Bob Foster

In the latest of our series of profiles of those in the loss adjusting profession I spoke to Bob Foster, the Group Director of Claims at Brit Insurance, shortly before he recently retired.

For an example of how loss adjusting can be a gateway to success in business, it isn’t necessary to look much further than Bob Foster. Starting out with a chartered surveyor working on industrial valuations, over 40 years ago, he has since progressed to become Claims Director at Brit Insurance, a FTSE 250 company that earns around £1.5 billion annually in premium and with a claims team of some 100 people.

Born and raised in Manchester, he describes himself as one of the few people in the insurance industry today to have actually seen traditional businesses like Cotton Spinners and Weavers fully operational although in decline. After working for 10 years valuing business assets he found that his knowledge and experience would naturally transfer to loss adjusting, and in 1973 he was invited by Thomas Howells to join them as a junior loss adjuster. He remained there for 22 years, working his way up to the position of COO and then CEO in 1994. During this time at Thomas Howells his primary business was supporting large UK corporations around the world in their claims: “I had a portfolio of industrial clients through the major London and Manchester broking houses who supported me dealing with very much the FTSE 100 companies. It troubled a lot of my London colleagues at the time who thought that management of such high profile accounts should be in the Square Mile! After leaving Thomas Howells Bob moved into consultancy, carrying out United Nations compensation work after the Iraq invasion of Kuwait , evaluations within Palestine and corporate work in Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. After performing a total review of Brit’s claims services in early 2003 as part of that consultancy he was invited to take up the position of Claims Director with the company, a role he was on the eve of retiring from when I spoke to him.

He describes his rise into the higher levels of the insurance industry as ‘highly fortuitous’, but is keenly aware that to really go far in the industry today a wide range of skills and competencies are required, something he feels that the adjusting profession has been slow to acknowledge: “You have to understand the nature of claims, the policies, the insurance companies, in fact the whole business … I’m just concerned that for most adjusters there’s no breadth of knowledge,and the profession is too insular. If you get a lot of loss adjusters in a room they don’t talk about the business, they don’t talk about strategy, they don’t talk about blue sky thinking - they talk about a claim. That’s not business, that’s an expertise, and you’re not going to get advancement into the hierarchy of major companies by just being a good surveyor or a good accountant – you have to see the bigger picture.” To rectify this situation he has been advocating the creation of a postgraduate qualification in insurance claims that would cover topics such as understanding insurance company investments and underwriting, in order to complement the more detailed understanding of claims that is covered in the CILA exams: “I think there needs to be a combination of real on the ground training and understanding of the businesses of insurance companies, so that by 30, you’ve got a fully qualified individual who has a breadth of knowledge across the entire industry, and then he or she can choose which direction they want to go. And they will then be sought after”.

He thinks that the issues that have been identified around succession planning are not being faced by most in the adjusting profession or the insurance industry generally: “There is a problem recruiting, not just into loss adjusting practices but across the entire insurance industry, whether that’s a broking house, insurance company, managing agency… there are insufficient people coming in at an appropriate level of competence.”

When I ask him what he thinks makes loss adjusting an attractive career choice, he points to what are new opportunities for claims management firms, He also suggests that the commercial knowledge that can be gained from actually understanding the workings of a business entity are significant. In addition the new world will drive more need for travel and overseas deployment will be on the increase: “ In the UK we’ve become very restricted in our vision as a profession generally with focus upon the UK and North America – I think over the next 10 years the opportunities within a claims environment for working overseas are going to expand.” He identifies China, India and and Brazil as locations where more jobs will be created.. On the negative side he mentions the high level of pressure that adjusting can involve, although this is something it shares with almost all worthwhile careers. And of course the potential for serious career advancement is there: “Once all the major loss adjusting companies start to grow a real body of high quality broad based commercially aware people there will be the opportunity for individual advancement into related businesses. If they have the acumen , the expertise, if they can grow to become businessmen and women, then opportunities will open up. But I travel around the world and I see loss adjusters who are in senior director roles who do not have business acumen, or strategic vision. They are responsive or reactive, they are not proactive in what they’re trying to do for their companies or the profession as a whole.They don’t go to the market and try to offer something that is new and innovative, they merely respond to the market’s perceived needs.”

The market has of course changed a great deal in recent years. “Loss adjusting as a business has become more sophisticated and recognising real economics it has become more a TPA (Third Party Administrator) function rather than solely an adjusting facility”, he tells me. “ Probably 75% of claims in the Lloyds’ market are small – they cannot economically be handled in the traditional manner.

When I first approached Bob for an interview he told me he would be happy to help as he is keen on promoting the claims profession generally and the CILA in particular. Before I leave he reiterates his message: “to have any chance of having a real career, nowadays you have to have that full range of skills across the entire insurance industry… the market is looking for people who understand the loss on the ground, understand what business wants, understand what the stockholder and the shareholder wants… that opens different doors. It opens lots of doors and will perhaps entice a higher level of graduate entry into the profession.”

Rob Didcock