Podcast Offers Important Insights from Accurence’s Vice President of Innovation

By Heidi J. Ellsworth, RCS Partner.

Tim Bruffey shares how his career as a contractor helps fuel the technology of Accurence.

In a recent podcast, Tim Bruffey, VP of Innovation for Accurence, Inc., talks about why he made the move from a 20-year contractor to working in software development with Accurence.  He shares how he recognized an opportunity for improvement inherent in the inconsistencies in roof damage inspections and repair estimates and wanted to change the process.  Noting that as a contractor he saw no way to predict profitability, he felt compelled to address these problems through a technology-based solution.

Bruffey talks during the podcast about claim management workflows, describing how an insurance carrier works through the process of settling an insurance claim. Traditionally, it involved a policyholder calling up their agent after an event and reporting a loss. The carrier typically responds by sending out an adjuster to document the damage and then prepare an estimated cost to repair the damage.

He notes that the entire process is evolving. The average independent adjuster today is 59 years old. These adjusters are retiring and there’s been a general lack of recruitment by insurance companies to backfill the positions. The need for their services hasn’t disappeared, so carriers are having to find ways to fill the gap and are experimenting with new workflows. One of those is an inside/outside model that employs an inspector, who is not an adjuster, who goes out to document the damage and an inside person, a worker at a desk, who reviews the damage report and actually writes the estimate.

Emerging technology-fueled processes will drive this new system.  Roofing contractors need to inform themselves on the changes in insurance and with adjustors.  Also understanding the technology that is supporting these changes is important.  Bruffey talks about the solutions they have created at Accurence that help contractors write a consistent estimate every time, so you don’t have to worry about your estimators being incomplete. Using technology, contractors can do a better job presenting complete estimates.   

For the entire interview listen to the podcast.

About Tim Bruffey

Tim Bruffey, VP of Innovation for Accurence, Inc., a Colorado-based technology provider with inspection and scope automation solutions for insurers and contractors, is an industrial engineer and inventor with 25 years of solution-oriented IT expertise for the property and casualty insurance and construction industry.   He previously worked as a plant QA manager for GM’s Cadillac brand, was the founder of MonitorBot™ – a remote moisture monitoring system for mitigation vendors (merged into Accurence in 2008) and was an operator of a ServiceMaster franchise for more than 15 years. At Accurence he works with insurance carriers to innovate their claims workflows and aids contractors in system implementations that generate consistency and scalability.