Vice President Jon Siglar expresses, “We have what we call our agents-relations folks which will be dealing directly with the agencies.  We have all of our marketing; we have all of our back office functions ready to rock and roll.  We have our IT department.  The whole nine yards.”

Employers Direct stopped writing business as a direct writer of workers’ compensation policies on June 30th 2009.  They are now reemerging as Pacific Compensation Insurance Company according to the agency distribution model, and should begin writing new policies by this fourth quarter of 2010.  

Joyce Schulman, the Vice President of Claims, vows consistency in the claims department.  She has a very detailed policy and procedures manual, which is online.  It’s over a hundred pages.

“We also have the lowest case loads in the industry,” Joyce reports.  “The case loads are a maximum of 125 per examiner.  Our standards are very high, and we back it up by giving the examiners low case loads.”   Examiners also share a claims assistant with one other examiner, in a one to two ratio. 

Joyce’s philosophy is to give the right care to the injured worker up front in order to get them well and back to work.  “We really want to remember that it’s that injured worker that holds part of the key,” Joyce says.  “They want to get well, whether they have a job to go back to or not.  We really need to evaluate and make sure we are meeting the needs of the person who is truly injured to get them well and back to work.”

When claims come in that appear questionable, Joyce asserts that they are investigated fully, to make sure the customers are protected from fraudulent or abusive claims. “I really think that working with the doctors to get the people back to work is key,” she emphasizes.  “We’re doing some utilization (review) in house so we can speed up the medical care where it’s appropriate.” 

Pacific Compensation has now spent over a million dollars redeveloping their systems to support their new agency distribution model.  The systems should be all solidly in place in a few more days, by this middle of June.  Then, they will start selecting their agents and brokers.  Vice President Jon Siglar’s plan is to carefully select about 25 agents and brokers.

“We really want to be that go-to workers’ compensation specialty carrier in California,” Siglar expresses.  “There are only a few of us left.  We have within the next five years some pretty aggressive growth plans.  What we want to do is ramp up slowly in the beginning.”  And then after everything is well worked out in the systems, he wants to take on the industry by storm.

“We have a wonderful claims unit,” Siglar states with pride, “and we’re always looking for quality experienced claims examiners as we move forward. This is a real opportunity for claims adjusters out there as we move forward.”

Now the plan for Pacific Compensation, according to Siglar, is to make sure that PacificComp is a long-term player in California.  “We’re here in the state of California, so we understand the challenges in the economy and because of that I think we have a better understanding as we have our finger on the pulse.  We’re a pretty nimble company and we can move and change with the times.”

Readers may write to writer Lonce LaMon at lonce@adjustercom.com