Need for Claims Adjustors

Letter from

Charles M. Stephens
President
Marinebidexchange.com

The real need is the proper training of making marine surveyors into marine adjusters. That is where the value is and not surveying since any one can be a marine surveyor by just saying they are a marine surveyor.

Last week a man that held himself out as a marine surveyor said to my client that he could do a pre-purchase survey a 2001 35 ft Sea Ray which included sea trial ,haul out and full inventory including testing of electronics for $450.00. The distance to the boat was 45 miles and back 45 plus the boat sea trial had to be done in the ocean which involved a 30 minuet trip out and 30 minuets during sea trial and back. What I expected would be about 10 to 12 hours for inspection and full report with 15 to 20 photos and the oil sample reports at about my price of $85.00 PH or $900.00 to $1,100 plus oil samples 4 x $35.00 and mileage of 90 miles at 35 cents per mile or at total package of 1,300.00 . That is a full pre purchase survey in very hot humid conditions in South Florida. His price is out at about $37.50 per hour and that was the going rate at 1984 to 1986. I think we have enough marine surveyors in that world but have very few qualified people that can handle marine insurance claims as marine adjusters.

In the marine claims world I can easily investigate claims and on average save with being given about 100 to 135 marine claims of all kinds in a year about $4.0 million to $20 million and have done this for the past 25 years. Problem we are getting a lot of people that are inspecting not surveying boats and have no idea what to look for from past insurance claims that kill people or sink or burn boats. Who looks in to stolen boats or boats that catch fire. I use to recover 5 to 10 stolen boats a year but the insurance companies do not have any one that looks into fraud properly so they pay the dishonest claims. Many insurance inside claims managers are not going to pay a marine surveyor to inspect or look for a stolen boat and have an insured evaluated if that may be involve with drug smuggling or transporting aliens or just insurance fraud. To make money it requires this kind of experience and talent and is worth about $100 to $150 per hour and is where the money is and not just looking at boats plus many surveyors do not want to pay $200 to be told what to look for based on what some standard book says since they need to see a burned boat and the name of the boat manufacture and why it burned with photos on fire and that he is told on how to in place of putting a recall notice out about100 other boats that burned or have the potential of also burning. He has conducted C&O investigations and run spectra lab test and or run finger print tests to find who did what and when.

Look it is real easy to tell some one you will teach them but if the teacher does not have at least 20 years past experience with 2,000 past claim cases in files it is just a soft promo to sell some class or computer soft ware to make money and they will see that and say why do I want to see the same things in a standards book that is boring and unproductive to producing income.

I felt I needed to jump in and make a comment here and best of luck.