, you quickly learn that there are nuances that um that you're just not familiar with.
• 4:50
  William Auten: And that might be something just uh I mean, you look at some people that just are Xactimate wizards, right?
• 4:58
  William Auten: You'll always learn something from them.
• 5:00
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 5:00
  William Auten: And they may not know how to take a statement from somebody, but they know how it, you know, Xactimate upside down, inside out.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_03: Left and right, yep.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:11
  William Auten: So that that's kind of what you give up as a multi-line adjuster is you you don't specialize, meaning that there is gonna be some details that you're not really familiar with.
• 5:23
  William Auten: Um and and again, like my the first part of my career, I was I was um sure that the multi-line was the way to go.
• 5:33
  William Auten: And you know, a little hubris uh you know was involved too, where I thought I you know I can do it all.
• 5:42
  William Auten: Well, yeah, then I specialized in liability claims, and now I realize the stuff that we do here is so specialized that I would never expect um somebody, a multi-line adjuster, to just hop in here and know everything that we do um on a daily basis.
• 6:01
  William Auten: So anyway, that that being said, um I agree with you uh for the most part.
• 6:09
  Chantal Roberts: However, I I do feel that almost every adjuster should be a multi-lined adjuster and maybe start off that way and then figure out what they like because I I started off with being specialized with semi-tractor, trailer, rig, accidents, bodily injury for a specific amount, you know, uh very, very specialized, very narrow.
• 6:36
  Chantal Roberts: And I have seen adjusters who all they do are total loss automobiles for the state of Arkansas.
• 6:44
  Chantal Roberts: That would drive me up the wall.
• 6:45
  Chantal Roberts: I would be bored to tears, but that particular adjuster really liked it.
• 6:50
  Chantal Roberts: Um, I like the fact of being a multi-lined adjuster.
• 6:54
  Chantal Roberts: I became a multi-lined adjuster later on, like after three or four years in uh my insurance career.
• 7:02
  Chantal Roberts: And I liked the fact that I was working cargo one hour.
• 7:07
  Chantal Roberts: I was doing a liability claim the next hour, I was doing a property damage, you know, roof claim or a flood claim or a water burst claim the next hour.
• 7:16
  Chantal Roberts: I liked that kind of stimulation.
• 7:19
  Chantal Roberts: Now, was I better at one particular type of claim than the other?
• 7:25
  Chantal Roberts: I think that's what you're talking about too, is that you do, even as a multi-lined adjuster, find where you're good at.
• 7:32
  Chantal Roberts: But the reason I like to advise adjusters to start off being multi-lined is is you get a broad breath.
• 7:45
  Chantal Roberts: And let me say one thing as a caveat that I don't mean you start off on day one accepting 15 different types of policies.
• 7:54
  Chantal Roberts: You can't do that.
• 7:55
  Chantal Roberts: Right.
• 7:56
  Chantal Roberts: There's no way you can.
• 7:58
  Chantal Roberts: So, yeah, what I mean when I say multi-lined is spend five years being a property adjuster, first party property adjuster, and then maybe two years as the liability adjuster on a homeowner's claim or commercial general liability, and then move over to cargo or workers' comp or something like that.
• 8:21
  Chantal Roberts: So that by the time that you've been in the industry for 20 or so years, or 10 years even, you know, you you do have a good idea of how policies are read, how policies are interpreted, and how to adjust lots of different kinds of losses.
• 8:41
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 8:41
  William Auten: And your employer, uh, you you know, if you work for a larger insurance company, depending on the culture there, they may have um job postings that that they allow for folks to move from one discipline to another.
• 8:55
  William Auten: And that that's the best opportunity because if you're working in a place like that that does kind of have those open doors where uh people have the uh ability to to switch around, um, you're probably gonna learn more in an environment like that.
• 9:10
  William Auten: Um the alternative is to say, well, I don't like this this desk property job.
• 9:16
  William Auten: I would like to go do something else.
• 9:17
  William Auten: You might have to leave the company.
• 9:19
  William Auten: That's no fun.
• 9:19
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, it's not.
• 9:20
  Chantal Roberts: It's starting all over again and and that sort of thing.
• 9:23
  Chantal Roberts: And and that's what I did do at Liberty Mutual is I did the commercial general liability both for slip and falls and for semi-tractor trailer rigs.
• 9:34
  Chantal Roberts: And then I moved over to SIU and I became an SIU investigator.
• 9:38
  Chantal Roberts: And then I ultimately left Liberty Mutual and went over to MetLife and did something else.
• 9:44
  Chantal Roberts: But um, again, you know, looking at the different things, uh, and and I do want to say, if you if you happen to be a younger uh adjuster, give it some time because I think our young generations, as opposed to like the boomers or whatever, they were just like, I'm gonna be here for 50 years or whatever, and uh younger generations are like I'm gonna be here for a year and a half.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 10:11
  Chantal Roberts: Um you you need to you need to invest more time than that.
• 10:15
  Chantal Roberts: That's gonna be my my thing, especially when learning a a particular type and a particular line of claim.
• 10:22
  Chantal Roberts: Because like you said, you could just do Xactimate or you could just do first party property losses, you know, homeowners and become really, really good over 20 years, because over 20 years you've spent that time doing it, you know, over and over and over again.
• 10:42
  Chantal Roberts: Um but it's not gonna come in a year, it's not gonna come in a year and a half.
• 10:46
  Chantal Roberts: You're looking at probably three years to five years.
• 10:51
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 10:51
  William Auten: Um and some people settle into a specific line and they just they stay there because they love it.
• 10:59
  William Auten: And uh I've got I've got two brother-in-laws that are both property guys, one's in commercial, the other's in homeowners.
• 11:06
  William Auten: That's their lane.
• 11:08
  William Auten: They've been doing it now for 25 years, maybe 20, 25 years, and um they're perfectly happy.
• 11:16
  Chantal Roberts: And you know, there's even when we're talking about a multi-line adjuster, there there's even ways to get even more narrow because while I consider myself to be a multi-line digester, I like liability, but I again I like liability going through all the states.
• 11:35
  Chantal Roberts: You have specialized in liability in New York, so you're still like a multi-lined adjuster.
• 11:40
  Chantal Roberts: You've seen all the stuff, you can do all of the stuff you like, liability, and you've decided, you know what, I'm gonna stay in New York.
• 11:47
  Chantal Roberts: I'm not gonna look at New Jersey or Connecticut or Vermont or anything like that.
• 11:52
  William Auten: Not to say, we're actually licensed in Connecticut and we do work in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, so don't bring them in our chair geographic territory.
• 12:00
  Chantal Roberts: I'm just not that okay, I was just getting ready to say before I got so rudely interrupted, that you can't do those things.
• 12:08
  Chantal Roberts: It's just, you know, when you and I are talking, I might throw out Arkansas and Texas.
• 12:13
  Chantal Roberts: That's because that's where I grew up learning these sorts of liability claims, right?
• 12:18
  Chantal Roberts: You usually talk about New York because that's where you are.
• 12:21
  Chantal Roberts: If we had someone from California, they'd be talking about California and how weird it is.
• 12:26
  William Auten: Anyway, um well, within liability claims, you could be you could be the dog bite person.
• 12:32
  William Auten: Yeah, you know, the person that just handles dog bites, you know, everything there is to know about dog breeds and the laws that relate to dog bites and all that stuff.
• 12:41
  William Auten: You could be one that focuses just on the tavern industry and uh liquor liability claims.
• 12:47
  Chantal Roberts: Um those are good, yeah.
• 12:49
  William Auten: I mean, the the sky's the limit.
• 12:51
  William Auten: Uh exactly um personal auto versus commercial auto.
• 12:56
  William Auten: Uh commercial auto, you could pick us you could pick a subset there and just do accidents involving landscape companies or accidents involving delivery trucks um or mail trucks, you know, exactly.
• 13:09
  William Auten: Choose your poison.
