Deft is at a crossroads influenced largely by my own extensional crisis of owning an independent adjusting firm while passionately motivated by predicting and preventing losses from occurring through our ever-evolving risk management efforts. Even if our hypotheses that parties interested in fair and timely claims settlement have an appetite for a more holistic risk reduction approach than praying a loss doesn't occur, and when it does taking the offensive through engaging aggressive dispute resolution tactics, how do we as a company monetize what never occurred in lieu of capitalizing on what did occur?
As with most of my messaging, I'm speaking to the cross section off the property insurance space with TIV interests of more than $10,000,000. While in a perfect world a more holistic model would be presented to the lower and middle-markets in unison, fact of the matter is that there simply isn't enough fat on the bone to allocate to pre-loss efforts in lieu of continuing to leverage the law of large numbers. When it comes to large commercial and ultra-high-net-worth residential though, shame on those that don't better understand what they are insuring from the point of policy bind while constantly striving to harden the exposure and while establishing rapport with policyholders and interested stakeholders otherwise through regular pre-loss touchpoints. The same message can be directed at the high-value policyholder from the perspective of better understanding their own exposure to put to in turn place themselves in a position of strength when outsourcing their risk. And then there is the producer for who a turnkey pre-bind through claims handling message should effortlessly resonate. What a huge value add claims-informed risk management can be. By largely eliminating uncertainty, everyone in the vertical is elevated in relation to the risk management mean.
I've said it multiple times over the past few months and will say it even louder moving forward. Allocating a small amount pre-loss will pay huge dividends post-loss (that is if a loss occurs at all). Wise entrepreneurs and investors advise we look out 10 years and determine today's business model based on the reality we expect to encounter then. Well, I for one see a world with more frequent and severe catastrophic losses, continued market instability, the ever-constant game of whack-a-mole when it comes to relevant legislation. The only thing that works regardless is more risk controls early and often.
-JK
