Continuing Education: Investing in the future

In order to be a profession and be professional, continuing education must be part and parcel of what independent adjusters do. “You’ve got to do something relevant in order to be relevant,” Fred Plant, president of the Canadian Independent Adjusters’ Association (CIAA), says.

In an industry that can be dramatically affected by a small policy wording change or a legal decision, it is essential for independent adjusters to remain up-to-date, not only to ensure the best service for the policyholder and the insurance company, but to reaffirm the credibility of the profession.

However, as it currently stands, there are no mandated continuing education requirements across Canada for independent adjusters. While a select few provinces have requirements for continuing education hours, there is no set standard across the board for continuing education or even licensing requirements for independent adjusters. The number of required continuing education credit hours varies across the country, with some areas having no continuing education requirements, such as Ontario, the Atlantic provinces and the territories.

British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan require eight hours of continuing education, Alberta stands at 15 and Quebec requires 20 professional development units (PDUs) over two years in order to renew an adjuster license.

The discrepancy in continuing education requirements makes it difficult to send independent adjusters to another province or territory to work in the event of a catastrophe or large claim situation.

In many provinces, once you are licensed as an independent adjuster, “you’re pretty much free to do as you will,” John Sharoun, CEO of Crawford & Company (Canada), says.

CIAA is working to change that — having created a national licensing committee to specifically focus on licensing and continuing education — because the association realizes the value of keeping independent adjusters up-to-date on developments in the field.

Within the CIAA there has been a substantial amount of discussion about continuing education and what is required to ensure that independent adjusters remain sharp on the various aspects of the insurance product offered by the industry.

Over the past 18 months, CIAA national executive, in concert with its regional executives, reviewed the topic of continuing education in detail. It seemed sensible that adjusters, as business/insurance professionals, be prepared to invest a consistent amount of effort in continuing education, no matter where they practiced their profession.

“We believe that having a consistent number [of continuing education credit hours] across the board is a benefit not only to the adjuster but to their client in the industry,” Miles Barber, chair of the CIAA national licensing committee and immediate past-president, said.

Having consistency is of benefit for the Insurance Institute of Canada (IIC), as well, Ted Hellyer, vice president of programs for the IIC, notes. “It helps us to help our members, because our members will often come to us for the professional development that they require.”

The CIAA’s national licensing committee is working diligently towards a standardized number of continuing education credit hours through discussions the provincial regulatory bodies. At the same time, the committee is working towards harmonized licensing for independent adjusters across the country. In addition to ensuring that all independent adjusters in Canada are on par in terms of education and licensing, it will also allow for more seamless licensing of independents to work in more than one province.

“We’ve had discussions with CISRO [Canadian Insurance Services Regulatory Organizations] and with other regulatory bodies and there is a desire to see if we can harmonize legislation, policy changes, new developments licensing levels and establish parallels with the required continuing education hours and what qualifies for continuing education credits.”

CIAA will continue to dialogue with the various regulators on continuing education, noting that at present, where the amount of required credit hours may not be consistent across the board, those jurisdictions requiring continuing education as a component of licensing have a reciprocal recognition of continuing education credit hours with each other.

“Obviously it would be more fluid for licensing adjusters if the number of hours would be consistent across the board, but as with everything not all regulating regimes came in at exactly the same time,” Barber notes. “So you’re going to have jurisdictions that predate others and for various reasons, and because of many variables in their own jurisdiction, they may have chosen a different level of hours that they believe are appropriate in that jurisdiction as opposed to others and still compared to others where there is no requirement for continuing education.”

Hellyer says he too has had conversations with provincial regulators not only about harmonized approaches to licensing, but continuing education, as well.

“The short answer, I guess, is that it would be favourable, not just from a consistency point of view,” Hellyer notes. “But having said that, understanding that there are some provincial issues that come in to play and so therefore provincial regulators might be more attune to their specific needs.” And while bringing about consistency would be of benefit when adjusters are moving from province to province to deal with claims, having a requirement to acquire a certain number of credit hours is not enough. There needs to also be a certain expectation of what counts as a credit hour. There needs to be value to the education: breaking in technology, customer service, dealing with a client, soft skills, etc.

