If claim association membership is any indication, from the few claim club lists this writer has seen recently, the most active members are independent property adjusters. Where are the insurance company adjusters? Where are the liability or workers' comp adjusters? Most of these associations offer continuing education programs, some of which are liability-based, but more often their programs seem to involve presentations by “vendors,” guys who sell services such as restoration or remediation used by property insurers. As many insurers simply use an approved contractor on a homeowners' claim, or call in an engineering firm to assess coverage, liability, and damage factors on a larger commercial property loss these days, even the role of the independent property adjuster seems to be waning. Except for limited assignment activities, the “full claim assignment” for either a property or casualty adjuster seems to be a thing of the earlier 20th Century.

If so, where will the experienced leaders for our industry come from in the near future? Very few insurance companies these days “push” their claim representatives to join a claim association. There is little, if any, loss and risk education; it's “training.” Well, that's a bit like saying if you are “toilet trained” you are either qualified to be a plumber or an internal medicine physician. Training isn't “education.”

I got a hint of this a few years ago when I saw that the National Association of Independent Insurance Adjusters were listing Pat Magarick's Successful Handling of Casualty Claims and Reed & Thomas's Adjustment of Property Losses as recommended reading. Both have been out of print for at least twenty years, Magarick's book replaced by a three-volume text updated twice a year that I seriously doubt one percent of those is the claim industry have ever seen. That is probably because it is not a training manual–it's a university-level textbook. It explains the “why” of claims and loss, not just the “how to.” It takes more than a cookbook to make a chef.