• 13:12
  William Auten: There's opportunities all over the industry.
• 13:14
  Chantal Roberts: So let me ask you, do you think it's becoming more specialized?
• 13:18
  Chantal Roberts: Uh like insurance companies are driving adjusters to be mono-lined or only handling one line, or maybe one particular aspect of one line?
• 13:32
  Chantal Roberts: Or do you think it's always been this way?
• 13:35
  William Auten: I think that the industry has uh a patchwork of uh methodologies that there's no one I would say that just because the bigger carriers employ more people, um, it is the bigger carriers that tend to narrow down the focus and slot you into a very specific subset of the adjusting category.
• 14:00
  William Auten: So um that might because those bigger carriers employ more people, the impression is probably that it is going that way where it is becoming more specialized.
• 14:13
  William Auten: However, there are a lot of small carriers out there that have very small claims departments.
• 14:20
  William Auten: Uh many of our clients have one or two people in their claims department.
• 14:25
  William Auten: Some of them have 15.
• 14:27
  William Auten: Um, some of them have 30 or 40 or 50.
• 14:30
  William Auten: So uh those smaller ones, they can't afford to just have a person just only handle a specific type of claim.
• 14:38
  William Auten: Right.
• 14:39
  William Auten: In an environment like that, you have to be a generalist.
• 14:41
  William Auten: And when the storms come in, you're their liability person, but all of a sudden they're getting 20 property files in a day.
• 14:51
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 14:51
  William Auten: You you're gonna you're gonna jump ship and you're gonna have to help out.
• 14:55
  William Auten: And that that's what we see.
• 14:56
  William Auten: So um my my thought is that's always going to be the way because these small firm mutuals, there's there are thousands of them all over the country and they're still operating and they still need claims people in their claims departments.
• 15:11
  William Auten: And if you go to work for one of those to and say, I only handle XYZ kind of a claim, right?
• 15:20
  William Auten: Probably not gonna work out.
• 15:21
  William Auten: So um, but that if but if you want to be multi-line, those smaller carriers are the best place to to look.
• 15:28
  William Auten: Those and independent adjusting firms.
• 15:30
  Chantal Roberts: I was just getting ready to suggest independent adjusting.
• 15:34
  Chantal Roberts: And uh I always thought that the a good way to a good career way is the way that I did, about five years in a carrier and then go over to the independent adjuster field.
• 15:47
  Chantal Roberts: But let me ask you, um you know, this isn't um, I mean, adjusters all over the country are asking these questions.
• 15:56
  Chantal Roberts: And you said that you looked at Reddit to get some of these questions.
• 16:00
  Chantal Roberts: And you use it, you talked about a generalist.
• 16:03
  Chantal Roberts: Is that the same thing as an all lines adjuster?
• 16:09
  William Auten: So I've heard the phrase general adjuster or the title general adjuster.
• 16:14
  William Auten: In fact, that's that's what we uh most of our team members are designated as general adjusters, but that from our standpoint just has to do with their license.
• 16:24
  William Auten: They're licensed under New York, it's called the general adjuster's license, meaning you're you can do any of them.
• 16:32
  William Auten: So when you get that license, you you can handle property, they call it fire, um, auto liability, workers' compensation.
• 16:41
  William Auten: So that those are all under the general adjuster blanket.
• 16:45
  William Auten: Right.
• 16:45
  William Auten: Um I've also I've also seen that the general adjuster on the property side, if you got somebody called a general adjuster or a GA, those guys are usually the large loss people.
• 17:00
  William Auten: I don't know where that why that term came about, but um at one of the carriers I worked at there, they had like three general adjusters, and those they would travel you know thousands of miles to get to a big, you know, uh large loss.
• 17:17
  William Auten: So uh the the terminology can be weird in this industry sometimes, and that's one of the weirder, I think, right uh terms.
• 17:27
  Chantal Roberts: And but and I do think it's part of the issue too, because we can say, oh, we're adjusters, or we're customer service representatives, or you we're um I don't know.
• 17:42
  William Auten: We we were at uh one carrier I worked at, we were claims management specialists.
• 17:46
  William Auten: There you go.
• 17:46
  Chantal Roberts: And you're just like, dude, it it's a it's a like as Shakespeare said, a rose is a rose.
• 17:52
  Chantal Roberts: It doesn't really matter.
• 17:54
  Chantal Roberts: So yeah, all lines adjuster, multi-lined adjuster are gonna be those kinds of adjusters.
• 18:01
  Chantal Roberts: They're experienced adjusters who handle many different types of claims.
• 18:09
  Chantal Roberts: So uh you like you said, property, liability, workers' comp, cargo, uh maybe you do airs and emissions or DNO, directors and officers, uh that kind of deal.
• 18:24
  Chantal Roberts: So it can it can be any of those sorts of things.
• 18:28
  Chantal Roberts: Um, I would say that the the definition is definitely still accurate.
• 18:33
  Chantal Roberts: At least I do sometimes feel I'm I'm kind of out of the the loop sometimes since I'm not actually at a insurance company or an IA anymore, but I try to remain relevant by reading.
• 18:48
  William Auten: Yeah, well, it it it has there's so many things that have changed in the industry, but there are so many things that have not.
• 18:56
  William Auten: Um obviously AI is huge, and you know, the way that carriers are starting to use it is interesting and a little frightening.
• 19:08
  William Auten: Um I had one adjuster tell me works for uh a large carrier.
• 19:16
  William Auten: Actually, I he didn't tell me directly, I heard it secondhand, but um, he was told at their company that everybody should be using AI as much as possible in their work, which for us, we we have some strict rules around the use of AI.
• 19:38
  William Auten: And and I think most of the industry does.
• 19:42
  William Auten: Um I know like my wife works at a large corporation, they're very pro AI, that everything they do feeds into um co-pilot, I think it is.
• 19:52
  William Auten: Right.
• 19:53
  William Auten: Um but that falls under the Microsoft, you know, thing.
• 19:56
  William Auten: So as long as there's um, you know, security built in.
• 20:02
  William Auten: But to say blank to uh to issue a blanket statement to your team or your employees that just use it as much as possible, um, sounds like a recipe for disaster.
• 20:12
  Chantal Roberts: It does.
• 20:13
  Chantal Roberts: It does sound like a recipe for disaster.
• 20:15
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, I know that my husband, his company has uh given the statement that if you use AI, you must only use co-pilot because that's what they're doing.
• 20:26
  William Auten: They were whitelisted service.
• 20:28
  Chantal Roberts: Exactly.
• 20:29
  Chantal Roberts: And uh the reason why, if y'all don't know, is you could be uploading protected personal information that uh if it got out, it's a big fine.
• 20:45
  Chantal Roberts: We've kind of talked about that before with Medicare and Medicaid, about the protected health information and the HIPAA information, not to mention the fact that there have been a few court rulings, not about insurance, but I can see a plaintiff attorney arguing it for an insurance case that if an adjuster used AI, for example, to ask a question or do this or do that, then they have kind of like breached that uh privilege, so to speak.
• 21:22
  William Auten: So we have to be licensed as adjusters.
• 21:25
  William Auten: Um an attorney has to be a licensed attorney.
• 21:28
  William Auten: Um if you are depending on AI to make the call for you, AI is not licensed in either of those those aspects.
• 21:38
  William Auten: So it's a really weird problem to have because it's you can do legal research, yeah, and and that's okay.
• 21:48
  William Auten: Um how is it different when if you use AI to do that research for you?
• 21:53
  William Auten: I don't know.
• 21:54
  Chantal Roberts: Um I think the difference is that people are just representing.
• 22:00
  Chantal Roberts: Stamping, you know, or topshading it.
• 22:03
  Chantal Roberts: And Texas, for example, Texas, I wrote about this on LinkedIn.
• 22:07
  Chantal Roberts: Texas has come back and specifically said, uh, the Texas DOI has specifically said, you cannot do that.
