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trader
USA
236 Posts |
 Posted - 01/10/2004 : 15:27:21
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| Most Auto BI-PD temp adjusters make from $20.00 to $30.00 per hour. Its the market conditions at the time. If you work storms for 26 weeks x 16 hrs per day, that 2912 hours devided by your goal of $100,000. take 30% off the gross for expense and depreciation, then 32% for tax man you are getting close to the Auto Temp adjusters at home, but you have the travel experience. |
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CCarr
Canada
1200 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 15:51:06
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Kile, going back to your post, yes, in a sense it is the 'market' that is affecting the fortunes of those that do cat claims; whether as a "handler", estimator or adjuster. "We" are what is driving that market, by the complacency of some for the income derived and by the joy of others for the income derived.
However, I do disagree with your comments that, ".... the carriers are apparently happly with what they are getting becuase if they weren't they would be looking for OTHER WAYS TO GET WHAT THEY WANT ....". I capitalized the focus part of what I disagree with in your comments.
The carriers over the last 2 to 5 years have taken and made large steps to get what they want, that has broken the traditional cat claim concept as it used to exist. Much discussion has taken place in these forums relative to cat claim call centers, and the taking away of the adjustment process in the field handling of cat claims. Carriers are working towards fine tuning these "other ways to get what they want" and increasing the share of the pie that those alternate sources of handling will chew up.
I suggest that in response to carriers being unhappy with the quality of the work, for the reasons you have stated, and that instead of implementing the solution you have stated; that carriers are focusing on these alternative claim methodologies.
As for the pendulum, my opinion is as I stated earlier. The tarpots and the like will continue to enjoy 'work', that for the large part is not adjusting 'work'; until such time that financial and best practices reviews reveal the downsides to the increased and increasing segment of the cat claim pie being consumed in that manner. Then, the pendulum will swing and the real claims people - adjusters - will once again have their value recognized as a benefit and intregal part of the system.
I have to add, that I wish I knew who "R.V. Winkle" was. His or her posts have a grasp of what is happening in the marketplace, and are expressed in a professional manner.
It is unsettling, that by and large, the population of this community has a fear of vendors. Although I don't have an answer to the problems confronting those who are adjusters and choose to derive their income from cat claims, I do suggest that complacency with the current conditions and schedules, and any hesitantcy to confront vendors about this; will only allow that pendulum to swing further and longer away from the adjusters side of value. |
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trader
USA
236 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 16:31:15
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Kile I have a question for you to consider? If the Insurance Company you work for called you and said " Kile we love your work, but we have to make some changes in our budget process starting on the first of Feb. What we propose to you is for you to inspect and email us your report with the camera and computer we supply for $50.00 per house, but we must have a vendor to insulate us from you, aned you can have your choice of the 6 listed, but we are only paying them the agreed fee of $10.00 each house you inspect. You will note one new unknown vendor on the list; however you must choose one. Please let us know by the deadline date.
Best wishes to and you family if you decline this one time offer and new trend. Sincerly, BIG INSURANCE COMPANIES |
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trader
USA
236 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 17:04:40
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| The fee schedule was devised by GAB in the middle 1950,s They sold it as "thier stats as the largest property adjuster in the US, who only worked for the stock insurance companies, and not the mutual co's ; presented the schedule for storm and regular losses. It was based on time & expense. 3-4 regular non complicated per day, 5-6 non complicated storm claims per day. It was about $35to $45 per house. It caught on with the local IA,s working the mutual losses, and its still used. When this did not kill off the independants (We did not think of GAB as independant) in the middle 1960,s GAB dropped the "Closed without payment fee" to $4.50 per house and we all met it and survived. Dont you know who the mutual companies learned from. Now the mutual companies have 60-65% of the US Homeowners market. Hold on gang, its coming. |
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JimF
USA
1014 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 18:55:30
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And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...
The February 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly reports that insurance claim and policy processing clerks will be among the ten occupations with the largest projected decline over the period from 2000-2010 with a projected loss of 58,000 jobs. They also show the median annual wage for these positions as $28,870.00.
