The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Galen Hair, Managing Partner of Insurance Claim HQ, Respected Litigator and Successful Entrepreneur

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

Galen Hair, Managing Partner of Insurance Claim HQ, Respected Litigator and Successful Entrepreneur Insuranceclaimhq.com Insurance Claim HQ: Advocating for Fair Treatment in Insurance Claims Show Notes About The Guest(s): ​ Galen Hair is a respected litigator and successful entrepreneur. He is the founder of Insurance Claim HQ, a law firm that takes a holistic approach to helping clients with insurance claims. Galen has gained a reputation for his aggressive and relentless litigation skills, and he is licensed in multiple states. He is dedicated to getting the job done for his clients, both inside and outside the courtroom. ​ Summary: ​ Galen Hair joins Chris Voss on The Chris Voss Show to discuss his work as a litigator and entrepreneur in the insurance claim industry. Galen shares his insights on leadership, running a company, and navigating the insurance claim process. He emphasizes the importance of leading with empathy and building meaningful relationships with clients. Galen also discusses the challenges faced by consumers in the insurance industry and offers advice on how to navigate the process effectively. ​ Key Takeaways: ​ - Leading with empathy is essential in building meaningful relationships with clients. - Insurance agents have no decision-making power when it comes to claims, so it's important to understand the policy and the claims process. - The insurance industry is facing challenges due to climate change and legislative changes, which can impact consumers' ability to get fair compensation. - It's crucial for consumers to research and understand their insurance policies, read reviews, and consult professionals when needed. - Litigation can be an effective tool in holding insurance companies accountable and ensuring fair compensation for policyholders. ​ Quotes: ​ - "Empathy is really listening to that person and truly understanding what they are going through." - Galen Hair - "Your insurance agent has no decision-making power at all with your claim." - Galen Hair - "Insurance claims are a zero-sum game. If you get a dollar, they lose a dollar." - Galen Hair - "If you don't want to be in that state, don't. Charge appropriate premiums for that." - Galen Hair - "Leading with empathy also means actually diagnosing the problem." - Galen Hair Biography A respected litigator and successful entreprenuer, Galen Hair has dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of policyholders, holding insurance companies accountable when they deny, delay, or underpay claims. He grew his law firm from 7 to 90+ employees in less than three years, and has experienced multi-million dollar annual revenue growth.

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The Iron Lady sings it. That makes it official Welcome to the big show, we certainly appreciate you guys Being a part of it today As always the Chris Voss family The family that loves you but doesn't judge you At least not as harshly as your mother-in-law For 15 years we've been bringing you the CEOs

The billionaires, the White House advisors The governors, the congressmen The astronauts, the Pulitzer Prize winners All the smart people who spent a lifetime building their knowledge, crafting it, learning from failure, and bringing you their stories. And I always say on the Chris Voss show, and I say it elsewhere too, just on the show, stories are the owner's manual to life.

That's why we love them so much, and we learn so much from each other. So you, by listening to the show, have joined an elite crowd of people that bask in the Chris Voss Show glow of knowledge. We have another gentleman joining us today who's going to increase that basking of glow, the basking, as we like to call it on the show. He's a respected litigator and successful entrepreneur. Galen Hare joins us on the show today, and he'll be talking about what he does, some of his insights to leadership, running a company, being an entrepreneur, and probably some litigating too there as well, since he's, I believe, an attorney. He is an aggressive and relentless litigator. He's licensed in multiple states and boasts clients from around the world. With large wins both at home and across the country and an impressive record of favorable results, he gained a reputation for getting the job done inside and outside of the courtroom early in his career. He focuses

not only on litigation in front of the client, but the long-term personal and business effects that his clients' issues will cause. Viability is a key to him, and no small victory is worth it if the client is put in a more detrimental position. With both large firm and boutique firm experience, he combines a large firm comprehensive approach to a small firm low cost model to achieve impressive results with minimal financial expense. His clients are like family to him and it shows. Welcome to the show, Galen. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Give us a dot coms.

Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, the biggest, easiest way is insuranceclaimhq.com. And then all the social media kind of comes right off of that. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview of what you do. Do you delve specifically in the insurance claim industry or give us that overview? Yeah. So what we do at Insurance Claim HQ is we're a law firm, just like any other. Our name's just a little bit different because we try to take a more holistic approach to our clients' needs. And our

clients are people with insurance policies that have suffered some kind of disaster, natural or man-made, and their insurance company is just not treating them fairly. Uh-oh. That's never good when that doesn't happen. It's usually a negative. Usually a negative. I think I can name a few companies, but I won't. I've heard are pretty abusive.

So you step in. You help them fight for their rights. People pay into insurance policy. They expect that it's going to be there when they need it the most. And I imagine the worst thing that can happen to them is that they're getting stiffed and maybe they lost a home or a business or something and they're kind of out. Yeah. It just sucks. I think we have this interesting relationship with insurance. We trust them. I mean, a lot of my clients will say,

I was with this company for 15, 20, 30 years, right? And then when it's time, the insurance company doesn't really have to do anything for the vast majority of that relationship because you won't suffer a ton of losses, at least the average person, right? So they pay, they pay, they pay, they pay. And then it's time for the insurance company to

do something. And it's kind of like, Hey, good luck. You're on your own. So a lot of business owners and homeowners, when they come to us initially, they're really confused and really upset at the fact that the process isn't playing out the way that they thought it should. Yeah. Or they seem to have been promised by the insurance company. You know, you see the commercials were like, we run out there first and take care of all your needs. And, you know, that's all that stuff. So tell us about how you grew up. What was your hero's journey? What got you into this business?

Why did you become an attorney, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, so grew up in a decent sized town in Texas, Arlington, right outside Dallas. So big sports town. Kind of grew up with that. Tornadoes were pretty regular. So had some friends that had experienced losses on a regular basis, but that all really changed for me when I was in college and hurricane Katrina hit new Orleans. And I was like, I, I just felt like I needed to be there. So I packed up, I moved from Boston at that. That's where I

was in school, came down to new Orleans, gutted houses, stayed in the lower ninth ward, like really right in the middle of the devastation. And from there I was just hooked. I was so fascinated by the insurance claim process by natural disasters, by all the different things that have to happen for you to recover and for the government to recover. And it just changed.

It changed my life. I ended up going to law school, big, big, big firm in New York representing big, big insurance companies, and then came back to New Orleans and started representing people that were having trouble with carriers. What do you find is the most rewarding in that work? It sounds like maybe some of that came out of that flood, but what do you find most rewarding about being an attorney? So lawyers are in this really interesting position where we're like completely not trusted. I mean, I think they did a study and prostitutes are literally respected more and trusted more than attorneys, right? So you start almost like Dennis, right? No one wants to see you. No one wants a lawyer, right? And it just is what it is. And you get really used to that. And I think in my practice, what I find the most rewarding is when we succeed,

it really affects someone's life in a very material way. Like my favorite thing to do is to send a housewarming gift to a client after we've gotten a good result for them, because like I now am a part of their life going forward. And that's really cool. Yeah. I mean, people, you know, when a tragedy hits, they usually lose a lot of the things that are important to them, you know, like an attorney or something. I can't imagine losing like all my pictures and everything, keepsakes, memories, but then they lose their home. They might lose a business, which is their source of income, you know, and a lot of that's probably identity based and it gets taken away from them. And suddenly you don't have an identity and then you know you expect your

insurance to cover it because you dutifully paid into it and you know then they're playing games with you and you're like wow okay yeah it's got to be really hard you know this lady she's a client of ours and i was kind of just sitting down talking with her case was getting ready to go to trial. And I said, so the stuff, you know, I always like, I always want to go through the client's contents with them, because those are the keepsakes, the photos and stuff like that. It's not that it matters in terms of dollars and cents, but it's irreplaceable. And that's where I can kind of tap into actually being empathetic with my client and personalizing my client to someone else. And she didn't care about any of her stuff. You know what it was? She has to rip down a wall. She has two kids and she had used that wall to measure her kid's height every single year. So just losing that, just

losing that wall that she was able to walk by and one of her kids is like grown in college and others in high school. So just no longer being able to see that memory of her kids growing up in that house was absolutely devastating to her. It's so raw and emotional. And I think people forget that when they're watching a disaster play out. There you go. Well, you lead your organization and you lead people through crisis. Talk to us about how you believe and practice leading with empathy and how to succeed

in a crisis and helping people. So I just think we live in a world where empathy is confused with sympathy. Sympathy is feeling bad for someone. Empathy is actually tapping into their emotions and truly understanding what they are. We tend to confuse them. We tend to substitute sympathy for empathy. I always say no empathetic statement has the word but in it. Oh, that really sucks. But at least you have your health, right? That's not an empathetic statement. Stop.