• 22:15
  Chantal Roberts: You know, you can use AI no problem if you wanted to compare estimates or whatever.
• 22:21
  Chantal Roberts: But you as the adjuster have to approve what AI has done.
• 22:26
  Chantal Roberts: And my LinkedIn note was by the way, adjusters, you writing a claim note saying reviewed the AI and I approved it, it doesn't cut it.
• 22:37
  Chantal Roberts: Um, you need to do a little bit more.
• 22:40
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, and this this is talking about how the industry has changed.
• 22:44
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, you know, you when you and I started, there were paper files, there were film and cameras.
• 22:51
  Chantal Roberts: My very first job at my dad's AI firm or IA firm, independent adjuster firm, was taking his role of cameras that he that he took pictures throughout the day.
• 23:03
  Chantal Roberts: When I got off from school, I would go, I would grab you know, those roles and go drop them off at the hour developer, or he had already dropped it off at the hour developer, you know, film developer.
• 23:14
  Chantal Roberts: And my job was to go pick it up uh so that he could, you know, start posting it into the files.
• 23:20
  Chantal Roberts: Uh we did the same thing.
• 23:21
  William Auten: We had the 35 millimeter rolls, and um there was um there's two ways we could do it.
• 23:28
  William Auten: There was a small Photoshop in town and super nice guy.
• 23:34
  William Auten: He sold some cameras there, but his main service was film developing because that was a thing back in the mid like well for many, many years.
• 23:42
  William Auten: Right.
• 23:43
  William Auten: And I started in '96, so that time period, that's the way you did it.
• 23:48
  William Auten: Um, and then the other way was to go to uh the supermarket and you drop it off in a little put it in a little envelope with your name, right?
• 23:57
  William Auten: Drop it in there, come back.
• 23:59
  William Auten: Either way, we got free doubles.
• 24:02
  William Auten: They always printed like the big ups, you know, the the upside.
• 24:06
  William Auten: We wound up with two copies of every photo.
• 24:10
  William Auten: So for years, I would always take the risk photo in front of the house and I would save them.
• 24:16
  William Auten: And I had this big stack.
• 24:19
  William Auten: I I just got rid of it probably 10 years ago.
• 24:22
  William Auten: I found it in a box, and I'm like, why do I still have these?
• 24:26
  William Auten: And um, it was interesting to flip through them and see if I could remember some of the some of the claims, some of them I could because they were either really bad or whatever.
• 24:36
  William Auten: Um but yeah, back in the day, it wasn't too long after I started that the first digital cameras started to come out, and um I was all in.
• 24:48
  William Auten: I was like, these are great, this is the best thing ever.
• 24:52
  William Auten: I worked with uh a couple folks that were in their probably 30s and 40s, maybe 50s, and uh they didn't like it.
• 25:01
  William Auten: So our office got issued one digital camera for three people, and um, I was the only one that used it, nobody else wanted to use it.
• 25:11
  Chantal Roberts: So yeah, oh my.
• 25:12
  Chantal Roberts: Well, see, we used okay, as we go down memories.
• 25:16
  Chantal Roberts: Um this is so gonna be an advert.
• 25:19
  Chantal Roberts: Um, so we uh had the doubles, which was a big thing, but you know, we would mail because email wasn't a thing yet.
• 25:27
  Chantal Roberts: And when there wasn't color faxes, so pictures, photos didn't go over well when you faxed it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 25:35
  Chantal Roberts: So what we would do is we would keep the the copy in our file because again, as adjusters, you had to keep a clear file, and then our report would go off to our client um with the uh originals.
• 25:53
  Chantal Roberts: You know, we had fewer lawsuits back then.
• 25:56
  Chantal Roberts: There, of course, there was less electronic evidence.
• 25:59
  Chantal Roberts: There may be an electronic file where you would type in your time and expense, as we would call it, notes back in the day, or claim file notes back in the day, but everything was still paper.
• 26:10
  Chantal Roberts: Um, you know, there wasn't a a a scanning capability to put all of the insured's emails or faxes or whatever into the system.
• 26:22
  Chantal Roberts: And that's when you got really good at summarizing.
• 26:26
  Chantal Roberts: But today, uh like it actually, we were in a we were in a taxi in Barcelona, and there was a camera facing us as passengers.
• 26:39
  Chantal Roberts: And uh I thought, uh-huh, you know why he's doing this is because he's had customers who who get a little belligerent or whatever.
• 26:49
  Chantal Roberts: And so this is a way for him to protect himself that you're being recorded.
• 26:54
  Chantal Roberts: And and so it's one of the ways that the industry has changed as adjusters.
• 26:58
  Chantal Roberts: We would need to, of course, ask for that, but um, you've got ring cameras, dash cameras, cameras everywhere.
• 27:06
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, you've got people on cell phones taking recordings uh all the time, you know.
• 27:13
  Chantal Roberts: Uh so it has changed the the as the job has gotten faster with electronic, people's expectations have gone up.
• 27:23
  Chantal Roberts: We've talked about this before, where uh people just email you constantly and you're like, oh, okay, I have 24 to 48 hours to respond.
• 27:34
  Chantal Roberts: You know, please take a breath because I I have 250 other claims that I've got to work or whatever.
• 27:41
  William Auten: The the access to information today is huge too, and it and that actually makes it easier to become a multi-line adjuster because now you can get your questions answered more quickly.
• 27:55
  William Auten: Um, you know, if you've got uh a complex situation and you can't reach your supervisor, your mentor, or whatever, um, you can do a search, you know, and and uh Reddit is one of those places that uh continually feeds AI because it's such a huge resource of information.
• 28:16
  William Auten: Um is you know, is it all accurate?
• 28:19
  William Auten: No.
• 28:19
  William Auten: No.
• 28:20
  William Auten: Um so you kind of have to, you know, use your brain around some of these uh responses and post, but um, you know, it it'll get you closer to the answer than than you might have been 20 years ago or 30 years ago.
• 28:35
  William Auten: Absolutely.
• 28:36
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, and um yeah, I think that's that's it for me on on on that one.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 28:45
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 28:45
  Chantal Roberts: Well we're so suave when we change subjects.
• 28:49
  William Auten: We are, yeah.
• 28:50
  William Auten: Property versus liability.
• 28:52
  William Auten: What's your what's your favorite?
• 28:54
  Chantal Roberts: Uh I you know, I like liability.
• 28:56
  William Auten: Yeah, to pick down now today.
• 28:58
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, I I like liability a lot better.
• 29:01
  Chantal Roberts: Uh I mean why?
• 29:03
  William Auten: Why is that?
• 29:04
  Chantal Roberts: I think it's a I think it is a little bit more complex.
• 29:09
  Chantal Roberts: Uh I think personalities are more involved, and I like that challenge a little bit more.
• 29:18
  Chantal Roberts: Um, it is a little bit harder in the fact that you are usually dealing with a person who has been injured and they may not be the best person who uh they may not have the most what's the word I'm looking for, unbiased opinion about how how injured they are.
• 29:45
  Chantal Roberts: Or um I had to deal a lot with animal or or vet malpractice, veterinarian malpractice.
• 29:55
  Chantal Roberts: And that was hard, it was a liability because invariably we we would have inadvertently killed their animal.
• 30:05
  Chantal Roberts: And you know, having to tell someone that you are in a state that sees your beloved pet as a piece of property, and so I can give you$60 plus your med bills, right?
• 30:19
  Chantal Roberts: Your veterinarian bills, does not go over well.
• 30:23
  Chantal Roberts: Right.
• 30:23
  Chantal Roberts: Uh and and so I like liability in the fact that it does require more skill.
• 30:30
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, but that that's just me.
• 30:32
  William Auten: Maybe some people, you know, I've seen some really complicated property losses too.
• 30:38
  Chantal Roberts: This is very true, very true.
• 30:40
  William Auten: And I it's hard for me to say that one is is more nuanced or more complex or whatever, because both of them are rich with conflict and uh legal issues and legal disputes, emotions run high in both.
