The Adaptability of The Company Structure

 Davis Flachs

The Adaptability of The Company Structure

In mid-2019, I found myself an underwriting job working for a company called Prescient National. It was a small-medium-sized worker’s compensation insurer, coming in just under fifty employees, with ten of those alongside me in underwriting. Being an underwriter meant the heat was on us. The executives wanted to know how we were performing for the quarter, sales was pounding on our door seeing if we had priced their prospective client yet. We were pounding down the claims department’s door, seeing if they were done vetting the prospective client’s previous claims.

Uneven Workplace

Working in this ecosystem allowed me to get occasional glances into each department, seeing exactly how they worked. This ecosystem did not come with total balance. Most of the time it was the underwriting department who were left waiting on the other departments. Constantly wondering if the sales department was ready for us to price, or if the claims department had their audit completed already. This led to the underwriting team being required to be able to pick up the slack of others. Although there was nothing we could do to hurry along the early stages of the sales process, we could do something about claims audits. 

Working in claims was a difficult job. The people in the claims department came in early every day, around six to six-thirty every morning, and left around six to seven in the evening. Even with these long days, they were still swamped, often unable to do what we asked of them on time. Due to this, it was not uncommon for us to have to take over and audit some claims ourselves.

Work Overload

What I thought was a simple underwriting job came with more than what met the eye. This made for a challenging first month since each department ran on different software. Having to figure out the underwriting software, the operations software, the claims software, and having to figure out how to format and transfer data between them seemed like quite the potential quagmire. Luckily, I am quick on my feet and had helpful coworkers who assisted in teaching me.

Tasks like auditing and processing claims allowed me to see how the workplace functioned outside of my department. Being required to understand the claims systems also allowed me to assist them with an overload of claims, often in the winter months when conditions were more dangerous and slip and falls became far too common. Being in this position gave me an almost managerial perspective.

The Covid Slowdown

When rumors of a potential pandemic began to crest the horizon in February of 2020,  the company went into preparation mode. Executives were fumbling to figure out how to delay layoffs for as long as possible. The company was well situated financially, but we were unsure if we were going to get capsized by a rogue wave of COVID-19 claims, as nobody seemed to know the full scope of the virus and the news coming out of China was alarming.

When businesses started shutting down, there was a slight sense of relief. Sure, we had to discount all our premiums and new accounts were becoming harder and harder to come by, but we were just glad we hadn’t been overrun with expensive claims.

Soon enough, our brief breath of fresh air was over. We were left with a base of clients only paying a fraction of what they did before and a pool of potential clients who didn’t want to hop into anything quickly. As businesses were laying off people and struggling to get financial relief from the government, it was impossible to work with anyone. 

Where did this leave us? The claims department, for the first time in the history of insurance, was quiet. In underwriting, we were left twiddling our thumbs. Sales on the other hand was working overtime. The company had to reorganize. In underwriting, we had to keep up some correspondence with potential clients while pricing an account, so we went to help with the sales team. They were pretty defensive about their work, not wanting to give up any commissions, but in time we learned to cooperate, working ourselves into the closing end of the sales process.

Risk to Reward

Mid-2020, the company took a risk. The worker’s compensation industry had ground to a halt. Employers were coming to the realization that they couldn’t hold off any longer and had to get back to work, even if it was in a lesser capacity. They were back at our door, ready to move forward with renewals. After a few weeks passed, we hadn’t seen much activity from our competitors in our regions. After calling around to contacts at various companies, we learned they were hesitant to move forward, citing a feeling of uncertainty for how the pandemic would progress. Laws had been drafted in some states to protect insurers from being swamped with covid claims, but they weren’t ironclad. Some states didn’t even offer protection. This left us with a decision. Lie in wait while slowly bleeding out reserves, or take a chance and put forth a massive expansion. We went with the latter.

We went about our current territories, snatching up all the clientele we could from the competition. We applied for licensing to work in more and more states, expanding our reach. Obviously, there was a massive potential risk at play. To counteract this, we encouraged early testing and had a set of recommended doctors in every major city within the states we operated in. To encourage this, we offered substantial premium discounts to clients who showed a record of testing often or catching infections early.

Reorganizing (Again…)

The weight was shifted entirely to sales. I, another underwriter, and a woman from claims became impromptu salespeople overnight. As companies had been putting off renewal for some time, they were left with little time to consider and had to move forward quickly. This made the clients roll in left and right. The sales floor turned into a bustling hub of activity. Claims was back working overtime, vetting potential client’s claim history while underwriting was back to pricing.

Our ability to reorganize is what allowed the company to expand so quickly. In our recovery from Covid, we nearly doubled our premium intake from January 2020. 

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.”

–H.G. Wells

Adapt To Survive

Having that role in such an active atmosphere in what was typically a quieter, more boring industry not only taught me everything I know about sales (and about every other function of the company), but it’s what drove me towards sales in the first place. 

Working at a smaller company like Prescient National also taught me the importance of adaptability. This was especially important in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who weren’t structured with the ability to adapt were unable to weather the storm. Many of our competitors still haven’t returned to their previous capacity due to their unwillingness or incapability to adapt. The same is true in business as it is in nature. Without the ability to adapt, we will cease to exist.