“It should have some substance and the education that you are taking should have something to do with what you are doing,” Rob Seal, president and CEO of Cunningham Lindsey Canada, says. “Somebody needs to regulate that, or at least say ‘yes, you know that does have some benefit to what we do as adjusters’ rather than let’s get on a boat and go drinking and get a credit for it.”

Education and professional development must allow the candidate to improve his or her status and the ability to help clients.

“I think it should be broad enough that incorporates opportunities for you to take courses or go to workshops that are going to help give you information that’s going to make you a better broker or adjuster, etc,” Hellyer notes.

The importance of education

But, it’s not just a matter of being able to tell the insurance company that independent adjusters are educated, it’s essential because nothing in the world is constant and insurance is no exception.

“As professionals and the association that represents the majority of our practitioners in this side of the profession, we look at it as our duty to remain sharp, current, cutting edge on the product that we are delivering (and) on the ancillary and related services that dovetail with the delivery of (that) product,” Barber says. “You want to be up to date, you want to be current, (and) you don’t want to be left in the backlog. You’re not doing the policyholder — and you’re certainly not doing your client, the insurance company or the self-insured retention — any service by not being current and up-to-date on new breaking legislation, new breaking legal decisions, changes in policy wordings or products or changes in how we can better repair, remediate and help the policyholder out with their damages.”

The insurance product, for which independent adjusters are the front line agent for, changes. Wordings change, exclusions change, legal decisions come out that impact the interpretation of various policies, techniques in repair and remediation change, etc. and these all impact how the product is delivered.

An independent adjuster needs to be up to date on cutting edge techniques — and what was cutting edge six months ago can be complet
ely obsolete today.

Not to mention, it lends some creditability to the independent adjuster and the job that they do. It should give the person who is trying to file a claim a little more faith in the insurance industry when they realize that there actually is some education involved, Alan Gallagher, president of the Ontario Independent Adjusters Association (OIAA) and branch manager, Ottawa, with McLarens Canada, notes.

But while keeping up to date on changes in the industry, such as legislative changes, might be essential and important for some, there are others who are content to just rest on their laurels or offer-up the excuse that it takes away from real work.

“(Education) does take time away from other things, but I think it’s something that you have to do to keep up with today’s world in general, A. Gallagher says. “I guess if you’re happy to just sit and not worry about getting any further and you’re happy with your little niche then that’s great, but to learn and to get better all the time you are going to have to do some sort of education.”

It’s an investment not an expense

Unfortunately, training and education is often the first thing to go when cutting costs, but you can’t look at it as an expense, you have to look at it as an investment, Plant notes.

Everybody is too busy and there is more pressure on adjusters to bill hours than there is to get better, Plant says.

What happens is that while more hours are worked and perhaps more claims are handled, it’s not better quality, and it is essential to focus on better quality.

“If not, then after a while if you keep the focus on just more with no emphasis on quality you’re absolutely headed down hill and eventually you’ll have absolute cod swallow,” Plant comments.

But how to get there? “Mandatory continuing education credits, that’s definitely a step in the right direction,” Plant says. “Adjusters taking their profession more serious and therefore wanting to be proactive in going out and getting more education, that’s another way to do it too.”

However, without instilling mandatory continuing education, people who might want to attend a seminar will continue to be fearful of taking a day off from the office because of the heavy workload, Marie Gallagher, branch manager, St. Catharines, for McLarens Canada and sub-chair for the industry liaison and promotion committee with the CIAA, points out. But, if continuing education is mandated, people will have no choice but to budget time to keep up to date on current trends.

“There’s always going to be adjusters in our industry, that will participate in courses because they are the type of person that is a move forward person, they are keeping up, they are honing skills because our industry is not stagnant,”

M. Gallagher says. While there is always going to be those that want to move forward, there are those that will not continue to attend seminars unless it’s mandated.

Type of education

But something as simple as reading a newspaper for 20 minutes every day can help adjusters learn about what is happening in the world and, in turn, learn things that can be used on the job, Plant points out.

“I think every day of working in your career is education,” Plant says. “So there’s education from being on the job and then there’s education from formal classes and there’s education from seminars.” But education is not simply relegated to the technical side of things; learning about the psychology of people and the soft skills necessary to deal with people is essential in moving forward as an adjuster, as well.

It is just as crucial to learn how to be empathetic with a person, methods to get the necessary information from people, how to ensure that the person is telling the truth, right down to how to write up the report.