No one wants to hear but. There's a silver lining, right? Empathy is really listening to that person and channeling back their emotions. And one of the things I learned early on is our clients come to us in crisis mode. Sometimes they can't help themselves. Sometimes they can't help us help them. But when we, and when we tell them, oh, that really sucks. I feel bad for you. That doesn't help. Right. But when you can actually sit down, look those people in the eyes, even virtually, and hear a story like that woman with the wall and look her back in the eyes and say, you must be absolutely devastated that you have lost the ability to look back on what the

last 22 years of motherhood have looked like for you. That changes the relationship. And what I teach all of our attorneys and all of our staff is if you can have a meaningful relationship with your client, the things you can accomplish in terms of advocating against the insurance company is immeasurable because insurance companies don't have souls. That's not like they just don't companies don't have souls, right? But people do. And as soon as you can tap into what makes them a person, you can show any jury or judge what's really going on here. There you go. Well, I think Mitt Romney said corporations have sold or some crap one time. He did.

He did. He did. And he meant it. He meant it because he had a lot to gain. But when you're a VC, that's a whole different thing, I guess. When you're on a VC firm. So there you go. But you're right.

Being a leader and being able to show empathy is really important. You know, I still, you know, people don't understand when you say the butt word. The butt word basically means, and I'm talking with 1T folks, is that you've flipped the whole what you just said prior. Like what you just said prior means nothing whatsoever. Because once you say but, you're like, well, I care about you, but I left you for someone else. You know, you've totally just wiped the, whatever you said, proceeding. You might as well not even bother saying at that point, really, when it comes down to it. So those are important aspects. One of the things you talk about is keeping teams together in tough times. And I'm sure that's

maybe the counseling you have to give to your employees and stuff like that. Did the COVID-19 pandemic, did you see fallout with that with companies that you're working with and trying to help? I mean, that was kind of a disaster. And then maybe in your own company and trying to make sure everyone's keeping busy and employed and all that good stuff. I credit the way that we handled COVID-19 solely with our success to date. It was so scary. I was terrified. The phone stopped ringing. New clients stopped coming. Insurance companies weren't really in a big hurry to resolve claims and defense attorneys were loving the delay. So nothing was happening. And it was absolutely devastating to me financially

and devastating to the company. So I did what any sane human would do, I guess, and took out as many loans as I could and emptied out my bank account and told my team, look, I'm not firing any of you. You just stay on the team. You work on what we can work on. We'll do strategic things. We'll set ourself up for the future since we don't have a lot of work right now, but I'll commit myself to every one of you. And they ended up forming the backbone of our firm today, you know, and it's just been amazing. And that's some real leadership right there. Taking on the chin, taking the buck stops here sort of mentality and supporting your team.

You know, I mean, I just I guess I never really thought about it, that, that must've been a hard time for a lot of attorneys because the courts weren't even running. They just shut down the courts and we're like, well, you know, trying to figure all this stuff out. And now we do everything on zoom, right?

It's like zoom meeting this zoom meeting that 5,000 competitors of zoom. If, if we can video it, we will do it. Right. But at the time, a lot of court systems were very distrustful of that. They didn't want zoom meetings. They didn't want telephone status conferences. They wanted everything in person,

but they didn't want to do anything in person because they felt like it wasn't safe. So things just came to a screeching halt. It was wild. And so what are some of the strategies that you use or you give people advice on when times are tough, how to make people feel more motivated and engaged? Yeah, so the first thing we do is whatever we can to deal with the underlying need, right? So in Hurricane Ida, we're based out of New Orleans. That's where the majority of our staff are. And we got hit by a hurricane. Wow.

