Be it Resolved

By late December 1992, Doug Cutbush had been in the insurance industry – on both sides of the pond – for 44 years. With the Gerling Global Insurance Group for 32 of those years, Cutbush decided it was time to retire.

But there is retiring, and there is retiring. “I retired from the insurance industry, but I didn’t retire to vegetate. I retired basically to start a new career,” he says.

That new career – which kicked off within weeks of his official “retirement” – was as an insurance consultant, arbitrator and mediator for Douglas F. Cutbush & Associates Limited, duties that continue to this day. In 1997, he added serving as a mediator, arbitrator and appraisal umpire for York Street Insurance Dispute Resolutions to his pursuits.

Offering something new, but also familiar ground, the mediation and arbitration venture afforded Cutbush a way to employ his expertise in a different way.

Now a chartered arbitrator and approved mediator, he deals with all types of personal injury and liability claims, including automobile, occupiers’ liability, errors and omissions, employment and municipal liability.

Having “been around for a while,” he says, Cutbush had amassed quite a bit of experience in the claims arena that he felt could lend itself to mediation and helping get disputes settled expeditiously and fairly.

It was a tack he always tried to employ while working at Gerling Global. The group insured a number of major companies in steel, mining and oil and gas, Cutbush notes. “During my career, I handled some of the biggest insurance claims that have ever been settled in Canada. 

PROVIDING SUPPORT

But at the heart of any claim, regardless of its size, is a loss, one that can sometimes be devastating and that demands immediate action.

“Even though I was the claims manager (at Gerling Global), I was a hands-on claims manager,” he suggests. “When a major loss occurred, I would go to the scene, wherever it was, by helicopter or plane, and help get the thing resolved.”

Cutbush considered some form of immediate response to be critically important. As both senor vice president and claims manager for Canada at Gerling Global General Insurance, and vice president

and claims manager at Gerling Global Reinsurance, he was authorized to make substantial advanced payments ($100,000 and up) and often had cash on hand, as it were, to provide assistance as quickly as possible.

Cutbush recalls an ice storm in Manitoba that left a television tower in Brandon – the second highest in the country at the time – so thickly coated with ice it collapsed. The collapse sent debris as far as a quarter of a mile from the tower, he says, and knocked out TV reception for many in the area.

Cash in hand, Cutbush flew into Winnipeg and, because icy conditions had closed the roads to all other traffic, travelled by bus to Brandon. The insured was “able to immediately put up a temporary aerial,” he says, restoring service for a number of communities in the area.

“Supporting your policyholders is as important as paying money,” Cutbush contends. “When a serious loss occurs, they need help, they need understanding.”

His time at Gerling Global offered a unique perspective, Cutbush says, since the group was made up of both a major insurance company and a major reinsurance company. In the event of a major loss, “the insurance company relies on the reinsurance company to provide advice, provide funds when there’s substantial payments being made,” he says.

Cutbush would always try to involve reinsurers very early on in the process. In a catastrophe such as a windstorm, tornado or flood, he notes there may be many “small losses that collectively bring in a reinsurer. On major property losses, because the reinsurer(s) had more at stake than my company, I often invited them to participate in the decision-making process of how the funds should be spent.”

FANTASTIC START

Dealing with multi-million-dollar claims may seem a far cry from where Cutbush got his start in insurance.

At the tender age of 15, he left school and took a job as a claims broker at Lloyd’s of London in the early days of January 1948. “If you didn’t go to a private school, that’s what you did (got a job),” Cutbush reports.

“I could have left (school) when I was 14, but I went on to higher education and left when I was 15,” he quips.

“You cannot report your claims directly to Lloyd’s; you have to go through brokers,” Cutbush explains. So working for Willis, Faber & Dumas Limited, he would receive information and then talk to underwriters to try to get the issue at hand resolved.

After six years there, he continued at Lloyd’s, but became a marine claims settler and cargo underwriter for A.J. Whittall and others. Working on the other side of the process, he saw issues from a settler’s perspective.

Cutbush calls his experience at Lloyd’s “a fantastic start to my career,” providing him with a solid footing for when he made his Canadian connection in May 1956.

At that time, Cutbush took on duties as a claims examiner and then a claims supervisor for Willis, Faber & Company, Canada (subsequently called Independent Insurance Managers Limited).

AN EDUCATED VIEW

It was not long after coming to Canada that Cutbush immersed himself in education and getting involved in associations, including the Canadian Insurance Claims Managers’ Association, which he joined in 1958.

“I’m the oldest in age and the oldest in service,” the former director and treasurer, and life member of the association, says proudly.

Education is important to this three-time fellow – Fellow, Chartered Insurance Professional, Fellow of the Insurance Institute of Canada and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators of the United Kingdom.

“Not only did I get the experience working as an active claims person, but I also got the theory” from the Insurance Institute of Canada courses.

While at Gerling Global, Cutbush says, he insisted on staff taking the courses, and encouraged them to “get their fellowships as soon as they could.”

A solid understanding of the principles of insurance is very important because things are always changing.

Citing policy language, this has been “developed because of experience, what has been needed,” he says.

“You have to keep up to date with what the law is as a good claims person, in case you’re going to be trying to settle a claim based on what the law might be and how much (the claim) is worth.”

Cutbush got to know the law very well. As part of his extensive committee work for the Insurance Bureau of Canada – among others, he chaired the subcommittee on primary and excess liability insurance agreements and was a member of the claims committee for 10 years – he was part of efforts to produce agreements, some of which remain in force today. One of those is the Intercompany Settlement Chart, he notes, which has “predetermined divisions of liability based on how an accident occurs.”

His committee work was enough that one IBC annual report referred to him as Mr. Claims Canada, which he regards as “a bit of honour.”

Asked how he would like to be described, Cutbush says tough, but fair. “I think that’s what you have to be.”