6 Prominent Insurance Designations and How They Can Benefit Careers

With so many insurance designations out there, it can be hard to determine which one is the right next step for your career.

By: Courtney DuChene | April 7, 2020

If you’re interested in increasing your knowledge of the insurance industry, taking courses and earning a designation might be the way to go.

Designations help insurance professionals expand their knowledge of the industry, improve customer service and prepare for the future.

“When I first started my insurance career, I set out to gain a deeper understanding of the industry. The coursework has made me more knowledgeable, a resource to my peers, and better equipped to serve customers,” said Timothy Cuoco, claims specialist in the Property Complex at State Farm. Cuoco has pursued several designations, including the CPCU, AIC, AINS, ALMI, ALB, ACS, AIS and the AA.

Professional designations don’t just increase your knowledge of the industry, however. Pursuing a designation can also help you take the next steps in your career.

“When trying to get promoted, education is what sets you apart from other candidates,” said Tracie Warder CPCU, AU, AINS. Warder is a commercial farm/ranch strategy consultant at American Family Mutual Insurance Company.

“The designations, in many of the cases, are what differentiated who was more desirable for the positions I applied for and why I ultimately landed the job. It helps set you apart from the other candidates,” she added.

Jeff Couden, CPCU, AIC-M, ARe, AIS, AIDA, assistant vice president, property claims at Quincy Mutual, agreed that pursuing insurance designations has helped him get ahead.

“Early in my career, having two to three CPCU courses under my belt helped me transition from an assistant underwriter to a junior underwriter. I feel I was an easy hire when an employer looked at my resume and saw my drive to continue my own education,” he said.

“Since getting my CPCU, I have never lost out on a job opportunity that I wanted.”

With so many designations out there, it can be hard to determine which one would best serve your career and increase your knowledge of the industry. Here’s a breakdown of six prominent designations and how they’ve helped the careers of insurance professionals.

1) Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter

For anyone looking to pursue an insurance designation, the Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) seems like an obvious place to start. It’s one of the best known designations in the industry, and many recommend that it be one of the first designations insurance professionals pursue.

“The CPCU designation is far and away the most well-recognized of insurance designations. It’s versatile yet exclusive,” said Amelia Fitch, CPCU, enterprise strategy research consultant at American Family Insurance.

“It’s more than just any designation; it’s a designation that is known and respected throughout the industry.”

In addition to being one of the best known designations in the industry, the CPCU is one of the heftiest. Made up of nine courses and eight exams, it typically takes two to three years to complete.

Despite the time it takes, the CPCU is worth it, insurance professionals say, because it can go a long way in expanding your knowledge of the industry and advancing your career.

“During my first insurance position out of college, I was working at a large regional office for a national carrier. I noticed certain folks were highly skilled and respected in the office, and I quickly learned all of them decided to pursue the CPCU designation,” Couden said. “Within that office of about 200 people, there were maybe three CPCUs.

“So many people said it was too time consuming, or too difficult, so they were not going to even try it. That’s not my style. I wanted to lead and show others that the designation is obtainable with dedication, motivation and a positive attitude,” he added.

Who Should Pursue a CPCU Designation? Agents and brokers, agency principals, claims representatives, lines of business managers and executives, insurance litigators, risk managers and underwriters.

2) Associate in Risk Management

An Associate in Risk Management (ARM) designation can help risk and insurance professionals improve their understanding of risk assessment and risk solutions.

The designation is made up of four courses and typically takes 9 to 15 months to complete. Insurance professionals say that this designation helped them gain knowledge of the industry that they wouldn’t have gotten inside the office.

“There is so much more to learn about insurance than what I get exposed to on a daily basis. The insurance designations help me to continue education and learn outside the bounds of my current broker position,” said Kelly Thresher MBA, ARM, AINS, AIS. Thresher is an assistant vice president and account executive at Lockton.

