Gary Blake is director of The Communication Workshop, offering claims writing webinars and seminars to claims professionals throughout the US, Bermuda, Canada, and the UK. Blake is the author of The Elements of Business Writing (Pearson Education), used at more than 100 insurance companies. He has written about claims writing for a number of industry publications. His e-mail is garyblake725@gmail.com. To help you solve your claims writing problems – or those of your colleagues – I have put together a list of 20 topics that claims executives tell me are of concern to them. These topics can harm customer service, …
There’s no good reason to make an enemy of the claimant or, if in litigation, the opposing attorney. We reveal ourselves in our claims letters and their tone. Is the tone nasty? Negative? Arrogant? Your job is to make your …
The following sentences are missing commas. See if you can put them in their proper places and ask yourself to supply the rule or reason for your decision. Mr. Polk signed a second agreement on November 2, 2017 which restored …
Are there any questions I can ask myself before starting to write that will help me focus my message? Your effectiveness as a writer depends on how well you identify the reader and respond to his or her needs. Before …
Clichés are trite written or verbal expressions that are used over and over, eventually wearing themselves out and communicating very little. At first, a phrase is coined and gains popularity (e.g., “Enclosed please find,” “do not hesitate to call,” “point …
Microsoft Word allows you to comment on another person’s document. I find it helpful to point out mistakes or comment on the structure and phraseology of some of the claims letters I am shown during a webinar or seminar. The …
What’s the difference between “insure” and ensure”? And can you differentiate among “to,” “two,” and “too”? One claims adjuster told me this insure/ensure mix-up was one of his major pet peeves: “Ensure! Please don’t tell me you can ‘insure a …
Redundancy is a type of wordy phrase in which, usually, one word is giving the message and the other word is, in a different way, repeating the message. In the phrase “VIN Number,” the term “VIN” already means Vehicle Identification …
People are always confusing the semicolon with the colon, but they are quite different. All of the comma rules, in one way or other, are separating a dependent clause from the rest of the sentence (e.g., The manager, who led …
One of the most cumbersome aspects of a denial letter is the often-abrupt transition from letter to legalistic policy language to establish what the policy says regarding a particular type of incident. Claims people refer claimants to the policy in …