You know, I was getting calls from other law firms. Oh, you must be so excited. And I said, yeah, half my staff is homeless. I'm super pumped. Right. But you know, this, this is an earnings event for everyone, but for us, it's a humanitarian crisis for our team. And I have to keep these people together. So we got them housing out of state temporarily. We relocated the office temporarily. We paid a roofing company to go tarp everyone's roof and inspect everyone's homes so they wouldn't be panicked. We got childcare for the single mothers that were now, they were, they were now like displaced. So they didn't have a way to take care of their kids, but they wanted to work. Right. Again, all of that was like a huge

financial expense, but would I do it again? 100%. I'd probably do more now that I know what I can do, because what we got was this super invested, hardworking team who had their underlying problems taken care of. When you walk out and you look at your team member and they're underperforming, they might be underperforming because they don't want the job. They might be underperforming because they don't like the job. But there's usually another reason. It's a personal issue. It's that they don't feel like they're getting enough training. So I think leading a team with empathy also means actually diagnosing the problem.

And if we can't do that with our own teams, how can we do that with our customers or our clients? That's very true. Sometimes there's issues going on with them, maybe at home or in their mental state. I've dealt with that with a lot of my salespeople. They get off their game, they're missing their sales marks, and you got to go in and play psychologist and try and figure out, hey, man, why are you off? What's up? Oh, I'm having issues at home. Or sometimes, I remember one issue they would have is they're like, I'm making so much money with you, Chris. I mean, more than I ever made in my life. And now I'm not motivated. And I'm like, are you serious?

Your bills are still going to, there's going to be new bills coming next month and next month and next month. They don't stop. You're going to still have your child support and alimony and whatever else you got to pay, your car payment and stuff. They're going to be here next month. So I don't know why you're not motivated because they're coming. But some people did that. They have that thermostat where if they make too much or they make too little, they either kick in or they kick back. One thing you talk about is pivoting during a recession. What were some of the ways that you adapted your business in the climate of the COVID-19 pandemic and how other leaders can do

the same? Yeah. So we did two things and I think they were both equally important. The first thing is we said, okay, if not a lot of work is coming in, we should focus on strategic stuff. All of those projects that you're like, I'll do this one day, I'll get the software, I'll build it out appropriately. I'll write a handbook, all that stuff that like you, if you're a business owner are saying, I'll do that tomorrow. Well, the best time to do it is when the phone's not ringing. Right. So, so money stops coming in. It's very tempting to say, I'm not doing any other projects. I'm going to tighten down and clamp down. But we instead said, we're going to do all the strategic stuff that we said we were going to do. That was like point one. And that was huge. Point two is like when there's a disaster,

you have to find a way to row with the disaster. And that's not just in my business. That's any business. So what was our disaster? Well, everyone's home. There's nothing going on. People aren't really looking for lawyers.

We still had some work on the property casualty side, but like my personal injury friends, they were devastated. Cars weren't on the road no one was having accidents right so i mean all those big billboard lawyers like hate them or love them whatever they lost their shirts during covid billboard bills kept coming and no one was there to see it right so what we did is said how can i roll with the disaster so what we did there is we helped people file for the various like sba eidl loans and charged a very very small fee we basically became a loan processing center for these businesses that couldn't quite figure out how to get these applications through and that generated a ton of revenue for us and you know

every as a result every time something, like we got bad legislation in Florida, really, really hurt the consumer. What did we do? We found other opportunities in Florida that were similar that would allow us to really double down. So you just have to adapt. Every time something happens, you have to adapt. There you go. Roe with the disaster. I like that. I think that describes my dating life and me as a disaster. That definitely was mine for many, many, many years. I'm putting that on my Tinder profile. Hey, baby, just row with the disaster.

Come on over. But no, you bring up a good point. When you were doing your strategy planning during the disaster, when you finally got the time for it, was part of the strategy, you know, how to get out of the situation, how to improve the situation, how to bring in different revenue, et cetera, et cetera, and maybe a five, 10 year plan or something like that? A little bit. So the first part of it was, okay,

phones aren't ringing, but we're pretty confident this is going to end, right? There's also two types of disasters, right? There's like the temporary and the permanent. And COVID I saw as a temporary disaster. Things were going to change forever, but people were going to go back to work. And I knew that. So a lot of our strategic planning was, Hey, let's go through all our processes and procedures. Now let's document them all let's map about, and then let's find ways to

improve every single thing. So when the phone starts ringing again, it's, you know, we were just let out of the gate sprinting instead of having to warm up. So that was the first piece. And then the second piece, and you never combine these things in the same meeting, was like, how do we generate new clients? How do we generate additional revenue? What other opportunities do we have?