*The source for their story are US Department of Labor projections, with the loss in insurance jobs as the fourth worst among the top ten.
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Gale
USA
231 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 19:11:44
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| Jim did it indicate why the insurance execs were forecasting this drop.I can't see them as being able to forecast the number of claims to decrease so they must plan to handle the same load with less staff some how? |
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JimF
USA
1014 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 19:26:36
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Gale, the report was more along the lines of just listing the top ten occupations for projected job growth and the top ten list for job decline.
A synopsis of both lists is as follows;
Top Ten Occupations with the largest projected job growth (in order of number of jobs):
Combined food preparation & serving, including fast food +630,000
Customer-service rep +631,000
Registered nurse +561,000
Retail salesperson +510,000
Computer support specialist +490,000
Cashier, except gaming +474,000
Office clerk, general +430,000
Security guard +391,000
Computer software engineer, applications +380,000
Waiter & waitress +364,000
Top Ten occupations with the largest projected decline
Farmer & rancher -328,000
Order clerk -71,000
Teller -59,000
Insurance claim & policy-processing clerk -58,000
Word processor & typist -57,000
Sewing machine operator -51,000
Dishwasher -42,000
Switchboard operator including answering service -41,000
Loan interviewer & clerk -38,000
Computer operator -33,000 |
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KileAnderson
USA
875 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 20:30:46
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Isn't it curious that the number of waiters and waitresses will increase yet the number of dishwashers will decrease? I hope the waitstaff of the future isn't going to be serving food on dirty plates.
And also if you add up the pluses and minuses you get a total of 4.861 million new jobs and a loss of only 778,000 for a net gain of over 4 million jobs.
WAY TO GO PRESIDENT BUSH. |
Edited by - KileAnderson on 01/10/2004 20:35:01 |
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KileAnderson
USA
875 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 20:53:21
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| How do you know that? Do you know what I'm paid? I don't know any roofers who made what I did last year. There may be a few, but I don't know them. |
Edited by - KileAnderson on 01/10/2004 20:54:51 |
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Gale
USA
231 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 21:15:59
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| Does anyone know the expected home grown and imported number of population increase over next 10 years? |
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Tom Toll
USA
154 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 21:19:20
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I find the below article very similar to our situation. Rip Van Winkle, a/k/a R.V. Winkle was an interesting soul in his time. But that was his time and this is ours. Winkle is absolutely correct. Why do we cower when a vendor asks us, will you work for this schedule. Is it fear, intimadation, or lack of principles and respect for ones self. Please read this article very closely and try to digest it. It is absolutley food for thought. Let us not think we cannot change this industry, when indeed we could.
Imagine going into a coma today, and waking up in 19 years time, in the year 2022. How old would you be? How old would your children be? Would your husband or wife still be alive? Who would be the leaders of your country, and indeed of the world? Will Mahendra Raghunath still be on telly?
Terry Wallis of Stone County, Arkansas is currently facing the answers to these questions, having just woken up from a coma which has seen him sleep for 19 years. He was involved in a car crash in 1984 - aged just 20 - when his car spun off the road and into a creek. He was only discovered the next day - his best friend dead beside him - and was already comatose, a condition which didn't improve until two weeks ago, when he awoke.
The first thing he said was "Mom", followed by "Pepsi". Advertising execs are no doubt sweating into their Armani collars and running themselves stupid over plush New York office carpets, trying to maximise the potential of this unexpected endorsement.
Wallis was married at the time of his accident, and his wife had just given birth to a daughter, who is now 19. They - along with his mother - spent all the years talking to him, and taking him out of the hospital for holidays, and doctors have speculated that this constant stimulation of his mind helped him remember things when he woke up.
Now he is talking fine, although he still suffers from short-term memory problems and his speech is slurred.
What a rush. Not that you'd want to lose half your natural life in a coma, but in effect he has been a time traveller, skipping almost two decades into the future, and at least he has that to take out of the whole affair. Not to mention a bloody good sleep, and from where I'm sitting right now, 19 years on the horizontal sounds like a pretty damn fine idea.
