View from the top: Jim Shevlin, ESIS

Jim Shevlin was named president of ESIS Inc., Chubb Ltd.’s third-party administration business, last year after spending most of his career in property/casualty insurance. He started out in personal lines and later spent several years at American International Group Inc. before joining Ace Ltd. in 2001. In 2008, he was named regional executive for the Southwest in Dallas and moved on in 2010 to run the Southeast region from Alpharetta, Georgia, where he managed all the insurer’s offerings. After Ace bought Chubb Corp. in 2016, he was involved in merging the operations of the insurers. He recently spoke with Business Insurance Editor Gavin Souter about his impressions of the TPA business and the future of the sector. Edited excerpts follow. 

Q: What are your impressions of the TPA sector?

A: The last couple of years obviously have been interesting in the TPA space. We’ve had our challenges as we’ve come through the pandemic with staffing and so on, which everybody has had in the marketplace. … The great resignation provided some challenges to the marketplace, so how do we rebuild some of that experience that decided to retire either because they could retire, or they were looking for a change? It’s been interesting for us to be able to go out there and present ourselves and provide solutions and create a partnership in the risk management community.

Q: How difficult is it to attract people in the TPA market at the moment?

A: With the right approach we’ve been able to find talent in the marketplace. Part of it is providing the right culture and opportunity to educate folks on why they want to become part of our organization and how we can help them to succeed. Part of that is putting together a strong learning and development approach so that we’re doing the right thing by training our folks, putting them in the right position to grow, and then hopefully create a career opportunity for them. 

So, we’ve had to rebuild a little bit and staffing has been a common theme throughout almost every industry that we touch. We’re in a pretty good spot; my opportunity is to find the right folks that want to learn, and I can help them learn, give them the opportunity to be successful. 

The other part of it is we’ve got to provide them with the right tools and capabilities, so technology platforms, which we’ve made a big investment in, we will continue to invest in. 

In the pandemic, we saw folks retire with a lot of years of experience and you don’t rebuild that overnight … but if I can train folks the right way and use technology and data the right way, we can position our folks for success.

Q: Where do you see the TPA business headed? 

A: It’s in a good position right now. I just got off a phone call with a risk manager and he was expressing their challenges. They have limited resources, so there’s a good opportunity for us in how we position our capabilities to help the risk management community in areas that they feel stressed, and they don’t have enough resources or enough capabilities.

Also, we’re seeing more and more clients taking larger retentions, so they’re putting more of their dollars at risk, and they want to make sure that they’re partnering with the right TPA that has the capabilities to help them manage the cost of risk effectively, short term and long term. 

Q: Are there any particular areas where you see opportunities? 

A: We see it in our standard services – work comp, auto and general liability areas – but I also see opportunities in our medical programs group as we continue to offer solutions to our clients for better care of their employees at the time of injury and through the process. 

Then a growth area for us is what we call our specialty claims area – medical malpractice, professional liability, tough products liability – so we bring a skill set there that helps us differentiate ourselves in the marketplace. 

Also, absence management is an area where we’re seeing a good opportunity for growth as companies are looking for that one solution to manage all the absence management related to an employee, whether it’s short- or long-term disability or workers comp. 

Lastly, there’s what we call Chubb global risk advisors where we are selling loss control and risk management prevention services to our clients on a bundled and unbundled basis.

Q: Do you see lasting consequences of the pandemic for the TPA sector, both from the perspective of losses and how you operate your business? 

A: As the severity of the pandemic declined, some states loosened up on the requirements of reporting, but if that changes we can adapt very quickly to it. 

From a staffing standpoint, one of the things we’ve had to adapt to is work from home. We allow our employees a flexible work schedule, but we also believe in being together in an office environment for learning. We’re bringing in folks with limited experience and we want to make sure that they’re learning face to face, and then also impromptu conversations or learning opportunities are invaluable. 

Q: Do you think increased use of data and technology is going to have a significant effect on the TPA sector?

A: It will have positive effects. We see this as a people-related business. When somebody’s injured, they want to talk to somebody who can walk them through the expectations of what they’re going to be faced with and they want to have that understanding. We’re using technology where we think it can create efficiencies in the claim process — how can I identify a claim situation, based on our database of information, that … might be something that could turn out to be worse than what it looks like on the surface? How do we use predictive modeling to help us identify a claim that might get out of control and that we can address earlier and make sure we’re taking the right steps in that process, too?

We’re always learning about data – how do we use it more effectively and how do we use it in the right way, so that we provide the best level of service and the best outcomes?

There’s no doubt that data will continue to influence us in a positive way.