People love talking about that stuff. So if you make it like, hey, let's write a handbook and let's come up with new sources of revenue, you lose the handbook. No one wants to help with the handbook, right? So we very intentionally carved those separately. Ah, that's very smart. Yeah. I didn't know handbooks were so hated, but I guess they are. Wow. Note to self. People like to complain about things that are wrong, but they really don't love to spend the time in a tedious way of documenting it all and fixing it.

Right. People like cool, sexy, attractive projects. They don't love the minutia. And that's one of the reasons I think we've been successful in the insurance realm is it's all minutia. All of it. Oh, there you go. You believe in the phrase, if you're not growing, you're dying. Tell us what that means. Oh, geez. Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what that means for me, which is it doesn't have to mean

you're getting bigger. It doesn't have to mean you're generating more revenue. For a lot of people, it does, but you have to constantly be growing as a company, as a person, as a lawyer, whatever you are. So for us, that means even if we've said, okay, we're hitting our revenue targets, we're not trying to sign more clients. We love our population, our census. How can we better serve these clients? Do we need to have a portal for them so they can access all their information easier? Great. Let's do that. Do we need a better way of showing them accounting and where the money is and how the money's moving? Fantastic. Let's work on that. That's all growth, even if it doesn't necessarily help your bottom line. I love the distinction that you make. That's not just necessarily revenue

or growth of the business and more employees, et cetera, et cetera. I've always used that term, if you're not growing, you're dying. I don't know where I heard it from 20 or 30 years ago, but unfortunately I used the most of it for my belt line so same thing the scale was just going up and if you're not growing you're dying eat more mcdonald's no don't do that people yeah unfortunately there if you're growing you literally are dying but i'll work on that next i guess that is true thanks for spinning that around yeah i never thought of it that way but yeah shit so there you go i suppose you could put that in a business sense too sometimes you can overgrow Yes, that is true. Thanks for spinning that around. Yeah, I didn't even thought of it that way. But yeah, shit. So there you go.

I suppose you could put that in a business sense too. Sometimes you can overgrow and end up dying. You know, some people do that where they expand too quickly. People get so overextended, right? They take out, they see an opportunity to do a bunch of marketing. So they take out a huge high interest loan or they factor their revenue. Like you only expand financially for a reason, right? It's,

it has to be intentional. It's not just growth for growth sake. Cool. You took out a million dollar loan and hired a ton of people, but what's the game plan? Is there a game plan that you get bigger? So hopefully you can take out another loan. Like I watch all these companies do all these rounds of funding and

investments over and over and over. And they're just hoping that one day someone will come buy them out before the music stops. We as lawyers don't have that luxury. So I never really thought that way. There you go. In the property and casualty claims, tell us about this industry and maybe what consumers need to know. I mean, are there certain companies that are bad companies or is it kind of across the board gambit with companies? Are there certain companies that maybe people should, you know, I don't think you want to endorse any company specifically, but it's up to you. It's your dime. But, you know, what are some things people need to know about, you know,

the claim business and casualty business and all this. So the biggest thing is your insurance agent has no decision-making power at all with your claim. And I think people forget that they think that their agent is their friend and hopefully they are. I'm really happy for you if they are, but that agent is not going to get your claim paid. They might make a phone call, but the person answering on the other side of the phone does not care that the agent is calling them. I promise you. I've seen this play out so many times. People say, oh, I'm not going to pursue that claim because my agent is my friend. Okay, great. I'd like to sell you insurance if that's the rule is that you don't actually need to get paid when you're owed money. That's the first thing. The second thing is people, because of all the marketing, they think their insurance

company is going to pay them fairly, but insurance claims are a zero sum game. If you get a dollar, they lose a dollar, right? So at the end of the day, it's just about moving money around. And that doesn't typically inspire the best trust. I'll put it this way. If you and I, if I damage your home, I drive my car right into your house and you come and say, Galen, you got to pay me for this. And I say, cool. How about this? I will tell you how much I owe you and you will accept that amount. How do you feel about that?

I wouldn't be too excited about that. That's exactly how insurance works, though. Right. Your insurance company tells you what they need to pay and how much and then they expect you to say okay great wow wow this sounds like when i was married the i was never married folks the yeah i mean that doesn't seem fair i'm still trying to figure out why were you driving my house galen you know i've i've had you on my podcast like why would you do that to me man man? Anyway.

