Mr. Neale said that, in the long run, the industrys difficulty in rewarding good adjusters with higher pay is shortsighted because of the steep costs involved in hiring and training replacements to fill vacancies.

Indeed, Grover Davis, president and chief executive officer of Crawford and Company, the Atlanta-based independent adjusting firm, noted that the acquisition cost involved with hiring new adjusters is $5,000 to $10,000.

Mr. Davis said that part of the reason for adjuster turnover is that hiring is done “for convenience, not expertise.” The high turnover rate, which sees many adjusters working for four employers in the space of four years, will not decrease “until we change the selection process,” he added.

Nancy Brennan, director of product development for Hartford Specialty Risk Services, said that some of the job changing that goes on might result from the fact that recent college graduates are not looking for a long-term employment relationship. A “generational” factor may be at work, she suggested.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, September 2, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.