Last Thursday, I posted Citizens Property Insurance Employees and Vendors Should Read this Blog Because of Systemic Wrongful Claims Handling, stating partly:
Our regulation agency had simply acquired a letter from Citizens Property Insurance, the place the letter date was roughly 60 days earlier than the envelope containing the letter was despatched. Public adjuster George Quintero of Vanguard Public Adjusters was complaining about quite a few letters from Citizens Property Insurance, which have been severely backdated. I’ve hooked up as a footnote some redacted letters that Quintero supplied.
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My wager is that this has occurred tons of if not 1000’s of instances—I can’t think about that the follow of backdating letters, in all probability to cover proof of claims delay and inactivity, is remoted. I ponder if the claims division will report back to the Citizens Board of Directors about this and different issues being complained about by their policyholders on the subsequent Citizens Board assembly.
So, my query to readers of this weblog is whether or not you suppose a Citizens Property Insurance press launch issued the very subsequent day following the submit was a coincidence or made in response to this weblog. The Citizens Press Release acknowledged:
Today, Citizens Property Insurance Corporation started notifying policyholders and brokers of potential delays in policyholder claims-related communications resulting from processing delays brought on by its contracted vendor, Exela Enterprise Solutions, Inc. Citizens claims workers has additionally been alerted to those challenges and stand prepared to help policyholders.
Policyholders won’t be adversely impacted by the mailing failures of the seller, and deadlines that will have handed can be revisited and prolonged by Citizens the place acceptable.
Any policyholder who believes they’ve been impacted by delays ought to contact their agent, name Citizens at 866.411.2742 to succeed in their assigned adjuster or submit a request by way of Contact Us on Citizens’ web site. Policyholders can even submit further claims documentation by way of the Citizens web site.
To tackle the backlog brought on by the seller’s failures, Citizens is rising output from distributors and hiring an extra third-party vendor on an emergency foundation to course of the backlog. All impacted Citizens claims paperwork have been despatched and the complete backlog for all different policyholder paperwork as described above can be eradicated by mid-April.
Citizens stays dedicated to rapidly resolving any issues that will have impacted our policyholders.
Regardless, it’s refreshing to see an insurance coverage firm situation a public assertion that it made an enormous mistake in its claims dealing with. Every enterprise entity could have some embarrassing mistake happen sooner or later in time. Thousands of policyholders not receiving written communications for 2 months following a significant disaster will end in many complaints and pissed off prospects. Stopping these actions, making up for them, after which stopping them from taking place once more is all that any claims administration can do as soon as the issue is found. In this case, discovering the explanation why the issue was not fastened sooner is one other step towards higher claims administration.
As a footnote, the seller whom Citizens Property Insurance blames these claims delay upon revealed a white paper, 3 Things Your Claims Process Should Do… And How to Get There, which states partly:
It’s a truism: ‘If you are in the insurance business, you are in the claims processing business.’ The promise to pay on a buyer’s declare of harm is what property and casualty corporations essentially promote. After the insurance policies are written and the premiums are collected, all the pieces else revolves round processing claims—as cleanly and effectively as potential.
Amen.
An Afternoon Thought
Mistakes are all the time forgivable, if one has the braveness to confess them.
—Bruce Lee