Crawford & Company’s expertise in handling claims considered ‘major and complex’ has been bolstered, with the recent addition of three specialty adjusters.
Ian McDonald and Joe Thomas join Crawford Australia’s Global Technical Services team based in Melbourne, after both working in senior loss adjusting positions in the Asian market. Meantime, Paul Tuthill, who has previously worked for competitor multi-national adjusting firms here in Australia, is a specialist across the construction and engineering sectors and based in Sydney.
Crawford’s Head of Specialty Craig McLeod said the trio of loss adjusters is highly respected across the industry.
“Paul has over 30 years’ experience across five continents and is focusing on the assessment and settlement of construction, heavy process engineering and power generation losses throughout Australia.
“Ian has around 23 years’ experience in major property loss across Australia and Asia, while Joe spent 17 years in power station engineering before transitioning to loss adjusting across the power and engineering sectors in 2013.”
McLeod acknowledged the war for talent across the Australian insurance industry is rife.
“To be able to attract the calibre that is these three individuals, I think speaks volumes for how highly respected Crawford is in the market today.
“We continue to invest considerably in our specialty expertise and in top talent. Our resolve to be a market-leader in this space is unwavering - these new hires are evidence of that.
“I think it’s also important to note that Crawford has always been known as the best in the business when it comes to talent development. Investing in our high potential people is something that gives me great satisfaction – right now we have many emerging loss adjusters keen to move through the ranks to become top specialty adjusters. That’s incredibly exciting to watch,”
he said.
He also noted that the company expected to make further significant external recruitment announcements in the near future.
In response to some market myths that Crawford is less committed to specialty loss adjusting than it had previously been, McLeod vigorously rejected this.
“As a company, we have diversified considerably over the past 10 years. Crawford has a very successful TPA business, we have Contractor Connection which is the managed repair area, and we own a specialist insurance law firm HBA Legal.
“There are some who have created their own narrative around that, suggesting that Crawford is moving away from major and complex loss. This is just not accurate - we have never been more serious about high end loss adjusting.
“The reality is that Crawford has deep expertise at every stage of the claims journey – we are proud to be the only claims business in Australia to be able to handle a claim from ‘first notification of loss’ through to litigation where necessary. We know this makes for an even stronger customer value proposition. And, indeed, customers can choose whether they want to utilise our services for the full claim lifecycle or just certain parts of it – the customer remains in full control in that regard,” McLeod concluded.
Crawford Australia President Tim Jarman weighed in, noting that the ability to offer a single supplier service can often mean a more seamless claims process for clients and their policyholders at lower cost.
“When clients are only dealing with one company for any given claim, there are efficiencies to be gained. Time is money - if we can do things more efficiently, we’ll pass that saving onto our clients.
“To give you an example: a client might use a specialty loss adjusting house that only does specialty and nothing else. Then the claim becomes litigated, so the adjusting house must engage a third-party law firm. That law firm then must get up to speed on the claim, often on an hourly rate. Whereas when you work with Crawford, we are one team. If a claim becomes litigated, our loss adjusters can speak to our lawyers at HBA Legal and move the claim along quicker.
“What client doesn’t want to get ‘more for less’? Our motivation for diversification in our business has entirely come from delivering better value for our clients,” Jarman said.