• 30:58
  William Auten: Yes.
• 30:58
  William Auten: Um, I mean, you can't say, well, people got hurt on the liability side, so they're they're more upset.
• 31:04
  William Auten: Now, when people lose their house, yes, they get pretty upset.
• 31:09
  Chantal Roberts: And all of their um, you know, grandma's silverware and you know, all of that kind of stuff, photographs, and yeah.
• 31:21
  William Auten: Oh, yeah, and that becomes then part of that that claim as well.
• 31:25
  William Auten: Um, just I mean, not not from a compensation standpoint on the property side, but it it is just now this cloak of right darkness over the whole file that that uh is always going to be there.
• 31:39
  William Auten: And you've got to maybe deal with a family who's lost their home and lost um a loved one.
• 31:44
  William Auten: Um, and it's that makes it tough.
• 31:46
  Chantal Roberts: So you know, uh this leads to the adjuster stress.
• 31:51
  Chantal Roberts: And Heather Blevins, who had co-hosted for a little while here, talks a lot about how adjusters are kind of like secondary people who absorb people's stress, and uh they're almost like a PTSD sort of deal where um people are undergoing like their home has been destroyed, or they've lost a loved one in an automobile accident, or uh they've lost some kind of capability, or their pet or whomever, whatever.
• 32:25
  Chantal Roberts: And an adjuster is getting yelled at a lot, and an adjuster is taking on that uh emotion and that stress.
• 32:34
  Chantal Roberts: Um, so do you think that being an multi-lined adjuster in that particular instance helps reduce that stress or does it increase that stress?
• 32:46
  Chantal Roberts: What what is your um take on that?
• 32:51
  William Auten: That's interesting.
• 32:54
  Chantal Roberts: Because, you know, like it's like you said, property can be just as fraught with emotion.
• 33:00
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 33:01
  William Auten: I would say though that the with property there's probably more opportunities to uh get into a rhythm.
• 33:12
  William Auten: So let's say you're multi-line adjuster and you've got to interview someone who was involved in a fatal auto accident in the morning.
• 33:20
  William Auten: That's tough.
• 33:21
  William Auten: Um, it's exhausting.
• 33:24
  William Auten: So you still got a laundry list of things to do that day.
• 33:29
  William Auten: Maybe just write, sit down and write some estimates from inspections that you did the day before, you know, and um just you can just check out of your emotions and just sit and do the uh go through the process of putting an estimate together uh to take your mind.
• 33:48
  William Auten: So there that switching is is kind of a benefit um on uh as a multi-line adjuster.
• 33:56
  William Auten: Um you if you're climbing roofs all week and you need a break, um, pick up your liability work and just go take some statements or some scene photos or something, you know.
• 34:08
  William Auten: Um one other benefit of being a multi-line adjuster is you do have, I think, just as a consequence of doing that type of work, you wind up having more autonomy in your day.
• 34:21
  William Auten: You don't have generally um someone breathing down your neck every five minutes.
• 34:27
  William Auten: Um the metrics are usually measured just like any other company.
• 34:32
  William Auten: Right.
• 34:33
  William Auten: But um I I would say that as a multi-line, the odds are that you will have more autonomy than in other lines of of business.
• 34:45
  William Auten: It's not always true everywhere.
• 34:47
  William Auten: I mean, I've worked in a multi-line environment where you know we got a call from a supervisor or manager every 30 minutes to make sure we were doing what we're supposed to do.
• 34:56
  William Auten: That's fun.
• 34:57
  Chantal Roberts: Oh yeah, that's that's a little micromanaging.
• 35:00
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, that is that is nuts.
• 35:02
  William Auten: Um it all depends on you know the environment that you're in.
• 35:07
  Chantal Roberts: So um which is another reason why I think since we're talking about stress, if you knew, if you if you had a bunch of, or not a bunch, if you had experience in different lines of business and one made you more stressed than the other, then I think that's why you would want to either consider going over to the one that you particularly like and is not stressful and you do really well at as opposed to staying a multi-lined adjuster or doing the kind of work that always makes you stressed and unhappy at work because we spend a lot of time at work, and so we might as well be happy while we're there.
• 35:55
  William Auten: You know, this job as a whole isn't for everybody.
• 35:58
  William Auten: Yeah, like some people come into this business and they say that that's just not the work for me.
• 36:04
  William Auten: I don't ever want to do that kind of work.
• 36:06
  William Auten: And there could be various reasons for it.
• 36:09
  William Auten: It might just be that you're just in the wrong line of business, you know.
• 36:12
  Chantal Roberts: Um it could be that.
• 36:14
  William Auten: Maybe you hate property claims because you're afraid of heights and you don't like roofs, and you decide that being a just an adjuster isn't for you, but you know, you could drive a desk um in another place, in another kind of um role, right?
• 36:31
  William Auten: And you might love that, and it might still be handling property.
• 36:35
  William Auten: Um so it's a very vast and colorful kind of um place to work, this business.
• 36:44
  William Auten: There's many, many different directions you could go.
• 36:48
  Chantal Roberts: Um so what is what about you?
• 36:54
  Chantal Roberts: Um you asked me, you asked me what if I were starting today, which which one would I go with?
• 37:00
  Chantal Roberts: And I said liability.
• 37:01
  Chantal Roberts: What what about you?
• 37:02
  William Auten: If you were starting over with well, if if multi-line is still an option, I would I would definitely pick that.
• 37:08
  Chantal Roberts: Well, of course.
• 37:09
  William Auten: That's where I started.
• 37:10
  William Auten: But yeah.
• 37:11
  William Auten: Um if I were starting today, that's a tough one.
• 37:18
  William Auten: That is really tough.
• 37:21
  William Auten: Um if if I was starting today with the the background that I had when I started on October 5th, 1996, uh a property.
• 37:33
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 37:34
  William Auten: Because that's what I was uh that's what I went to Lindsay Morden to do was handle property claims.
• 37:41
  William Auten: Um and a month into it, I was told we need we need multi-line.
• 37:46
  William Auten: So we're you we're sending you to liability school down the Vale.
• 37:49
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 37:50
  William Auten: So um, so that's what I did, and I was glad for it.
• 37:54
  William Auten: I was I learned a ton there.
• 37:58
  William Auten: And then um, because when you work for a large independent firm like that, back then anyway, you got to see some of the craziest stuff.
• 38:07
  William Auten: Like the claims that would come in were just bananas, and uh you learn real fast in an environment like that.
• 38:16
  William Auten: So um that's what I would say about that property, probably.
• 38:20
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:21
  William Auten: Cool.
• 38:21
  William Auten: So what's the um I had a question pop into my head though.
• 38:25
  William Auten: Of all the claims, types of claims out there, what's the worst type?
• 38:30
  William Auten: What would you avoid like if you had this assignment and had an opportunity to pass it off to somebody else, what would it be?
• 38:39
  William Auten: And it might it might take more thought than is uh than we have to do.
• 38:42
  Chantal Roberts: Let's just do like you know, knee-jerk reactions.
• 38:45
  Chantal Roberts: I never really cared for cargo claims.
• 38:49
  William Auten: Oh, okay.
• 38:50
  William Auten: Interesting.
• 38:50
  Chantal Roberts: Which is which is interesting because uh when we when we were doing cargo claims at my um previous job, you know, there were a lot of people who were intimidated by cargo.
• 39:04
  Chantal Roberts: And excuse me, uh, I would say, you know, why?
• 39:08
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, it's really liability, is what it is, but you're just dealing with property instead of people, right?
• 39:16
  Chantal Roberts: Um, I mean, that's what cargo is, is um someone was hauling it if that property that was being hauled belongs to someone else, that property got damaged, and so the owner is putting in a claim for their damaged property.
• 39:31
  Chantal Roberts: That's liability, you know.
