So this is claims – hey this job is pretty interesting!

By Marc Lanzkowsky – January 17, 2010

Welcome to the world of property and casualty claims management. I learned quickly to sit down and avoid the speakerphone. I also learned how to reserve files and negotiate settlements. I managed defense counsel and working with senior management to ensure underwriters, actuarial and finance, were aware of the impact of my work on the business. I found everyday to be a new opportunity to help protect the assets of the company while fairly resolving claims to a prompt evaluation, reserve, and resolution. Along the way I watched Juries defy logic and award verdicts beyond belief. I saw sadness in the faces of family members trying to understand what happened to their loved one and desperately looking to my clients to “pay” for the outcome. I met plaintiff’s attorneys who truly believed in what they were doing and stood up for their clients, but also saw fraudulent claims and plaintiff’s counsel who truly cared little about their clients.

One became slightly detached from the claims themselves and the losses suffered. Brain damaged infants, a parent having to bury a child killed because of a worksite accident, a grandfather and his grandchildren struck by a train at a rail crossing, it was my job to value lives that clearly could not be valued by all the money in the world. I used to tell claimants that unfortunately I had to put a dollar value on the life of their son, daughter, mother or father. That was the nature of claims and it was hard with a desk of 150 matters to always keep that in perspective.