Well, I mean, we'll see how the rest of the show goes before- It jumped out in front of you on the road. I get it. So there you go. So do people need to shop better and ask more questions of their insurance, potential insurance carriers? Yeah. So that's the first thing. So when you're shopping for insurance, you shop for it totally differently than you shop for anything else these days. Even online, you click through some reviews, you look at some photos, you check some videos, right? When you buy a car, you test drive it. When you buy a house, you do inspections. So those two things, cars and houses, you actually do a bunch of work to make sure it's going to be right for you. And then the thing that protects it, the insurance, the way you do it is you walk into your agent's office or you pick up the phone and say, hey, I need insurance. They say, great. It's going to cost you this much.

And you say, fantastic. You have no idea what it covers. You have no idea how much it covers. You have no idea if they're going to pay you when there's a problem, but you're fine with that. And that is how we shop for insurance in the United States. It's crazy, right? What people don't do is ask their agent if they can see a copy of the policy. What they definitely don't do is even if they do that first step, they usually don't bring it to someone that knows what they're doing to say,

hey, what do you think? Right? And the final thing that they do is they take discount after discount after discount. We love discounts, right? Oh, for a roof endorsement, you'll get $10 a month off. Fantastic. Did you read the roof endorsement? It says they won't pay for a roof. For a cosmetic exclusion, I'll give you $20 a month off. That means if they say it's not what we call functional damage, it's just the way it looks. We won't pay for it.

Wow. You had a car in a hailstorm and it looked like, you know, a teenage kid with acne. It had so many pockmarks. Yeah. You've seen it. You would want it fixed, right? You would want it fixed because it looks bad, but you get those exclusions in your home policy and your business policy all the time because you save 20 bucks a month. So you have to look at those discounts you're getting and why I will call out like a bunch of insurance companies by name, but I will, I will say this one farmer smart plan, most genius policy I've ever seen because it is masterful at covering as little as possible. All worded under this, we're going to give you a super budget friendly, really, really well thought out insurance plan. It's really well thought out for what they won't pay for. And so many people have these farmer smart plans and they call us up and say, you know, I need help.

They won't pay. And I know as soon as I hear farmers, oh, it's probably the smart plan. I get the policy. It's the smart plan. And, you know, 90% of the time we call them back and say, we can't help you. Wow. That is crazy. You know, I've seen different things where some companies,

especially with health insurance, they just play it out until you die. Or, you know, I think housing and burned down things. I've seen some stories of State Farm. There's one that they did here in Utah. It was like 10 or 15 years. They fought a house that I think it burned down. So you help, but you help fight against business interruption, insurance issues, hail damage, bad faith insurance, pipe burst, sinkhole,

storm damage, tornado damage, wildfire damage, fire damage, loss, homeowner's insurance claim, wind damage, water damage. Jesus, it's like a list of destruction here. Flood, hurricane, mold. Mold's probably a big one these days. Sewer. What are some of your thoughts on what's going on in Florida? I know that some of the, I think maybe some of it was prompted by the

legislator changes, legislators making changes. But I think also it's kind of like what's happening with climate change and more disasters that some insurance companies are kind of like, hey, if you're in a low-lying area or a disaster-prone area, we're bailing. What are you seeing there? Yeah, there's a few things that happened, and it's not a good situation for anyone. The first thing is, yeah, climate change, right? We have had more once-in-a-lifetime storms in the last decade.

It can't be a once-in-a once in a lifetime storm if it happens multiple times a year. Right. But nevertheless, it's throwing off all like the insurance companies, actuarial tables. It's just completely messing it up. It's really unfortunate from where I sit,

but there's a solution to that. Like number one, if you don't want to be in that state, don't number two, charge appropriate premiums for that. But what happened instead is we got this insurance crisis and it was largely manufactured the first thing that happened is over the last 15 years insurance companies have been advocating to their state

insurance commissioner whoever that is to have lower reinsurance thresholds insurance has their own insurance it's called reinsurance and it just pays what they have to pay right but they don't want to carry a bunch of it because it's expensive just like you don't like paying your insurance premiums but you do it because you have to insurance companies don't like paying their insurance premiums but they just go to the state and ask if they cannot do it right so what happened is these carriers got hit with tons and tons of claims and they did not have sufficient reinsurance to cover it and of course all the cash from your premiums they're spending that and they're investing that and doing other things so they just don't have enough cash on hand