• 39:33
  Chantal Roberts: So you would apply the same things.
• 39:35
  Chantal Roberts: I just um didn't like liability, uh, even though you're dealing with with business people, and usually a lot of a lot of adjusters will say dealing with commercial claims is almost better because there is sometimes that either professionalism or the um not so personal aspect people, yeah, people aren't as emotional about losing uh you know a load of uh of cargo exactly.
• 40:07
  William Auten: I mean, they may be.
• 40:08
  Chantal Roberts: They might be, but because I've worked plenty of plenty of commercial claims where you the the the insurance didn't have, for example, business interruption.
• 40:19
  Chantal Roberts: And because their building was on fire and and burnt, uh, a majority of the building burnt, you know, and it was gonna take six to eight months to repair, and they didn't have business interruption, their business was gonna go under.
• 40:34
  Chantal Roberts: So, yeah, they they got the ability to rebuild the building and start over again, but they weren't gonna make it.
• 40:41
  Chantal Roberts: Um, and so it got to be very personal because when you don't have business interruption, of course, you don't have uh income coming in, which means you can't make your mortgage payment, which means you can't pay yourself, you can't buy groceries, you can't do and and some business people don't think that way.
• 41:00
  unknown: Right.
• 41:00
  William Auten: And as it comes to a small business owner here, you know, uh if uh something happened uh where you know we couldn't we couldn't operate, um uh that that I'd get emotional.
• 41:11
  William Auten: You'd watch.
• 41:12
  William Auten: Absolutely.
• 41:13
  Chantal Roberts: Uh and the one, I mean, I didn't really work these claims.
• 41:16
  Chantal Roberts: I quote unquote worked them in SIU when I was in special investigations for fraud, but workers comp, I don't understand workers comp.
• 41:26
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, I know it's no fault, basically.
• 41:28
  Chantal Roberts: It is a whole different beast, and I understand that it's basically no fault, and you just start paying immediately.
• 41:35
  Chantal Roberts: Uh that part, I just can't get my little adjuster head wrapped around.
• 41:40
  William Auten: Um the concept, the the indemnity concepts and workers' compensation are almost flipped on their head if you're if you're used to handling liability.
• 41:52
  William Auten: Exactly.
• 41:52
  Chantal Roberts: Um you start paying first and then you continue to investigate.
• 41:56
  Chantal Roberts: And then if you realize that you don't owe it, well then you can stop, but you can't not pay until you determine.
• 42:03
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, you just start paying.
• 42:04
  Chantal Roberts: And sometimes payment isn't like within three days.
• 42:07
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 42:08
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 42:08
  William Auten: It's still it's much different.
• 42:11
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 42:11
  Chantal Roberts: I don't get it.
• 42:12
  William Auten: So that would be my choice for claims that I would uh quick very quickly hand off to someone else if I was able to, would be property damage liability and collision for personal auto.
• 42:25
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 42:27
  William Auten: Dealing with rentals and people screaming about their car and uh OEM parts and and now and now today we have um what's the depreciation uh the whole depreciation?
• 42:43
  Chantal Roberts: Like time quality.
• 42:44
  William Auten: No, no, there's oh diminished value claims.
• 42:47
  Chantal Roberts: Oh okay.
• 42:48
  Chantal Roberts: So let's just take a brief detour because I think this would be another good podcast.
• 42:52
  Chantal Roberts: Um here's my hot take.
• 42:55
  Chantal Roberts: I don't believe in depreciate, you know, recover or the diminished value claims.
• 43:01
  Chantal Roberts: I don't I don't get it.
• 43:02
  Chantal Roberts: I know it's a law.
• 43:03
  Chantal Roberts: Uh trust me, if I get into an automobile claim, I've never heard of it.
• 43:07
  William Auten: I I thought, I thought, well, that's ridiculous.
• 43:10
  William Auten: Then I the devil's always in the details.
• 43:13
  Chantal Roberts: The devil is in the details.
• 43:14
  William Auten: If you look at it, so for those who don't know, if your car you drive a brand new car off the lot and a week after you buy it, you get in a car accident.
• 43:24
  William Auten: So let's say that that car you bought it new for 60,000.
• 43:29
  William Auten: After a week of just driving it, it its value becomes 50,000, and then you get in a collision and it gets all fixed up.
• 43:37
  William Auten: But now because it's got a collision on its record, it's no longer worth 50,000.
• 43:42
  William Auten: It's worth 45,000.
• 43:44
  William Auten: That's$5,000 in difference.
• 43:48
  William Auten: Um, some savvy attorneys and things have decided that that's compensable under an auto policy, and that the auto policy should reimburse you for that damage as well under the collision code.
• 44:00
  Chantal Roberts: Coverage and um and it's more of a psychological thing.
• 44:04
  Chantal Roberts: I understand because you're absolutely right.
• 44:06
  Chantal Roberts: Um it but my point is if we repaired the vehicle correctly, there should be no diminishment of value, but it's a psychological thing.
• 44:15
  Chantal Roberts: It is because a lot of people are like, I don't want to take that car because I don't know if there's some kind of hidden damage that wasn't repaired, right?
• 44:24
  William Auten: It's it's a matter of of risk, right?
• 44:27
  William Auten: And because that risk now is attached to that car, um, you know, the it's the same risk of buying a used car versus a brand new car.
• 44:37
  Chantal Roberts: Exactly.
• 44:38
  Chantal Roberts: Um exactly.
• 44:40
  Chantal Roberts: So I totally agree.
• 44:42
  Chantal Roberts: Um, it's a hot take for me, though.
• 44:44
  Chantal Roberts: Okay, so uh we've we've talked about specialization uh versus being a general adjuster and the burnouts of both, and which would we do uh today?
• 44:58
  Chantal Roberts: What kind of advice would you give a brand new adjuster?
• 45:03
  Chantal Roberts: Would you say start off as an independent or would you say start off in the carriers?
• 45:10
  William Auten: That's a tough question too, because there's there's too many unanswered questions.
• 45:17
  William Auten: Like I I can't say any, I can't make a blanket statement about it.
• 45:20
  Chantal Roberts: But see, I'm you know me, I'm gonna make a blanket statement.
• 45:24
  William Auten: Everybody's different though.
• 45:25
  William Auten: And like if your skill set is in um, I don't know, maybe you're more of a bean counter than um an investigator.
• 45:35
  William Auten: Right.
• 45:36
  William Auten: You know, I'm gonna give you different advice as to what kind of adjusting you should be doing.
• 45:41
  William Auten: Um maybe you love outside, you hate the desk.
• 45:45
  William Auten: I got the answer, you know.
• 45:47
  William Auten: Um yeah.
• 45:49
  William Auten: So I I think I think before I would give anybody advice as to which line to pick or whatever, or to become multi-line, I think I would first want to know a little bit more about where they come from, what they like to do, what they hate to do.
• 46:06
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 46:07
  Chantal Roberts: Well, I can I can see that.
• 46:09
  Chantal Roberts: I though always like tell my students, for example, or I've always given the advice, go with the carriers, the ones that are going to ride you hard like a rented mule, you know, and and kind of put you up just till they break you, kind of deal.
• 46:31
  Chantal Roberts: And the reason is because yes, it's gonna suck, but you're going to get a lot of experience.
• 46:39
  Chantal Roberts: And after three years, you know, you would change uh from like property, for example, to liability.
• 46:49
  Chantal Roberts: And then once you get like 10 years of doing that, then I would go over into the independent uh sphere, is what I've always told people.
• 47:00
  Chantal Roberts: Because you can A, get a lot more money being an independent.
• 47:03
  Chantal Roberts: And it is, I think, a lot more fun being an independent because, like you said, you you get to do different things every day.
• 47:12
  Chantal Roberts: However, if you if you don't like that, then yes, stay in the stay in the carrier side of things.
• 47:21
  Chantal Roberts: I feel though, it would be really hard to start off as an independent.
