MINUTES OF THE CLAIMS COMMITTEE MEETING Thursday, August, 29, 2013

Transcription

1 CITIZENS PROPERTY INSURANCE CORPORATION MINUTES OF THE CLAIMS COMMITTEE MEETING Thursday, August, 29, 2013 The Claims Committee of Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (Citizens) convened telephonically on Thursday, at 2:00 p.m. (EDT). The following members of the Claims Committee were present telephonically: Don Glisson (Chairman) Juan Cocuy (Board member) Jon Palmquist (Technical advisor) The following Citizens staff members were present telephonically: Yong Gilroy Barry Gilway Lance Malcolm Jimmy Johnson Mary Leckey Anne Olson Jeff Lambert Jeremy Pope Stephanie Acuff Call Meeting to Order Roll was called: Chairman Don Glisson, Juan Cocuy, and Jon Palmquist were present. 1. Approval of Prior Meeting s Minutes A motion was made and seconded to approve the June 6, 2013 minutes. All were in favor. Motion carried. 2. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) Lance Malcolm stated, if you turn to tab two in your binder, you ll find our 2013 KPI trends through the second quarter. Our new First Notice of Loss (FNL) volume is down 30%. This reduction is driven by policy in force (PIF) reductions, mild weather impacting Florida in 2013, and 58% reduction in sinkhole claims in Through efficient and effective damage assessments, thorough claims investigation, and appropriate claims evaluation and resolution, the non-catastrophe (CAT) teams achieved a 104.2% closing ratio through June 30 th. Our

2 sinkhole team has achieved 139.9% a closing ratio through June 30 th. These results contributed significantly to reducing our overall pending inventory by 18% from our peak inventory of 27,754 files in August The current pending inventory does include approximately 12,500 litigation files. Approximately 26% of those files are settled but are waiting full administrative closure due to the court systems. Increased activity by the litigation closing team combined with a focus on litigation management strategy leads us to forecast reductions in pending litigations. Lance Malcolm continued, while we continue to have a 90% of our assignments handled by independent adjusters (IA), we continue to realize consistent results with our customer focus. Our customer complaint ratio continues to be less than 1% of new claims received. Our return customer survey results are trending above 3.6% on a scale of 1 to 4. Overall, Citizens Claims Operation continues to make solid forward progress. Lance Malcolm continued, I do want to introduce two new members to our Claims Leadership Team. First is Mary Leckey who has joined us this past Monday as our new Claims Consultant. Mary comes to us with over 15 years of experience. She holds a JD degree and an LLM in Insurance, which is an advanced law degree, from the University of Connecticut. We welcome Mary to our team. I d like to welcome Jeremy Pope, who is the Assistant Director of Vendor Relations. He is a new member of Yong Gilroy s team. I have one more person to introduce Craig Sakraida is our new Assistant CAT Director. He will take over the CAT Planning and will report to Jimmy Johnson, who is now our Director of Claims. Jeff Handy has been promoted from Assistant Director of Commercial Claims to Director of Commercial Claims. 3. Claims and CAT Update Jimmy Johnson stated, it has been a relatively quiet season thus far. We ve had six named storms and have been impacted by only one Tropical Storm (TS) Andrea. From that we received 600 claims. We paid about $1.1 million in indemnity. In June, we listed two outstanding items from the 2013 CAT Preparedness Exercises. One was the ability to have on demand access to our closed prior claims and the other was to increase our package printing ability from 2,500 a day to 4,000 a day. Both solutions have been implemented. The only outstanding item around the printing capacity is around a scheduled load test for next week. We have no additional critical areas of outstanding that would impede our ability to respond this year. Jimmy Johnson continued, for a quick update on the generators and satellites. The generators are purchased and are scheduled to be shipped today or tomorrow. We will store one in Orlando and the other in Jacksonville. The response service contract for the generators has been signed and is ready for utilization. For the satellite, we have coverage in place for the remainder of this year under an existing contract. The submissions from the vendors that are participating in the current Invitation to Negotiate (ITN), which was designed for a longer term solution, are currently being evaluated. We are on track to bring a recommendation to December. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Claims Committee 2

