If you’re in the business of resolving litigated or non-litigated claims, you’re in the business of negotiation.
Executive Summary
Great American Insurance Group’s Ron Morrison urges industry peers to reclaim their focus on what matters most—the task of negotiating.
“We can no longer afford to view negotiation as a soft skill or as something that happens organically. It is a skill that must be developed, measured and supported. We must be intentional,” he writes.
The article kicks off a multipart educational series, “Negotiation Reclaimed,” conceived by Guest Editor Taylor Smith, founder and president of Suite 200 Solutions.
Smith introduced the idea in his recent CM article, “Taking Back Negotiation: Why Claim Professionals Must Lead the Next Chapter“
Read more about the series in “Sharpening the Industry’s Most Overlooked Skill.” Look for Part 2 next month.
The math is simple: Most litigated matters are resolved without going to trial. That makes negotiation the defining process behind nearly every financial outcome in insurance litigation.
Despite this reality, much attention goes toward things like trial preparation, billing metrics and case milestone reporting. Meanwhile, negotiation remains underdeveloped as a core function—taught rarely, measured inconsistently and often executed reactively.
It’s time to change that.
Negotiation isn’t something we do when everything else fails. It’s the main event. It’s where outcomes are made.
The Real Work of Claims Professionals
At its core, resolving claims well means negotiating well. The emphasis here is on “well.” It’s self-evident that if file resolution were the only goal, we could accomplish that easily by simply paying whatever is demanded of us. But closure is not the only objective. We have obligations to our policyholders, to our shareholders and to the public to resolve disputes fairly and at appropriate settlement levels. In other words, to do it well.
Those of us with deep experience in this industry recognize that litigation is a subset of negotiation, and not the other way around. Litigation strategy should support our negotiation efforts. That means the biggest lever for improving claim outcomes isn’t litigation strategy or billing protocols. It’s negotiation.
Historically, claims negotiation has been built on experience, intuition and more informal routines. But that is no longer enough. We are definitely in a new age. On the other side of the table, plaintiffs’ attorneys are using AI tools to structure communication, curate evidence, control their messaging and frame their demands. Their approach can be both persuasive and highly effective.
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