to pay all these claims so that's like the first like really cataclysmic thing that happened that really started to make this bad so instead of insurance companies saying okay sorry we're going to get more reinsurance. What they did is said, oh, it's your state laws. Your state laws are so terrible. All these lawyers are filing suits against us and it's unfair. So we're going to pull out of the state. And that created the insurance crisis. So they said, but if you pass all this legislation that removes protections for consumers, then maybe we'll stay. And Florida was kind of the testing ground for that. Florida had a really robust bad faith statute where if they didn't

pay you timely and they didn't pay you fairly, your insurance, your attorney fees were going to get covered. So you weren't losing 30, 40% of what you needed to fix your house. And there could even be penalties depending on the situation. And that's basically all gone now in Florida. In Florida, if your insurance company does not pay you, you can sue them, but you'll lose 30 to 40% of what you need to fix your home. And attorney's fees. Wow. Yeah. I mean, because the attorneys have to work for something. And if the insurance company legally doesn't have to pay them, what do you do? Right right so now the next kind of narrative is going to

other states and saying look florida did this and we need to do this too wow and that's i mean this is causing a major disruption to housing in florida because there's there's a bunch of people going without insurance now on their house which i don't know if you can do that with a lot of your mortgage loans. I don't think mortgage companies are that up on it, especially if they're the ones collecting your escrow and paying your insurance and things. But my friends in Florida have been telling me there's just a lot of people that don't have homeowners insurance,

and they're kind of winging it but also they really can't sell because you know no one wants to buy a home and i don't know you can even get a mortgage if they don't have if you can't get insurance on it i don't even know how that works but it's kind of a catch-22 you can't move out of the state because you can't sell your home it's crazy. It is. And the mortgage companies have a solution to that, but it's not a good solution for you. It's the mortgage companies will buy their own insurance on the property.

It's called force. It's called forced placed insurance. It's more expensive. So your mortgage goes up significantly higher than if you bought insurance. And then when something does happen to your house, the mortgage company gets the money, not you. And they can choose to give you some money for repairs or they can choose to keep it all and apply it towards your loan, whatever they want. The other problem, and this

has been nipped in the butt a little bit, but this was going on for about a decade as the mortgage companies were getting essentially commissions on the insurance policies they were selling slash buying. So they didn't need to pursue claims they didn't want to pursue claims because they were getting paid anyway so it really wasn't important to them and since they were the named insured and not you you didn't have the right to go hire a lawyer to pursue your claim only the mortgage company did wow that's crazy man note to self to self, stay out of Florida. Well, that's everywhere. Just don't ever get forced place insurance. Just don't.

Yeah. So you see this spreading then to other states and throughout maybe America. I mean, are we going to end up in this nation where we're just winging it on homeowner's insurance? It's cyclical. I think in some states we'll be winging it for several years and then you know unfortunately there will probably be a housing crisis or something of the sort and then legislature legislators will turn around and be like why are insurance companies not paying anyone we should pass a law it's we never learn from our mistakes yeah and you know i guess i guess consumers have got to stand up and say, enough of this bull crap. Yeah. It's really surprising how we have this unraveling of these, technically what are security nets.

People's homes are the one thing that they can build the most value on. They can save their most. It's a vehicle that they don't have to be investment bankers to figure out. So you buy a home and it hopefully appreciates and has for the last little while and you know then you just keep it and maybe you downsize when you retire and you have a little bit of a nest egg there but you know i've been reading about cases from the florida thing and actually other people in the country where they're old senior citizens and they they can't afford the premiums and you know there's this game being played with the insurance and they're so they're just winging it they're just like fuck it i'm near the end what's the worst can happen and you're just like it's not really

a place to be at that position in your life i was at a condo building in south florida huge huge condo like it's more of a complex multiple buildings and everyone's retired like pretty much every owner is retired the insurance company is not paying for a roof after two hurricanes ago ian still won't pay for a roof water is still coming in all the units and all of these elderly people are now living with like mold and water intrusion and do not they don't have the money to hire contractors to just go fix this stuff so they're just absolutely in a terrible place and you know hopefully we'll get them to where they need to be but i was just there a few weeks ago

and it was heartbreaking yeah and mold is so dangerous too mold spores and and all that sort of stuff and they probably don't have money to move either if they wanted to. I mean, what would they do? Yeah. They suck everything they did. They had into these condos. Wow. That's just unfortunate. Yeah.

