I lately shared a publish titled “Public Adjusters Want To Increase The Bar For Admission If They Need To Be Seen As Professionals,” which sparked a energetic and insightful dialogue. I’m actually grateful for all of the partaking responses and concepts which have been shared.
In essence, I echoed within the publish a sentiment shared by Brian Goodman, the Common Counsel of NAPIA, and Steve Badger in a presentation they made this week on the First Social gathering Claims Convention: the necessity for public adjusters to raise the requirements for acquiring a license. It is a subject I’ve typically introduced up in my ethics speeches to varied public adjusting associations. I’ve privately raised it with public adjusting leaders.
The main focus of the publish, Donice Krueger, who occurs to be my higher half and a Licensed Public Accountant, raised an intriguing query. She puzzled if policyholders are conscious that hiring somebody with a public adjuster’s license may generally imply entrusting their claims to somebody who won’t be totally competent for the duty. As an instance this level, Donice, with out prior expertise in public adjusting, studied for about 4 hours utilizing a guidebook and efficiently obtained a Texas public adjusting license.
This revelation led to varied reactions, with some shifting the dialog as to whether insurance coverage firm and unbiased adjusters also needs to have increased necessities. Others recommended that the main target needs to be on eliminating dangerous actors inside the insurance coverage trade. One attention-grabbing perspective was that some may see it as a viable enterprise mannequin to acquire a license with minimal competence after which delegate the precise work to others, basically a “bait and swap” method.
This brings us to a basic query for all public adjusters who care deeply about their career: Can we need to permit the licensing of people who is probably not totally competent to deal with claims on behalf of policyholders?
I suggest that the reply needs to be easy – both “sure” or “no.” It’s a matter of deciding whether or not we view public adjusting as an important and revered career that calls for stringent entry requirements or if we’re content material with a system that probably permits unqualified people to symbolize policyholders.
I invite everybody within the public adjusting neighborhood to replicate on this and contemplate what steps we will take to make sure the career is held within the excessive regard it deserves. Your ideas and strategies on this matter usually are not solely welcome however important for our collective progress and enchancment—me included.
I counsel that these on this subject additionally take a couple of minutes to learn The Professionalism and Ethics of a Property Insurance coverage Adjuster.
Thought For The Day
Your life doesn’t get higher by probability, it will get higher by change.
—Jim Rohn