3 Jon Palmquist inquired, the average TS Andrea claims payments of $5,048, does that include commercial lines? Jimmy Johnson responded, yes. It is low but it is consistent with what we saw with TS Isaac, Beryl, and Debbie. With that, I d like to provide an update on the Water Loss Management Initiative that we started in the second quarter this year. Water losses make up our largest losses in claims. We felt it appropriate to create a water review team to review the mitigation invoices, which are typically incurred during a pipe break and a need for a vendor to go in and do a complete dry-in. The purpose of the team is to make recommendations based on the IICRC Standards to track and analyze data and to provide feedback. So far, this team reviewed 104 referrals. Of those, the team recognized a reduction of $1,600 per file. We have expanded the pilot to include all of the Managed Claims Model (MCM) firms and field teams. The referrals have steadily increased into the third quarter and we look forward to providing an update in December. This team will assist us in responding to the Board resolution that was passed on June 26 th directing staff to conduct the necessary analysis and preparation to propose legislation for a Water and Fire Mitigation Program Pilot. Juan Cocuy asked, could the number be the large percentage of claims in the term s of dollars or number of claims? Jimmy Johnson responded, it s number of claims. Right now it s running about 49% of our total volume. Juan Cocuy continued, in terms of dollars.... Lance Malcolm responded, in terms of dollars, the sinkhole losses still result in the highest percentage of dollars paid. Water losses would be the second cause of loss in terms of dollars. Keep in mind, though, that sinkhole represents about 3% of our FNL in 2013 and it was about 6% in Jon Palmquist asked, does the inside water mitigation team do the actual negotiation with the water mitigation vendors? Do they just review the bills? Jimmy Johnson responded, we provide guidelines to the IAs to educate them on how to discuss these with the vendors. If need be, we intervene and we do that on behalf of them. We follow the file from beginning to end to make sure our recommendations are adhered to for the full cycle of the claim. Yong Gilroy added, we re following the guideline that is in the marketplace, based on ICRC. That drives the scope of the equipment and damage that are associated with water damage and claims. Jon Palmquist asked, are you seeing a fair number of the vendors refusing to negotiate and taking an assignment right into suit? Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Claims Committee 3

4 Anne Olson responded, that is one of our growing areas of litigation. It is roughly about 17% of all incoming new litigation this year. Lance Malcolm added, the assignment of benefits are being generated before we had this loss. Yong Gilroy asked, the litigation associated across the board with all claims or is it strictly related to water losses? Anne Olson responded, it is primarily water, but there are other factors as well. Yong Gilroy asked, is it comparable to our water loss assignment volume which is almost half of what we receive? Should there be a similar parallel with litigations? Anne Olson responded, we are seeing a similar litigation trend in terms of water losses. They drive about 50% of litigation. That correlates at a higher degree on assignment of benefits cases. Jon Palmquist requested, at the next meeting, update us on how it s going and how its impacting on the suits and frequency of the suits on water mitigation trends. Yong Gilroy responded, yes. The effort our team is placing on now should diminish the disputes on the back end. They are working with vendors throughout the process and they are not just cutting up bills. That is what causes a dispute and that is when vendors claim disputed claims. Jon Palmquist stated, it s a great tool. It should save you a lot of loss costs down the road, I hope. 4. Sinkhole Claims Update Jeff Lambert stated, if you turn to tab four of your books, you ll see a chart that reflects sinkhole claim volume for several years. Our current volume is a good decrease from what we were tracking in 2011 and These numbers we are seeing now reflect numbers from 2008 and Looking at our financials, we are forecasting indemnity to be flat this year. The loss adjustment expense (LAE) is around 14%. Those results are driven by the timing of when we make LAE and indemnity payments. When you look at the sinkhole pending claims, you ll see a significant decrease over Pending claims are down 41% and our new claims volume is down 58%. We have been able to decrease the number of IAs that we involved in the claims process. We continue to communicate regularly with our Coordinating Counsel and litigation team to ensure proper investigation and resolution of claims. Jeff Lambert continued, if you turn to the next page, you ll see statistical information. Cycle times have changed as we move into the new policy language. It has reduced significantly. Under current activities, you can see that we participated in a sinkhole forum that Senator Simpson held. We re concentrating on providing additional training to increase the knowledge Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Claims Committee 4

5 of staff. We ve had training in our Special Investigations Unit (SIU). We did Quality Assurance (QA) cross training to support our CAT Operations. Jeff Lambert continued, I ll end on something that s listed under Ongoing Activities, which is our Neutral Evaluation Process (NEP). Until the beginning of 2012, we engaged our attorneys to work on neutral evaluations. With the addition of field staff and the reduction of pending and current claim volume, we have been able to internalize that process during Looking at the number of neutral evaluations, we ve saved about $350,000 because of the way we changed that process. The cycle times have reduced significantly. Jon Palmquist asked, do Citizens policies have a percentage deductible on sinkhole claims now? Jeff Lambert responded, yes, sir. 5. Insurance Operations Update Jeremy Pope stated, I d like to provide a high level report on the IA we ve dedicated for this hurricane season. We have recruited a record number of IAs 3,894 as of July 31 st. That is 107% of our IA goal. We hit 113% of our commercial IA resource commitment. That is a total record of 512 resources. It does not include any resources that we consider not to be approved. We have 865 resources that are considered approved and deployed. They are being utilized today. We have 175 resources that could be used but we have not activated those individuals. With regard to our dedicated CAT resources, we have 2,854 additional resources. We do have additional resources that have not been approved. We also have an emergency procurement opportunity in addition to fast track acceptance onboarding to pull IA resources if we need them. 6. Litigation Management Anne Olson stated, we are under tab six of your binders. Year to date (YTD), new incoming suit assignments remain flat, averaging 671 new suits per month. Also consistent with 2012 new litigation assignments are due to water loss denials (seepage and leakage). YTD, new sinkhole suit assignments are down 51%, totaling 372. However, a growing driver of litigation is the assignment of benefits cases, which account for 17%. Our goals are to manage new litigation with our existing inventory, including increasing communications, working with QA teams, and working with performance management with the claims litigation team and our outside defense counsel. Anne Olson continued, turning to page 13, you ll see side-by-side charts reflecting the reductions made with the litigations pending. The orange part of the pie chart illustrates the increase from 15% to 26% in cases that are pending with the closing team. The litigation closing team was established in January 2011, and once a case is settled, it moves to the litigation closing team. These cases are resolved and are fully concluded from a paid indemnity standpoint. They are pending the final dismissal from the court. We established the early Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Claims Committee 5