• 47:29
  Chantal Roberts: I don't know.
• 47:30
  Chantal Roberts: I didn't start off as an independent.
• 47:32
  William Auten: Uh yeah, I did.
• 47:34
  William Auten: And if you if you do that, you need to be in an environment full of people that can mentor you.
• 47:41
  Chantal Roberts: Yes.
• 47:41
  William Auten: I think you don't want to get a license and just start um applying to independent firms to get on their roster.
• 47:52
  William Auten: Right.
• 47:52
  William Auten: I think that would be a mistake.
• 47:54
  William Auten: I think that you would you would rather you'd be better off finding um a place that has a uh an office near you with the principals of that company or managers of that company that can serve as your mentors and that you go to and and will supervise you.
• 48:14
  William Auten: Um, because if you're just flailing out in the abyss, getting assignments and not knowing what you're not gonna do well.
• 48:22
  William Auten: Um, and you're probably gonna not have any fun.
• 48:24
  Chantal Roberts: Yes.
• 48:25
  Chantal Roberts: I do want to point out uh one thing that we're talking about with quote, independent versus the carriers.
• 48:32
  Chantal Roberts: We also have third-party administrators, which technically was my firm, the one that I worked at, but we were also an independent.
• 48:41
  Chantal Roberts: So it is possible that you could work for a third-party administrator.
• 48:47
  Chantal Roberts: Um, I think Cunningham Lindsay is one, Crawford and Company is one where they both are third-party administrators for certain insurance companies, which means they handle the claims for that insurance company in addition to being an independent, which means that insurance company will hire you to only do one specific thing, like maybe take photographs or write an estimate or whatever.
• 49:16
  Chantal Roberts: So I guess if you were going into the independent sphere, you could still kind of simulate the insurance carrier environment.
• 49:30
  William Auten: Yeah, environment.
• 49:31
  William Auten: So uh so Lindsay Morden became Cunningham Lindsay.
• 49:35
  Chantal Roberts: Exactly.
• 49:35
  William Auten: Cunningham Lindsay got bought by Sedgwick.
• 49:38
  William Auten: Yeah, 2017, maybe 2016, something like that.
• 49:43
  William Auten: Um, so and Sedgwick is a huge TPA.
• 49:46
  William Auten: They bought York, which was another big one.
• 49:48
  William Auten: Um so and they have always have job listings.
• 49:54
  William Auten: Um and as far as actually finding a job, uh great insurance jobs.com.
• 50:03
  William Auten: That's a great place to go.
• 50:04
  William Auten: Um, and you'll see listings for multi-line property, general liability, auto.
• 50:09
  William Auten: You'll see all those listings there.
• 50:12
  Chantal Roberts: I see a lot of things on Indeed as well.
• 50:14
  William Auten: Indeed, yep, yep.
• 50:16
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, and LinkedIn.
• 50:18
  William Auten: I see a ton of stuff from LinkedIn, but anyway, um Insurance Recruiters.com is another website.
• 50:24
  William Auten: Uh, I think there's probably four or five uh insurance recruiters out there that that's all they do is they they just keep a database of uh potentials and they they post jobs.
• 50:37
  William Auten: And um if you if you can't find a job in the industry, I think you probably can.
• 50:46
  William Auten: Um I yeah, I think there's something for people.
• 50:50
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 50:50
  Chantal Roberts: If you're not if you're not getting hits back on your resumes that you're sending out and things, you would probably need to take a look at your resume.
• 50:59
  Chantal Roberts: Is what I is what I would suggest.
• 51:01
  William Auten: Yeah, for sure.
• 51:03
  Chantal Roberts: Uh because there definitely is always uh people wanting adjusters.
• 51:10
  William Auten: We there's always a need for them.
• 51:12
  William Auten: I mean, like we need half of one right now.
• 51:17
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah.
• 51:17
  William Auten: Like, you know, we need we need half of one in one city and half of one in another city.
• 51:22
  William Auten: So like I mean, I'll put this out there.
• 51:24
  William Auten: If you're if you are in Buffalo or Albany and you need some uh liability claims to help us with, then give us a call because we need some help.
• 51:33
  Chantal Roberts: Yep.
• 51:34
  William Auten: Um Yep.
• 51:35
  Chantal Roberts: So would I mean I think we've kind of talked about this.
• 51:39
  Chantal Roberts: Um, you think going broad first is best, and then figuring out if you want to specialize, right?
• 51:48
  William Auten: I think so.
• 51:49
  William Auten: Um if you've got the tenacity and and and you're tough enough to deal with things you don't like, become a multi-line adjuster because you'll see it all.
• 52:01
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 52:02
  William Auten: And that's you know how I learned to hate PD liability and collision.
• 52:08
  William Auten: So um so you know, I just don't do that.
• 52:12
  William Auten: Uh, I don't think a lot of people, there are probably some people who like doing that.
• 52:16
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, I'm sure.
• 52:17
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, you know, I don't mind it, actually.
• 52:19
  Chantal Roberts: I don't mind it.
• 52:20
  Chantal Roberts: It's just not, it's not my favorite.
• 52:21
  Chantal Roberts: I don't mind it though.
• 52:23
  Chantal Roberts: I is and and you know, this is one of the reasons why you and I are are very good together, I think, when we're talking, because I'm just the opposite.
• 52:31
  Chantal Roberts: I would start specialized, but move around every three to five years and then become a multi-lined adjuster because I this is a career that fits your personality.
• 52:45
  William Auten: Like whatever your personality is, exactly, you're gonna find the, you know, if you're more of a um what do I want, independent go-getter type person, problem solver, like if if your first inclination is to figure something out and fix it yourself before you go ask for help, probably a multi-line adjuster is a good fit for you.
• 53:08
  William Auten: Um, if you are afraid to do something wrong and you want to make sure that you've got um uh you know rules to follow and and books to read and people to call when you have a question, you maybe specialization might be uh that's might be the best for you.
• 53:23
  William Auten: Probably a very inaccurate and uh loose reason.
• 53:26
  Chantal Roberts: No, no, no, no.
• 53:27
  Chantal Roberts: I think I think you're I think you're absolutely right.
• 53:29
  Chantal Roberts: And you actually triggered a memory for me is one of the things that we started people off on was property damage at our third-party uh administrator, you know, uh homeowner claims, commercial property, building claims, easy, easy stuff.
• 53:46
  Chantal Roberts: And um, then we worked them up to liability and then we worked them up to, you know, cargo or automobile claims or something like that, something that kind of got a little bit more complex.
• 53:58
  Chantal Roberts: But I you you said if you were scared to make a mistake, and I knew that some of our new adjusters were petrified, petrified to move sometimes or to make a call.
• 54:16
  Chantal Roberts: And I'm like, just do it.
• 54:18
  Chantal Roberts: What's the worst that can happen?
• 54:20
  Chantal Roberts: And they would be like, oh, I I we're gonna get sued, and blah, blah, blah.
• 54:24
  Chantal Roberts: I'm like, we're gonna get sued anyway.
• 54:26
  Chantal Roberts: If you if you don't make a decision, they're gonna sue us.
• 54:30
  Chantal Roberts: So, you know, we and I think it it made the new adjusters feel better that as adjusters, we have the right to be wrong.
• 54:44
  Chantal Roberts: Or we have, you know, it we don't get punished necessarily if we are wrong, although it might feel like we do.
• 54:52
  William Auten: Um, but one of the toughest things to learn is go ahead.
• 54:57
  William Auten: Sorry.
• 54:58
  Chantal Roberts: Well, I was just gonna say, as long as it's not done maliciously and willfully and wantonly, you know, you can make a mistake.
• 55:05
  Chantal Roberts: It's okay.
• 55:07
  Chantal Roberts: It's okay.
• 55:08
  Chantal Roberts: We're human, we all make mistakes.
• 55:10
  Chantal Roberts: That's all I was gonna say.
• 55:12
  William Auten: Yeah, yeah, to an extent.
