Larry Thomas

Global President

Crawford Specialty Solutions: Contractor Connections/GTS

When major events involving large complex claims or catastrophes occur, they do not catch Crawford by surprise. The Large Loss, CAT and Complex Claims divisions of Crawford & Company were closely tracking Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria in 2017 to make preparations in advance of deployment. Larry Thomas, Global President of Crawford Specialty Services, which includes the Global Technical Services™ (GTS) and Contractor Connection divisions, was involved in helping coordinate efforts to assist clients with adjuster and contractor resources.

“We had a number of adjusters deployed to the different islands including Puerto Rico, helping our commercial clients with recovery in line with our mission to restore and enhance lives, businesses and communities,” Thomas said.

The Atlanta-based company, founded in 1941, is the world's largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management and outsourcing solutions to brokers, carriers and corporates with an expansive network of experts serving clients in more than 70 countries. The triple hurricane impact called upon its global organization – which was restructured to global service lines to better serve customers locally, regionally and around the world.

Crawford's global capability provides clients expanded resources and claims expertise both locally and globally. The GTS division has over 400 adjusters in over 140 locations worldwide, providing various services ranging from complex property and casualty, oil and energy, aviation, forensic accounting, cyber and more, providing solutions to the construction, hospitality, real estate, and mining industries.

This global capability allows Crawford to mobilize adjusters within their countries as well as around the world. In response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, adjusters were mobilized from the UK, Australia, Canada and Latin America, providing much needed complex specialty loss adjusting resources.

“Being a global company and operating our GTS as a global service line provides advantages in resource deployment as well as developing best practices globally,” Thomas said. “We're able to take local market expertise from one country and share and educate the best practices to our other countries where that expertise is needed.”

Crawford provides claims solutions to the industry, and global complex large loss handling is the GTS division's expertise. These claims stretch from property loss adjustment to handling medical malpractice claims and everything in between. Whether it's a large auto tire distribution center with a fire loss, a power outage in a vacation resort, or servicing a hundred million-dollar factory flood, Crawford has the resources and claim expertise.

“Every day we experience different claims in different markets,” Thomas said. “Our adjusters will handle local claims in their market, or travel anywhere in the world to support our carriers, brokers and corporate clients.”

Thomas believes Crawford's ability to execute a broad portfolio of global solutions in diversified environments, and to various cultures and continents is what sets them apart.

“Our clients expect the same level of consistency they have within their own organizations and alliances; they know they can expect a consistent high level of service and expertise through us,” Thomas said. “The languages may be different, but we do our best work when we adopt best practices from different parts of the world. We serve locally but operate globally, which is the reason behind our global service lines structure – and the key to us providing a consistent level of customer experience across the globe.”

For more from Crawford visit: https://www.crawco.com/ or https://www.crawfordgts.com/