U P P A

 

Roofing, siding and related building product manufacturer and supplier company owners & shareholders

The above four letters are costing your company hundreds of millions of dollars annually in missed product sales to your customers

 

3RSystems, LLC estimate of missed manufacturer/supplier roofing, siding and related product sales to your loyal contractor customers for years 2017 thru 2019

 

$4,668,000,000 (BILLION)

 

Over the decades, property & casualty insurance companies managed to save billions of dollars on property damage insurance claim settlement payments rightly owed to unknowing insured property owners.  Their underpayment sleight of hand was accomplished by regularly denying legitimate property damage and/or delaying the claims settlement process for so long that insureds and their contractors would simply give up the fight and accept whatever incomplete offer was made to them by their insurance companies.  This resulted in billions of dollars of orders for manufacturer produced, supplier warehoused roofing, siding and related building products never being placed.

About twenty years ago, contractors, particularly those whose work was focused primarily on property damage restorations, began to become more aware of how the P&C insurance companies played the claim game.  As their awareness and understanding of how the process worked increased, they began to apply what they had learned to help their insured customers achieve better results on their insurance covered property damage claims.  Rather than simply give free estimates to insureds with damage, accept whatever the insurance company offered, then complete the repairs, contractors began to advocate on behalf of insured property owners by negotiating with their customers insurance company adjusters and in house claims representatives in order to help them to achieve fair, full, and proper settlement.  As a result, more and more property damage claims were getting, if not fully paid, better paid than in the past which meant that the approval of and orders for roofing, siding and other building product components that had previously been regularly denied by P&C insurance companies, began to increase dramatically.

Around 2008, P&C insurance companies became concerned that the proper substantial and legitimate increase in claim payments being made to their insured customers was diluting insurance company owner and shareholder value.  It was during that same year that I sent a personal note to Allstate CEO Tom Wilson that clarified for him that, although he did have, as he had expressed to an Allstate shareholder group that year, an obligation to earn a return for Allstate shareholders, his primary obligation was to not them but rather, to his premium paying property owner customers.  That note to Wilson resulted in Allstate quickly paying the additional $20,000 still owed to one of their insured customers which then allowed the insureds contractor to order all of the roofing materials the insured needed to replace their storm damaged roof.  Had the note not been sent to CEO Wilson, that roofing order would likely never have been placed with the roofing products supplier.

Beginning around 2010, in an effort to protect and increase insurance company owner and shareholder profits, which had been, in many of the previous years, record breaking, P&C insurance devised a plan that would prohibit contractors from advocating on behalf of insured property owners and negotiating their property damage insurance claims to full and fair payment.  Written by P&C insurance and aggressively and deceptively promoted to funded state by state legislators by P&C insurance and their lobbyists as consumer protection, the legislation against what became known as the "Unauthorized Practice of Public Adjusting", otherwise known by its acronym "UPPA", has become the law of the land across the country.  In many states, violation of "UPPA" by contractors doing what contractors successfully and rightly did for their insured customers for decades previous, that is advocate on behalf of and negotiate the claims of their insured property owner customers, could result in a felony charge against them.

With contractors no longer able to advocate on behalf of and negotiate their customers property damage insurance claims as they had been able to do for decades past, P&C insurance is now able to, and does, while hiding behind the false "consumer protection" ruse that is UPPA, withhold billions of dollars worth of legitimate claims payments owed to their all too trusting policyholder customers.  Those injured policyholders do, of course, have the option to hire an attorney to litigate their claims, but because of the often great expense in time, money and stress, most choose to settle for substantially less than they are owed.  With that, those billions of claims dollars legitimately owed to insured property owners, a percentage which would have gone to pay for billions of dollars worth of roofing, siding and other building products every year, remains within the corporate coffers of the P&C insurance companies as profits.  

Key point:  A percentage of those billions of dollars, $14,850,000,000 (BILLION) for years 2017 thru 2019, by my estimate, improperly withheld from their insured customers each year is money that, instead of rewarding P&C insurance company owners and shareholders should have been paid to roofing, siding and other building product manufacturers and suppliers thereby properly rewarding the manufacturing and supplier company owners and shareholders instead.  The manufacturer and supplier share (as shown above) for the years 2017 thru 2019, by my estimate = $4,668,000,000 (BILLION).

Not really understanding the law but rightly believing UPPA to be unfair to both their insured customers as well as themselves and their company’s, most contractors, not knowing how to challenge it, and not wanting to be charged with a crime for violating it, wrongly believe they have no choice but to simply accept it in its current form, carry on, and live with the financial and other costs. 

Roofing, siding and related building products manufacturers and suppliers both do a tremendous job at informing their contractor customers about the features, benefits and latest advances in their services and products that help those contractor customers to improve and advance their productivity.  What they do not do however, is inform their contractor customers regarding the UPPA problem, how it negatively affects them and what can be done to fight back against it.  Why? Mostly because they are not really even aware that there is a problem, that, as the above has clearly outlined, has and will continue to cost them billions of dollars in missed building product sales if not addressed and confronted.

With the above in mind, it is my strongly held belief that manufacturers and suppliers owe an obligation to their tens of thousands of loyal contractor customers who purchase billions of dollars worth of roofing, siding and other building products from them every year, to learn about then educate them on the UPPA problem and the solutions to it.  If not owed to their contractor customers, as one ill-informed individual suggested was the case, with the above numbers in mind, manufacturers and suppliers certainly owe an obligation to their owners and shareholders to make them aware of the problem so that they can in turn address it.

Since roofing, siding and other building product manufacturing and supply company owners and shareholders do understandably have a vested interest in learning what's behind and then stopping the billions of dollars of annual financial bleeding (missed product sales) from continuing, based on my years of successful construction, financial and legal experience, I have devised a plan that will, without question, allow them to, indeed, address the problem and take back control.   By addressing the problem as it should properly be addressed, from the top down (owners and shareholders first), and then educating those who purchase the roofing, siding and other building products on the process at it applies to them, those billions of dollars in owner and shareholder profits can then be properly re-directed back to where they truly belong.

To learn more about the plan and how it will benefit you as a roofing, siding and other building product manufacturing or supply company owner or shareholder, please feel free to contact me for consultation through the methods provided on this site.   Just as your shareholders, once made aware of the problem and the tremendous cost to them, will be likely looking forward to hearing from me, I will look forward to hearing from you to discuss.

Sincerely,

 

 

Larry Burtis - President, 3RSystems, LLC

 

 

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