I guess you get to, you get the government, you vote for people, pay attention to what's going on when you're voting and you may need to stand up more and, you know, start yelling at politicians and say, do your job for change. So there you go. Anything further you want to talk to us about, give us advice on, give people advice on insurance industry and picking the best insurance, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. I think you just really want to approach it like any kind of intelligent consumer for anything else. If you know how to buy a car, you know how

to buy a house. I promise you, you know how to buy insurance. You just have to like apply that. Look at reviews, look at how they're performing, read just have to like apply that. Look at reviews, look at how they're performing, read reports that come out. You know, the state, most states keep track of complaints that are filed against these insurance companies. Oh, really? Yeah. You can, you can look it up, read their policy, read your policy, actually read it and pay attention. And then the second you have something actually happen, there is nothing wrong with going and consulting with a professional that knows how to navigate this world. Because even if you don't hire them, even if you want to give the insurance company the benefit of the doubt, they will get you pointed in the right direction.

And you'll know how to spot the problems, right? Well, it kind of sent a signal to the insurance company, you're not screwing around. Yeah, I think to some extent. I mean, I'll tell you, in our experience, we get a different set of adjusters than you would get if you had a claim, right? We get what are called litigation adjusters. So in some carriers,

they have more authority in terms of the size of check that they can write. And in almost all carriers that have these people, they're just more experienced and they know the claims process more. Whereas some of these desk adjusters after a big disaster have been on the job for days, not years. Wow. They just hire up for the disaster? Yeah, they have to. They got such a big influx of claims. So one of the things we like is we're

usually talking to someone more experienced and we can kind of cut through the BS a lot faster. Yeah. People always get the, you you know anytime you send an attorney letter cease and desist or notice of intent people tend to take notice and be like hey we should take this shit seriously and quit fucking around so there you go yeah i mean i'll tell you we just tried a case against an insurance company for a church that wasn't really paid after a hurricane trial was trial was just before Thanksgiving. And they definitely pay attention when the lawyers get involved. Cause that was the whole theme during the trial was they hired a lawyer too quick. It was unfair that they hired a lawyer, you know, they didn't give us a chance to do this properly. They, and then they sued us and how dare they, and you know, we would have done the right thing, but we can't do the

right thing now because there's a lawyer watching us. And the jury did not agree. Jury came back with almost every penny. You know, I think, I think in this particular case, they had paid, the insurance company had paid like 460,000 and the jury came back with an additional 4.7 million. Wow. They just did not buy. They did not buy that at all. Yeah. I mean, when an attorney's going to sue you, I mean, nine times out of ten, he's going to send a notice of intent. 30 days is correct, right?

Yeah. And they give you a warning. That's how they get attorney's fees. Otherwise, if you don't, my understanding is if you don't send a notice of intent, you might not get your attorney fee. I guess it varies from state to state, but know you're gonna get an intent notice or cnd and saying either correct your shit or or you know pack it up we'll see you in court those companies had an option that's interesting the game they play i it's it's i i think I had seen something on a health insurance thing.

Was it Health Incorporated? It was one of those Netflix documentaries where they were figuring the amount that it would take for you to litigate against them versus the amount they would have to pay out, whichever amount was better for them, they would go with. And I was just like, are you freaking kidding me?

But, you know, there you go. Welcome to America, unbridled capitalism, people.? But, you know, there you go. Welcome to America. Unbridled capitalism, people. It's working out great. There you go. So thank you very much for coming on the show, Galen. Give us your final pitch out and tell people where they can find you on the dot coms. Yeah, for sure.

If you need anything, if you're having any kind of issues with your insurance company, feel free to reach out. Insuranceclaimhq.com, 844-CLAIM-84, and someone will answer the phone 24-7 for you. And you can reach out on all the different social media. We're under insuranceclaimhq, and someone absolutely will get back to you. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on, Galen. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Crispus, linkedin.com, Fortressmas the linkedin newsletter the 130 000 linkedin group subscribe to that as well christmas one on the tickety-tockety there and christmas facebook.com thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time