6 settlement team in December 2012 with a focus on pending and expense reduction for residential loss claims. Anne Olson continued, our focus has been drivingt the larger trends and making the right decision on each case one file at a time based on the individual merits. We continue to assess cases more efficiently to proactively determine if a case should be settled, needs additional investigation, or is a trial candidate. YTD through June, we ve had 10 trials with a 60% win rate and 14 appellate decisions with a 92% success rate. The largest portion of the pie continues to be the residential sinkhole cases. As we have engaged with the Coordinating Counsel for sinkhole, we are taking a strategic approach with sinkhole litigation. Sinkhole is represented in a pie chart that accounts for 16% of the litigation pending. Meanwhile, the proactive efforts of early resolved cases are expected for residential cycle time. Anne Olson continued, on page 14, you have an update on the Coordinating Counsel, Mr. Scott Link. We started working with Mr. Link in August Within that time, he s developed some macro strategies, working very closely with our litigation claims team and with outside defense counsel. Mr. Link has participated in calls with regard to about 1,000 cases. I d like to say that where evidence of sinkhole losses exists, our litigation approach remains consistent with what we are trying to achieve on a pre-litigated loss. Since Coordinating Counsel has been engaged, there have been very few cash settlements. We ensure that property is repaired in accordance with recommendations of qualified engineers and geologists. We ve had 11 trials, with 7 wins and 4 losses (in which appeals have been or will be initiated). Three dismissals have been prejudiced. 7. Quality Assurance Stephanie Acuff stated, we are looking at tab seven today. The QA team is to support our daily operations and our CAT side. Our vision is that we are accurately evaluate the claim operations for improved claims handling in customer service, operational efficiency and fiscal responsibility. There are four components that make up our audit process. The first component is our quarterly business unit audit. From that audit we develop an analysis and data results, which we share in the next component, which is our quarterly QA and business unit meeting. Every quarter, we meet with every business unit to discuss the audit results and identity the trends and training needs. The next component is our field re-inspection and we have field agents who will do re-inspections on losses. We can field customer service and identify any trends or issues. The last component is something we ve added this year. It is our full claims file audit to give us a strategic picture of what is happening throughout the whole claims process. We are also doing target audits. Stephanie Acuff continued, on the next page, you ll see a list of the different business units that we audit quarterly. This year we made a change in the approach in how we handle our audits. We used to audit on an annual basis, but we are now auditing on a quarterly basis. With this being a transitional year, some of the audits don t start until the second quarter. We are fully engaged with every business unit. Also, through the collaborative efforts between the QA team and the business units, the Claims Operations continues to raise the bar by increasing the quality standards. Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Claims Committee 6

7 New Business Yong Gilroy stated, with this being Lance Malcolm s last Claims Committee meeting, we have mixed emotions about him departing us. He will be an asset to the industry as he goes out. I want to thank Lance. He came here in December At the time it was just Dawn Sexton and I in this place. It has been an incredible journey with Lance. I want to thank him for the fact that he has put blood, sweat, and tears into this organization. I want to thank him for all the hard work he has put in and I wish him all the best. It has been a pleasure working with him and he has grown tremendously as a leader. Lance Malcolm responded, I want to share my appreciation to the Board, committee members, executive team, and staff. You have made my time here at Citizens very rewarding. Jon Palmquist stated, Lance, you will be missed. Chairman Glisson stated, Lance has been excellent to work with. He s always reached out and communicated above and beyond. Juan Cocuy asked, the sinkhole catastrophe that happened in Clermont that wasn t our claim was it? Yong Gilroy responded, no, it was not. [meeting adjourned] Citizens Property Insurance Corporation Claims Committee 7