The claims process isn’t an easy one to navigate.
You’re dealing with a carrier on one side that has their own tangled web of bureaucracy. On the other side are your independent adjusters, who all have their own way of doing things. You’re the one in the middle managing it all, from onboarding and credentialing adjusters to making sure that claims paperwork gets filed on time…and your adjusters get paid, of course.
It’s always the people that power a business, and that’s especially true with a network of independent adjusters. They can work for any firm, so it’s up to you to attract the best of the best—and deliver an unparalleled adjuster experience so they can do their jobs effectively.
That’s exactly what the team at CRU Group was able to do.
I sat down with Bret Peiffer, Chief Operating Officer at CRU Group, to talk through practical, real-world tactics on how independent claims companies can deliver a better adjuster experience, transform their back office, and accelerate growth. Watch the full session here, or read on to get the recap.
Why the adjuster experience matters
When you bring in W2 employees, you usually have lead time for onboarding. You know they’re coming and you have a few weeks to prepare all of the documentation and equipment. But with 1099s, it’s often a scramble.
“When a catastrophe hits, you don’t always have a lot of time to be able to respond. We’re calling them today because we need them,” says Bret. “They’re so key to our service delivery, but it’s a cumbersome process when you’re trying to get multiple adjusters going at the same time.”
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With 1099 adjusters, you’re also looking at a large number of people. You’re not going to call an adjuster in Florida after a catastrophe in Oklahoma—and so it’s a constant cycle of figuring out who to call, when, and whether or not you’ve got all of your t’s crossed and your i’s dotted so they can get the job done.
Critical workflows can break down under pressure when you need to move fast, which leads to frustration from your adjuster team—and gaps in coverage for your business. Having a repeatable, consistent process for your adjuster onboarding, payment, and compliance makes it easy to scale quickly when you’re in catastrophe mode vs. daily payments mode.
How to transform the adjuster experience
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“Anything we can do to make the adjuster experience better is something we’re looking at on a daily basis,” says Bret. “We rely heavily on 1099 adjusters, and we know that many of them are on the rosters of other firms. So how can we make working with our group the best so they keep coming back to work for us?”
For Bret and his team, that comes down to:
- Making it easy and fast for adjusters to get onboarded and verified
- Paying adjusters on their terms with easy and flexible payments
- Taking the burden off adjusters during tax season to make their lives easier
But it’s not just about the financial benefits they can offer—that’s table stakes, especially in such a crowded, competitive market. What gets their 1099 adjusters most excited is the ability to access health and lifestyle benefits typically reserved for W2 employees, like health and dental insurance. What if an adjuster needed a prescription refill while on a storm site? Offering these kinds of benefits makes their experience better and keeps the workflow going.
“Making the adjuster experience easy is also peace of mind for us. We’re relying on them to do a good job, and to take care of our clients and make them happy. We want them to like working for us, because a happy adjuster is going to be a better adjuster. We know they’re ready to go out whenever an event occurs, and that they’re going to work for CRU Group on that event instead of another firm. It just works out better for everyone in the long run,” says Bret.
Create a better adjuster experience with Wingspan
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That’s where Wingspan comes in. With Wingspan, you can handle every aspect of 1099 management, from onboarding to payments to tax compliance and benefits. Centralizing every aspect of the back office means that there’s one place to handle everything related to the business and communicate with one another, making it easier to work together.
For Bret and his team, that means creating a roster of 1099 adjusters with all of their information in one place. They can see at-a-glance whether or not the background check, licensing, or documentation provided is up-to-date, and whether or not someone is available for deployment the next time a storm comes around. Says Bret, “Every client’s going to require something different, but we just have to get them into Wingspan once, and we have that initial onboarding all set up so we can move them around in the system based on a deployment we have. That adjuster doesn’t need to go through the onboarding process every single time, so it’s much quicker to get them on the ground.”
The same goes for payroll. What was once a manual process that left the team open to errors (and lots and lots of phone calls), with Wingspan, everything goes smoothly. “It’s really helped the back office support staff to reduce these inquiries and phone calls and emails so they can run other processes for the business and get through the daily ebb and flow that occurs much more easily,” says Bret.
Transforming the adjuster experience can help attract and retain better 1099 talent, but it also offers meaningful impact on the back-end of your business. There’s always going to be another big storm or other major event to respond to, and when that happens, your team won’t have to waste time onboarding an adjuster you worked with six months ago. Instead, they can just go—saving you dozens of hours and administrative back-and-forth and delivering better results to your clients.
“When we call an adjuster, we need them today, or we needed them yesterday. Being able to quickly get them going and managing it all the way through has helped us so much operationally,” says Bret. “With Wingspan, everything we need is in one place. It’s a good system for 1099 management, and we’ve had a lot of really positive feedback from the adjusters, too.”
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