• 55:14
  William Auten: Like putting an extra zero on a check is not a good one to make.
• 55:18
  William Auten: Uh that's a big mistake, but um, but but if you're talking about deciding who's at fault in a case, and and both sides have different information.
• 55:30
  William Auten: Um, like I was just reviewing a case this morning, and we only had our insured's side and a witness's side of what happened.
• 55:38
  William Auten: Right.
• 55:39
  William Auten: Um, the other side they immediately sued it.
• 55:44
  William Auten: So all we know is what's in the summons and complaint.
• 55:46
  William Auten: Right.
• 55:47
  William Auten: So, you know, we can look at a summons and complaint and talk to our guy, and our guy's like, well, the no, and that's a no, and that's a no.
• 55:55
  William Auten: So um, you know, starts to look like a denial right away, or you know, this is a defensible case right away.
• 56:03
  William Auten: And then, you know, six months later, uh, an attorney provides us with a package of information that we didn't have any of this stuff before, and it just totally changes the the the picture of the case.
• 56:16
  William Auten: And um, so it's not getting it wrong, it's just a matter of having new information and and now you're enlightened.
• 56:26
  William Auten: Um and you can change your opinion, you can change your opinion, you know.
• 56:30
  William Auten: We reserve the right to change our opinion, and that happens on coverage too.
• 56:33
  William Auten: It does all the time.
• 56:35
  William Auten: A property claim where it looks like it's not covered, um, can flip on its head once you learn something new about it.
• 56:43
  William Auten: And and then you just say, Oh, well, okay.
• 56:46
  William Auten: We and that's not an insurance company um taking a an unreasonable stance on something.
• 56:54
  William Auten: No, it's just them working with the information that they have.
• 56:58
  William Auten: Exactly.
• 56:59
  William Auten: So anyway, that's my spiel.
• 57:01
  Chantal Roberts: Well, you know, and it's a and it's a very good spiel, spiel, yes.
• 57:07
  Chantal Roberts: Because it and again, one of the advice that I give to adjusters is look, when we think that there's gonna be a coverage issue, you know, we're gonna send out a reservation of rights letter.
• 57:19
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, you don't do that in New York, but anyway, go with me on this one.
• 57:23
  Chantal Roberts: And we explain to the insured, look, I don't think there's gonna be coverage.
• 57:28
  Chantal Roberts: And I'm gonna send you a letter, it's gonna explain why, but I'm gonna tell you right now, uh, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 57:35
  Chantal Roberts: And this is your chance to send me information that would help show that there's coverage.
• 57:44
  Chantal Roberts: And and that kind of clues into the insured that they don't automatically start yelling at you.
• 57:50
  Chantal Roberts: Like, what do you mean you're gonna deny my coverage?
• 57:52
  Chantal Roberts: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 57:53
  Chantal Roberts: You know, but no, that's why do I buy insurance?
• 57:55
  Chantal Roberts: Exactly.
• 57:56
  Chantal Roberts: I pay premiums for 15 years, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 57:59
  Chantal Roberts: We've all heard it.
• 58:00
  Chantal Roberts: Anyway, we can buy islands, private islands, with the nickels that we get from hearing that thing over and over and over again.
• 58:07
  William Auten: My father-in-law had a claim.
• 58:09
  William Auten: Uh, I helped him with it last week.
• 58:11
  William Auten: And he um, I don't know why it was even there.
• 58:14
  William Auten: He just wanted me there.
• 58:15
  William Auten: So he he called his his company up and and they did the whole claim process.
• 58:19
  William Auten: It was interesting to see the claim process being handled by uh another company and um the the how the the process they use to for intake and things like that.
• 58:30
  William Auten: Um, but he said that to the guy.
• 58:33
  William Auten: Oh the that guy said the the guy finally at the um at the end of the call, he said, I just wanted to let you know uh this is a covered claim.
• 58:41
  William Auten: And uh my father-in-law sat back and he's 80, 82.
• 58:46
  William Auten: Uh he goes, Well, I should hope so.
• 58:48
  William Auten: I've been paying you guys money for all these years, never once made a claim.
• 58:52
  William Auten: What do I even buy insurance for?
• 58:54
  William Auten: And I just I just belly laughed.
• 58:57
  William Auten: Right, right.
• 58:58
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, wow.
• 58:59
  Chantal Roberts: And he was an adjuster, and he was an adjuster too, you know.
• 59:04
  William Auten: No, I have no, not not him.
• 59:06
  William Auten: Uh, I have two father-in-laws.
• 59:08
  William Auten: I was married twice.
• 59:09
  William Auten: So sorry, and I always so my my father-in-law on my ex-wife's side.
• 59:15
  William Auten: I see.
• 59:16
  William Auten: Okay, okay, okay.
• 59:17
  William Auten: And I'll I'll name drop his name is Bob Hersey, and he was a Crawford manager for 40 some odd years.
• 59:22
  William Auten: There you go.
• 59:23
  William Auten: Okay.
• 59:23
  William Auten: And um, great guy.
• 59:25
  William Auten: He's the reason I'm an adjuster.
• 59:27
  William Auten: Um, and uh my other father-in-law, I see, Bobbo, um, he's the one who had he was never a claims guy, no.
• 59:38
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
• 59:39
  Chantal Roberts: I didn't know you were married twice.
• 59:40
  Chantal Roberts: Well, there you go.
• 59:41
  Chantal Roberts: We learned something about Bill today.
• 59:43
  William Auten: Hey, the secrets out.
• 59:45
  Chantal Roberts: There you go.
• 59:45
  William Auten: Hey, um, okay, so uh businesses, I think carriers are going towards specialized insureds or insurance adjusters more because I think they have to because you as a big organiz organization, if you've got a roster of 2,000 adjusters across the world, across the country, keeping keeping them all trained at the level that you need to be trained at to be a competent multi-line adjuster would be hard.
• 1:00:22
  William Auten: Impossible.
• 1:00:22
  William Auten: Impossible, I think.
• 1:00:24
  William Auten: Um you'll have your you're always gonna have your key players, you know, the the folks that have been there a very long time and and actually are functioning as a multi-line adjuster, but you have to slot people in to very specialized things just because of the volume of the work you do, I think.
• 1:00:43
  William Auten: Yeah, like this guy we talked to at at my father-in-law's story, you can tell that that's all this guy does is in claims intake.
• 1:00:51
  William Auten: You know, he's not an adjuster.
• 1:00:53
  William Auten: He he uh he just his job is to just take that and he was really good at it, excellent personality for it.
• 1:01:00
  William Auten: He was he was in the right job for him, right?
• 1:01:04
  William Auten: You know, and and he said he had been doing it for 20, 25 years or something.
• 1:01:08
  William Auten: Um so you know, there's lots of opportunities and claims.
• 1:01:14
  Chantal Roberts: Um tons, which I think is the reason why it's such a great job.
• 1:01:18
  William Auten: I still do.
• 1:01:19
  William Auten: I think it's a great job.
• 1:01:20
  William Auten: And and if you do read Reddit, you're gonna find a lot of people complaining about it, about the job and that it sucks and they hate it.
• 1:01:27
  William Auten: And um but that's just the way the internet is.
• 1:01:33
  Chantal Roberts: So Yeah, you know, there you go.
• 1:01:35
  Chantal Roberts: Um, so I think we've kind of we've talked about look at your own personality and see, you know, Bill would say start broad and and then figure out what you like and then go to to the specialist.
• 1:01:52
  Chantal Roberts: I would say start specializing, move around a little bit, and then you know, go broad and maybe have an emphasis in what you have, what you like.
• 1:02:04
  William Auten: And I think it's like you said, I think it's great that we have a different opinion there because uh 50% of the people listening are gonna be like, oh, what Bill said makes a lot of sense.
• 1:02:14
  William Auten: And the other people are gonna say, Oh, Chantel said make a lot of sense.
