Introducing the CICMA Ontario Chapter President Sharon Clark

Just three months into her tenure as Ontario chapter president for the Canadian Insurance Claims Managers’ Association (CICMA), Sharon Clark is busy recruiting members to work on the various committees within the association.

“We went through a period of time for a few years where everybody was busy — insanely busy — and we went through a number of years where the general membership of CICMA were a little reticent to get involved,” Clark, claims manager at Farmer’s Mutual Insurance Company, said. “In the last little while there seems to be a lot more interest, so we’re actually trying to get more involvement in the subcommittees.” Clark, and the rest of the executive, is working to increase the involvement of new committee members so they can bring fresh thinking to the table. The executive has received positive feedback from members after an email was sent out asking for members interested in joining committees, Clark said.

An issue close to Clark’s heart is the Canadian Inter-Company Arbitration Agreement, which is a dispute resolution process intended to save insurers money during physical damage subrogation claim disputes between signatories (insurance companies). This service, now overseen by CICMA, was previously managed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, and Clark, along with the executive, are raising awareness of the agreement in an attempt to let insurers know it is available to them.

In an effort to raise the profile of the association, CICMA has launched a web site ( www.cicma.ca),which is currently being enhanced. Clark would like to see all information for the Inter- Company Arbitration — the agreement, the summary, the forms, the procedures, etc. — available on the site at some point in the near future.

While reaching out to members, Clark and the executive sent out a questionnaire to determine what members would like to see during educational seminars and ways to improve the association. Clark said members offered suggestions on developing the CICMA brand (including the web site), enhancing CICMA’s influence, more opportunities for general membership to be involved, holding more than just quarterly meetings, hosting educational seminars (including call centre strategies), customer service tips, industry issues (including towing, threshold), new employee management strategies, common claims industry logic, performance standards and vendor selection criteria. Clark said she and the rest of the executive will work to implement these ideas and suggestions, including the educational component.

She added that working on further developing relationships with independent adjusters is paramount, as well. Independent adjusters can understand from a claims perspective, what the insurance companies are looking for, and claims managers are able to understand what the needs of the independent adjuster are. “It helps us understand what the trending issues are for the independent adjusters; they can see what the trending issues are for us,” Clark said, adding that the executives of both associations were discussing hosting more meetings together, or attending each others meetings. “We should do more of that because that allows us to have more discussion at an executive level,” she said, adding they can talk about needs and initiatives that way.

And fostering relationships and giving back to the industry is important to Clark. After being a member of CICMA, Clark joined the executive because it was time to give back to the industry. “Once you get to the claims manager role, you’ve been in the industry a while, and it is important to give back,” she said, adding that as a claims manager one has developed a number of skills that can be shared with newer industry personnel. “Everybody has an obligation to provide some mentoring to other people. The more people you have working on committees the more you can get done.” •