Citizens Claims Committee Meeting Report

On Friday, February 8, 2008 the Citizens Claims Committee (“Committee”) held a planning and strategy meeting to discuss Citizens’ Claims Department’s (“Department”) operations model, staff education and standards, key performance indicator (“KPI”) development, and file standards and protocols.

To view the complete meeting agenda, click here. To view the Committee report, click here.

The meeting was called to order by Chairperson Gloria Fletcher, with the following Committee members in attendance: Jon Palmquist, Richard Lydecker, Carol Everhart and David Emery.

Citizens’ 2006 claims operations business model focused on improving primary claims operations, building internal claims handling capabilities, relying less heavily on third-party claims administrators and effecting better training and auditing of internal staff. These structuring models were put in place to improve customer service, consistency of claims handling and overall expense handling.

Citizens’ Claims Department has increased its non-catastrophe claims handling staff to 107 and its total staff to 198. This allows Citizens to currently handle 36 percent of all non-catastrophe claims in-house. Citizens’ goal is to handle 80 percent of all non-catastrophe claims in-house by the end of 2009.

In response to a concern raised about this staffing increase (100 inside adjusters and 53 field estimators in total) affecting Citizens’ rates, it was explained that the increase is meant to replace third party labor costs and is not projected to necessitate an increase in Citizens’ rates.

Citizens’ Claims staff education methods will shift from only on-line training to a model that includes a claims training school, continuous specialized training, an enhanced audit mechanism as a feedback and development tool for adjusters, and a closer review of claims workflow, productivity and efficiency.

The Committee requested quarterly updates on how the staffing increases are affecting overall Citizens efficiency and budget, and how the training changes are affecting employee retention, which also is a concern of the Committee.

KPIs, file standards and protocols were also discussed.

The meeting was then adjourned.

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