• 1:02:18
  William Auten: Um, so different strokes for different folks, and that's exactly the beauty of uh of the business we're in.
• 1:02:25
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, but I would say, regardless of what you decide to do, learn everything you can.
• 1:02:31
  Chantal Roberts: I mean, just we would do this on purpose at my company, for example.
• 1:02:36
  Chantal Roberts: We would take our property guys who really loved property, and when we would send them off to seminars or whatever, we would deliberately enroll them into liability web seminars, not all the time, but once in a while.
• 1:02:53
  Chantal Roberts: And then when they came back to the office, they had to report to the rest of the adjuster.
• 1:02:58
  Chantal Roberts: So it was kind of like, you know, we were teaching ourselves sort of thing.
• 1:03:02
  Chantal Roberts: But uh again, uh, they kind of hated it because they're like, I don't like liability, I don't want to learn it.
• 1:03:08
  Chantal Roberts: But the reason why you're learning it is because you do actually pick up some stuff from other lines of business or other investigative techniques or whatever that can help you in your property claims or they can help you with your liability claims because it's the different way of thinking.
• 1:03:25
  Chantal Roberts: So uh just because you're in auto liability, for example, or auto first party, for example, don't not go to the opposite line of a webinar or a seminar or something like that.
• 1:03:42
  Chantal Roberts: Go to it and see if you never know when duty will call.
• 1:03:45
  William Auten: Uh also, you know, you could be over on the property side, pay as a clam, but then you get word that, you know, um some big accident happened and a busload of people got hurt and they need all hands on deck to process claims and you know, whatever.
• 1:04:01
  William Auten: Um, it's good to be well-rounded.
• 1:04:04
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, and and I think that's the reason I like a multi-lined adjuster so much is that they are well-rounded and you can fit anywhere.
• 1:04:16
  Chantal Roberts: And that's why I say, hey, you know, if you become a multi-lined adjuster, you can pretty much command your salary because someone's gonna need you.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 1:04:26
  Chantal Roberts: You know, so um I don't think that a multi-lined adjuster is necessarily dead or um out of place.
• 1:04:34
  Chantal Roberts: Uh I just think we should become one, kind of specialize where we want to specialize, but still be one.
• 1:04:42
  Chantal Roberts: So we can have podcasts and talk about a lot of different things and be experts.
• 1:04:49
  William Auten: I don't think it's dead either.
• 1:04:51
  William Auten: Um, I I think that um there are segments of the industry that have them in place because they need them in place.
• 1:04:59
  William Auten: And if you decide that that's what you want to be, you have to understand that you're gonna have to go to one of those places and you have got to have the personality for it.
• 1:05:08
  William Auten: Yeah.
• 1:05:08
  William Auten: Um but uh I I think the the blinders come on when people hear it because they think that that's um that's either the way everybody is or the way uh or they've never heard of it.
• 1:05:22
  William Auten: Right.
• 1:05:22
  William Auten: As evidenced in Revit Reddit, the first comment here is what the hell is an all lines adjuster?
• 1:05:29
  William Auten: Huh?
• 1:05:30
  Chantal Roberts: We've answered that now.
• 1:05:32
  William Auten: I hope so.
• 1:05:32
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, so unfortunately we can't like promote ourselves on Reddit.
• 1:05:36
  Chantal Roberts: So, but if one of our fans want to say, Hey, they've just been talking about this, so go listen to them.
• 1:05:43
  Chantal Roberts: Please do.
• 1:05:43
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, but we can do it ourselves.
• 1:05:46
  William Auten: There is a um somebody commented about your book on Reddit.
• 1:05:49
  William Auten: Oh, they did.
• 1:05:49
  William Auten: If you do a search for your book, oh uh The Art of Adjusting, someone uh has made a comment and they put it in a list of books that they recommended.
• 1:05:56
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, goodie because I was gonna say, hopefully they it wasn't something good.
• 1:05:59
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, good.
• 1:06:00
  Chantal Roberts: Well, hopefully it was like something good, like um for all by all means, do not read.
• 1:06:05
  William Auten: Actually, I'm there might be another one from me, and I don't even know what my username.
• 1:06:10
  William Auten: It's like some something alchemist 324 slash.
• 1:06:13
  William Auten: I don't know what it is, but um anyway.
• 1:06:17
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, there you go.
• 1:06:18
  Chantal Roberts: So I think we've wrapped this one up.
• 1:06:20
  Chantal Roberts: We have.
• 1:06:21
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, we're we'll be back in um two weeks, which by the way, spoiler alert, it is my birthday, it's July 30th, is gonna be um, so yay!
• 1:06:33
  William Auten: Extra special.
• 1:06:34
  Chantal Roberts: It's gonna be not gonna say what it's just special, but we have an extra special surprise.
• 1:06:39
  William Auten: We have to tease it a little bit.
• 1:06:40
  William Auten: We do have to tease it.
• 1:06:42
  William Auten: Everybody know that there's something really cool coming up for the next episode.
• 1:06:48
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, not just that it's my birthday, so we're gonna be celebrating.
• 1:06:51
  Chantal Roberts: When's your birthday?
• 1:06:52
  Chantal Roberts: The 30th?
• 1:06:53
  Chantal Roberts: The 30th, yeah.
• 1:06:54
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, okay.
• 1:06:55
  Chantal Roberts: Yay me.
• 1:06:56
  Chantal Roberts: Yay you.
• 1:06:57
  Chantal Roberts: Woo! Um, so be sure to like, subscribe, comment, share on Reddit, you know, all of those fun things.
• 1:07:04
  Chantal Roberts: Uh, and shoot us questions because we're happy to answer questions uh or troll us.
• 1:07:11
  Chantal Roberts: We do like trolls too.
• 1:07:12
  William Auten: Um I'd be giddy if if I did a search on on Reddit and found one of our podcasts that talked about criticized.
• 1:07:20
  Chantal Roberts: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:20
  William Auten: I mean, go ahead, give it right between the eyes, give it to you.
• 1:07:24
  Chantal Roberts: Yeah, like the one troll said, delete this podcast.
• 1:07:27
  Chantal Roberts: You don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:07:28
  Chantal Roberts: Go for it.
• 1:07:30
  Chantal Roberts: You know, because that's the one thing about being an adjuster, you get really thick skin.
• 1:07:34
  Chantal Roberts: So, I mean, you know, when people call me the B word, I'm like, oh, I feel sane.
• 1:07:41
  Chantal Roberts: I feel silly.
• 1:07:41
  William Auten: There's no further responses to that, was there?
• 1:07:44
  Chantal Roberts: No, no, no, because obviously it was just a troll.
• 1:07:49
  Chantal Roberts: Just a troll, just a troll.
• 1:07:51
  Chantal Roberts: So, anyway, yeah, like, comment, subscribe, all of that kind of fun stuff.
• 1:07:55
  Chantal Roberts: And I'll see you in two weeks.
• 1:07:57
  William Auten: See you in two weeks.
• 1:07:58
  William Auten: Bye.
• 1:07:59
  William Auten: Bye-bye.
• 1:07:59
  William Auten: Thanks for joining us on the Art of Adjusting Podcast, where we talk about life as an insurance adjuster.
• 1:08:05
  William Auten: Hit that subscribe button real quick and tell all of your adjuster friends to check this out as well.
• 1:08:10
  William Auten: For independent adjusting services, go to www.autin.claims.
• 1:08:14
  William Auten: And for anyone interested in working as an independent liability adjuster, go to the contact us tab to join our roster.
• 1:08:22
  Chantal Roberts: So this wraps up another Art of Adjusting podcast.
• 1:08:26
  Chantal Roberts: If you enjoyed this podcast or this episode, please give us five stars and a review.
• 1:08:32
  Chantal Roberts: It does help the algorithm pick us up.
• 1:08:34
  Chantal Roberts: In the meantime, you can contact me at theartofadjusting.com for consulting and training purposes.