“Each specialty will require some ongoing continued education,”

M. Gallagher says. “It even could be things that aren’t specific to your expertise — on customer service, handling stress in the workload, handling an irate customer — it doesn’t have to be specifically to your specialty, not technically.”

What type of education an independent adjuster focuses on depends on not only the stream taken — management or supervisory — and then subsequent to that what type of claims handled.

Companies are sitting down with employees to determine which stream they want to go towards and what needs to be done in preparation of that.

If an employee chooses to pursue the technical stream, then it needs to be determined which specialization will become the main focus.

“In the old days you used to be able to function multiline, but particularly Ontario now when you’re talking AB that’s a specialization in and of itself,” Sharoun says. “You could do nothing but educate yourself on how to handle or properly handle an AB claim and the errors and omissions downside to all of that is significant, so people require much much better skill sets than they did in the past. They need to keep up to date on what’s changing in the industry on a virtually day-to-day basis.”

But all is not lost. According to Sharoun, those who follow the technical stream and move from being an adjuster to specializing in high end, large loss adjusting, are more widely trained than in the past. As an example, previously an adjuster would understand insurance and would work on boiler machinery claims, whereas today, those adjusting boiler machinery claims will actually train in boiler machinery in order to understand the engineering surrounding boiler machinery systems. In other situations, there are adjusters who specialize in medical malpractice claims and having nursing backgrounds.

“It’s not just insurance any more,” Sharoun says. “Particularly when you get into the high end, we’ve got people who are doing business interruption claims who are taking accounting courses, that in the past would never had done that.”

Chartered Loss Adjuster

For CIAA members there is the ultimate test of competency: the Chartered Loss Adjuster designation.

Comprised of three examinations the CLA designation is “that flag that pops up and says high end professional here,” Plant says. “It’s a post nominal that any independent adjuster in this country would be absolutely proud to use and that any insurer or anyone looking to hire the services of a claims adjuster would have that much higher confidence in hiring a CLA designate because they’ve been recognized by their peers and they’ve been tried by their peers in order to get that designation.”

The decision to revise CIAA’s credentialing program came about at a CIAA Annual General Meeting roughly 15 years ago. The goal was to offer CIAA members the opportunity to raise their professional status of independent adjuster by recognizing competency, knowledge, skills and experience distinct from the already demanding requirements mandatory for attaining a full independent adjusters’ license, Pat Battle, executive director for the CIAA, says. Craig Walker, past president of the CIAA and the chairman of the education committee at that time, spent the next seven years working to develop a series of exams that would allow the successful candidate the honour of being recognized as an adjuster of senior stature, who is experienced, well educated and capable of handling complex claims, Battle says.

“A well-developed certification program is one of the most important services that an association can provide to the public,” Battle says. “It establishes an organization as a prominent standard setting body that defines competence in a particular discipline.”

The exams were complete and ready for the taking in September 2001. In order to obtain the designation a candidate must write a theory exam (which they can be exempt from if they have earned their FCIP or FIIC designation or have successfully passed the three subjects in the fellowship program dealing with claims management), and two case analysis exams in a particular field of specialization. Th
e exams are comprised of actual case studies that have been modified to remove identifying information or scenarios created by those who wrote the exam.

Since the unveiling of the new program, six members have successfully earned the CLA designation. Not all who have challenged the CLA program have succeeded, nor was it ever anticipated there would be a 100 per cent success rate, because it is intended to highlight the cream of the crop, Walker points out.

“It’s designed for those with practical experience and knowledge in the subject matter — they are difficult exams,” Gary Ellis, national education committee chair of the CIAA and one of the first successful recipients of the designation, says. “They are very comprehensive exams. You either know the subject matter or you don’t. There is no time to sit and ponder.”

The designation is a continuous work in progress; as legislation changes so too will the exams. Not to mention, the exams will be changed from time to time to ensure that people are not writing the same exam, Walker says.

“This examination program was developed to recognize those that are the best in our field,” Walker says. ” And those that are able to attain this designation should be recognized as the finest and the most qualified in Canada.”

In short, not only will continuing education provides the framework and knowledge to continue serving the customers in the best possible manner, and will also help CIAA members garner the necessary knowledge and experience to earn the CLA designation. A designation which, Plant says, shows others “I’m dealing with a real claims professional here.”