Life in the Fast Lane

First impressions can be deceiving. For example, Geoff Sullivan, president of the Ontario Insurance Adjusters Association (OIAA), had to give an adjusting career a second chance before he discovered just how much he loved it.

Sullivan is branch manager and senior general adjuster at the Thunder Bay, Ontario office of Crawford & Company (Canada). He was born in Newmarket, Ontario, just north of Toronto. Early in Sullivan’s life, his father worked for a law firm in downtown Toronto. Each day, his father would drive 70 kilometres, one-way, from the family’s home in Newmarket to get to the office. Finally, the commute got to be too much of a grind; when the law firm offered Sullivan’s father an opportunity to relocate to Thunder Bay, he took it.

Sullivan laughs at the thought the move was meant to be temporary. “He promised my Mum it was only going to be for two years, but they both fell in love with it,” he says. “That was 38 years ago.”

Sullivan completed much of his schooling in Thunder Bay, save for a few years he spent in a high school on the West coast, where he played junior hockey. When he finished high school, he returned to Thunder Bay to  work on a general Bachelor of Arts degree at Lakehead University.

By this time, Sullivan’s father had used some of the connections he made as a law clerk to also start a career as an adjuster. He got Sullivan an interview with a local adjusting firm in 1989. “I was there for about a year and it just wasn’t a good fit, so we parted ways,” Sullivan recalls.

He returned to Lakehead for two years. During this time he also played hockey for the Thunder Bay Twins Senior AAA team. His father told him of a posting at Continental Insurance to cover a maternity leave as a telephone adjuster. He got the job, and hit his stride. The feeling was mutual; at the end of the term, Continental did not want to let Sullivan go. The company found a place for him in its Toronto office.

After working for a year in Toronto, Sullivan moved to Adjusters Canada. He ultimately moved back to Thunder Bay to manage the firm’s office there. “I have been here [Thunder Bay] ever since,” Sullivan says. “I liked Toronto, but once you have lived the lifestyle you live up here — everyone knows you; anywhere you go, you’re welcome — it’s a drawing card for sure.”

As for the return to the adjusting business? “I think I was immature when I started and I didn’t realize what I had,” he says. “The thing about working in claims is that it’s different every day. You’re dealing with a different situation every day. Really, how far or how high you want to go is up to you.”

Over the years, Sullivan has focused on industrial and large commercial losses. He specializes in the forestry industry and adjusts claims in the full spectrum of the business, “right from the cutting of the wood to the final production of the product, be it in hardwood, softwood, pulp or paper.” His work has taken him all over Canada. He also has international work experience, travelling down to the Caribbean following Hurricane Ivan in 2004. There, he assessed damage to condominium buildings resulting from the storm.

Sullivan appreciates the variety associated with adjusting work. He recalls a mock newspaper ad that once hung on a former boss’s office wall. “It was a fake want ad for an insurance adjuster,” he recalls. “It read: ‘Must be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, psychiatrist…’ It went on to list a string of careers. When you think about it, it’s true. You don’t have to be all of those things to be a good adjuster, necessarily. But it helps to have a broad general knowledge of a whole bunch of different things to do this job.”

Association Involvement

During his short tenure in Toronto, Sullivan joined the OIAA to keep abreast of industry issues and network. Upon returning to Thunder Bay, he got involved at the local level as a director, and then as a chapter delegate. “I thought it would be good for experience and for networking,” he says. “It’s turned out to be great for a lot more than just those two reasons.”Sullivan says the theme guiding his term as president is ‘Information Highway: The Road to the Future.’ He worked alongside OIAA vice president Steve DelGreco to round out the theme.

In today’s environment, everything is driven by technology, Sullivan says. He points to his own experience at Crawford & Company (Canada), where all adjusters are outfitted with tablets. “When we’re out in the field, our adjusters have a laptop, they write on the screen — all of that info is taken and put into a report format. The adjuster can literally go to their car, where they have a WiFi stick giving them a connection to the Internet, wherever they may be, and send that report in an email format to the insurer from the claimant’s driveway.”

These technological advances, coupled with the increased use of ‘smart phones,’ are designed to ease the process of doing business and improve productivity. But the developments and advances can be a bit of a double-edged sword, he says. The ease of doing business and increased productivity creates increased expectations and demands from clients, he says. Plus, smart phones allow 24/7 access to the office, blurring the line between time at work and time off work. “It’s easy for work hours to become 24/7,” he says. “When you’re sitting at home on the couch with the kids at the end of the day, sometimes it’s hard not to reach for your BlackBerry to check on emails.”

Nevertheless, technology is a necessity. As the industry evolves and younger generations become its primary customers, they will expect — and demand — the ability to connect with an insurance industry rep at any time via the Internet. The OIAA’s conference in February 2011 will focus on this balancing act, he says. Conference seminars will teach stress management and work-life balance techniques, as well as how to optimize the use of technology to make life easier. “There are some great new tools being developed in the profession, and our goal is to help adjusters understand how to leverage them and not be disadvantaged by them.”