When Wallis "died" Ronald Regan was still president - he's missed out on two Bushes, seperated by a Clinton. Princess Diana was barely into her marriage to Charles, and he missed not only their divorce but her death as well. We've set a Rover on Mars, the West Indies have long since fallen from their status as best cricket side in the world, the Berlin Wall has come down and there is no longer an East and West Germany. In fact - the whole Cold War has vanished as though it never happened.
CD's have been invented, not to mention dvd's, and entire new communication methods are now commonplace, like cellphones and the Internet. All the old bands are gone, and music has changed dramatically from what it was at the start of the 80's, when Thriller was topping the charts and groups like The Commodores were seen as perfectly acceptable.
Wallis will never have heard rap music; he will be wondering where his stone-washed denims and white boots are, and he'll never have heard of people like Jim Carrey, J-Lo, Mariah Carey, Brad Pitt, and Britney Spears. Even language has changed, with English now a peculiar perversion of its original self, and filled with all sorts of sub-culture additions that have even me perplexed, let alone Wallis.
The world has changed unimaginably since Wallis was last compos mentis, from the ending of apartheid in South Africa to the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, and it's an almighty amount to assimilate and understand.
I wonder how it's going to affect him when he returns to "normal" life? I have no knowledge of what he was like before his accident, and for all I know he's not exactly a rocket scientist. But I would imagine his case will spark a fair amount of interest in the medical and psychology fields, and I'm sure they'll sort him out.
I wouldn't like to suffer a coma - there's no control over it whatsoever - but I would love to leap forward to 2022 for a day, and see where we'll be. Will we even still be around? Will a demon have arisen from the East as prophesised (someone, somewhere will have prophesised it, without doubt), and a war to end all wars have been fought? Will a man have walked on Mars?
Will electrical energy have replaced petrol? Will a tidal wave - caused by a rupture in the Atlantic sea bed - have washed over Western Africa, wiping out millions in its path? Will we have virtual reality, moon trips, sidewalk travelators and maglev trains? Will Cape Town have an Underground? Will we have found and implemented cures for AIDS and cancer, or will some new disease have wiped out one third of the world population?
And will Mahendra still be around? Because if he is, I'm not coming back. Forget it. Fag it, man.
All Smoked Out,
Luke Tagg
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KileAnderson
USA
875 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 21:20:29
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Well, I'm sure ther are several cases where a roofer makes more money than I do on an individual job. But I don't know many roofers that do 7-8 small patches a day. There may be a few. The good, honest roofers I know (and there are many) work their butts off. I wouldn't want to tear off a roof and swing a hammer in the south in the middle of July. That's alot of really physical labor.
The small roofing companies where the owner does those small patch jobs himself may make more money than I do on a particular small job, but for the most part, the ones who do those small jobs get paid by the hour. I know that they don't make the entire minimum.
I just noticed your edited post above RV. Doesn't the roofer have to pay taxes and expenses as well? I just looked at my version of exactimate and the Base Service charge I'm paying a roofer here is $118.05. Add $7 per shingle for a small repair job of say 3 shingles. So he is now pulling in 139.05 for that small job that may take him an hour if you figure in his first visit, the trip to the lumber yard (or to his own back yard) to get the shingles and the actual repair itself. He then takes out his own expenses, let's say $30 for material and overhead. Then he pays taxes and low and behold he is at $75 net profit for this job. I'm not going to say what I take home, but it's more than that.
I know the owners of these roofing companies probably do make alot more than me. That's the way they should be. They put up the money to start the company, they paid their dues, they employ other people, and they take the financial risks. That's how capitalism works. Those who supply the capital get the profits.
I think we would all be alot better off if we quit worrying about what someone else is making and focus on what we can do to better ourselves and make ourselves more valuable to those who pay us for what we do. If I can keep making what I make and the carriers decide to pay all the roofers double what I make, that's fine with me. They would have to pay me a heck of alot more than double what I make to be a roofer.
