The Independent Mitigation and Cleaning/Conservation Network is officially open for business. The organization was created to link insurers with independently owned and operated mitigation, cleaning, and restoration companies across the country, while providing the necessary tools and training to assure mission success.

If you ask IMACC President Pat Harmon why he is doing this, his response will be, “Something new and different had to be done.” During his decade with the Property Loss Research Bureau as assistant vice president of educational and technical services, Harmon observed steady and profound changes in the business of claims. These included a shift from long-term, local, personal relationships between adjusters and service providers to centralized decisions and a growing need for broad-market consistencies. Local claim offices have all but vanished, except in the largest cities. Claim expenses have been reduced dramatically. In many cases, adjuster workloads have quadrupled, and average loss severity has far out paced inflation. At the same time, more than 30,000 independent agents either have closed their doors or have been absorbed by larger agencies. Fragmented local claim marketplaces are coalescing into a giant national market.

Like many of us in the business of claims, Harmon believes that there is a direct relationship between adjuster attention to individual claims and loss severity. Furthermore, while direct repair programs and preferred provider networks have helped reduce loss adjustment expenses, they were not entirely successful in the arenas of indemnity control and customer service. Provider programs that ask contractors to scope the damage, write competitively-priced estimates, hold the line by not performing work that is not loss-related, while keeping property owners happy simply do not work.