Please read the edited 3rd paragraph. |
Edited by - KileAnderson on 01/10/2004 21:36:09 |
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JimF
USA
1014 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 21:51:37
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Kile, I don't want to pick on you either, but correct me if I am wrong, but aren't you working cleanup in Paducah for State Farm on a day rate?
Now under that day rate, you are obliged I assume, to handle as many claims as they ask you to inspect or cleanup in an eight hour or ten hour or some other period of time per day?
While you may be getting away with paying a minimum charge in Paducah of $118.05, I doubt seriously that minimum charge would work many other places in this country, and all the more so, if the adjuster/vendor/carrier wanted to close and keep closed a claims file.
Now unless the day rate paid by State Farm has gone up astronomically since I last heard it a few months ago, isn't it fair to say that a roofer could at the least handle 3 or 4 minimum charge roofing repairs per day, and if the roofer was paid $200.00 per claim which I think is more in line with a typical roofing minimum charge, isn't the roofer being paid more than you?
And while the roofer can increase his income per day by his industriousness, isn't it also true that no matter how many claims you inspect per day while working day rate, that your income does not increase with any increase in your production?
Please help me with this, as I either am missing something, or completely misunderstand the State Farm cleanup process and day rates.
I join RV in saying that I am glad you are happy with your income and perception of your value, but that alone doesn't void the trends that others of us are seeing nor negate the legitimacy of what RV and others are saying. |
Edited by - JimF on 01/10/2004 21:55:52 |
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JimF
USA
1014 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 22:02:29
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RV why don't you ask some or any of the cat adjusters who were handling clams for the NC Windpool how much they were getting paid for driving some of the long distances (sometimes near or in excess of 40-60 miles between claims), how much they were paid for their 'windshield' time, mileage, gasoline, and excessive wear and tear (accelerated depreciation) on their $25,000.00 vehicles.
The answer of course is NOTHING.
Perhaps Kile can and will share with us why this makes sense for cat adjusters? |
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KileAnderson
USA
875 Posts |
Posted - 01/10/2004 : 22:27:40
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Jim, your facts are correct. I am merely using RV's prior methods to illustrate my point. He deducted expenses and taxes from my pay but not the roofer's. That's all.
I still think that if you can't make a living doing this, maybe you should do something else. If the carriers are happy with the work they are getting and the vendors can get people to work for what hey are paying, there is nothing we can do about it.
I freely admit that I am very lucky and am probably not the norm when it comes to cat adjusters. But at the same time I don't believe that I have ever been "average" at anything I do. I actively try to be much better than average. I don't think that all the cackling in the world that we can do at this little hen party is going to change the realities that exist in the marketplace. They way you get paid more for what you do than others get paid is to provide more value for the dollar.
One time I was sitting in the office of the owner of a civil engineering firm. He had called me to see about hiring me to provide some data collecting services. He asked me what I would charge on a per file basis for the scope of work that he required. I sat there for a second and thought about it. Then I said $50 per file. His eyes bugged out. He kind of laughed for a second and then said, well that's pretty steep. Our current guy will do it for $15 a file. I said, well, if you current guy will do it for that cheap, why are you talking to me? The reason he was talking to me was because his current guy couldn't do the job in a timely and professional manner. There were 1000 files in the project. He agreed to give me 100 at the $50 rate and then he would review the work and renegotiate if necessary.
The prior contractor would supply everything in a paper format and everything would have to be scanned into a computer and then entered into an access database. Exactly one week later I came in with all a cd-rom and a bill for $5000. I handed the owner of the company the CD and my bill. He looked at me and said what is this, holding up the disk. I said that is the data. He said where are the photos? I said they are on there. They are in an access data base. It's completly searchable and when you type in the property number all the data comes up along with the picture of the property. He was astounded. It took the previous guy 2 months to do 100 files and then it took his staff another week to scan all the info and enter all the data.
I got the contract to do the other 900 files and I've done several other projects for that same company in the past 3 years.
I'm not bragging with this story, I'm just trying to make a point. If you don't think you are getting what you deserve, make yourself more valuable to those who pay you. |
Edited by - KileAnderson on 01/10/2004 22:31:15 |
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"Adjuster", or just a handler / estimator?
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