“Both the ARM and AINS are valuable designations,” Thresher added. “They show the time and effort taken by the individual to obtain the designation and shows others they are dedicated to learning outside their day-to-day experience.”

Who Should Pursue an ARM Designation? Anyone who makes decisions based on risk, including public and private entity risk managers; analysts and consultants; chief risk officers; CFOs; and business continuity, supply chain, and safety and loss control professionals.

3) Certified Insurance Counselors

The Certified Insurance Counselors (CIC) designation improves insurance professionals knowledge in one of seven different topic areas: personal lines, commercial casualty, commercial property, life and health, agency management, commercial multiline or company operations.

The designation is made up of five courses, four of which must be CIC courses and the last of which can be a Certified Risk Manager (CRM) or Certified Personal Risk Manager (CPRM) course.

“After receiving the CPCU designation, I wanted to pursue the CIC designation to better understand agency operations and to enhance my skills working directly with agency leaders,” said Blair Eichenberger, CPCU, CIC, personal lines marketing specialist at United Fire Group.

“I would encourage others to pursue the CPCU and CIC designations. It’s hard work, but I believe the status and opportunities that come with the designations are worth the time,” Eichenberger said.

Who Should Pursue a CIC Designation? Agents, brokers, adjusters, solicitors, other insurance professionals, and risk managers.

4) Associate in Claims

If you’re looking to improve your knowledge of all things claims, an Associate in Claims (AIC) designation may be the right one for you. Made up of five courses, the AIC designation typically takes 18 to 24 months to complete.

“I decided … on an AIC designation to gather claims acumen,” Cuoco said. “The coursework has made me more knowledgeable, a resource to my peers, and better equipped to serve customers.”

The AIC designation can be valuable as a starting point for those new to claims or to seasoned claims professionals.

It can also help those already working in another area of the insurance industry pivot to becoming a claims professional. Couden, for example, decided to pursue his AIC designation in order to help transition from a career in underwriting to one in claims.

“When I transitioned from underwriting to claims, my first thought was, ‘How can I get up to speed quickly to effectively lead this new team?’ ” Couden said.

“After studying for the required licenses, I looked for a designation to give me a lift. The Associate in Claims Management fit the bill for improving my claims technical and managerial skill sets.”

Who Should Pursue an AIC Designation? Claims professionals at brokerages, insurance companies, third party administrators and independent adjusters.

5) Associate in General Insurance

An Associate in General Insurance (AINS) designation can help insurance professionals build a strong foundation of knowledge around the industry’s principles.

At four courses and only 9 to 15 months of time, the AINS is one of the quicker designations to pursue. It can be a path to a great career in insurance and can set up the foundations for future learning and designations.

“AINS is a broad overview of property and liability insurance principles and a great place to start your learning,” Cuoco said.

“I started AINS to get a broad overview. I decided then on an AIC designation to gather claims acumen, and completed CPCU coursework to obtain the next major designation.”

In addition to giving insurance professionals a strong foundation of industry knowledge, an AINS designation offers practical skills insurance professionals can use to assist their clients.

“These designations directly relate to assisting my clients and broadening my insurance knowledge,” Thresher said.

Who Should Pursue an AINS designation? Property/casualty insurance professionals, managers or supervisors, customer service representatives, call center staff, and administrative and support staff.

6) Associate in Insurance Data Analytics

As data and analytics take on an ever-more important role in the industry and the world, it’s important for insurance professionals to understand and feel comfortable using data and predictive models.

If you’re looking to improve your data and analytics skills, an Associate in Insurance Data Analytics (AIDA) designation might be the right one for you.

“With such an intense focus on data and analytics in insurance now, I wanted to keep my skills sharp and relevant while continuing my own professional development,” Couden said.

“Honestly, I was never a ‘numbers guy’ in school, but realizing my weakness, I made it a point to focus on numbers, data and statistics, seeing how valuable they are in assessing losses, staff performance and evaluating opportunities.”

AIDA is another of the “quick” designations to pursue at only four courses in 9 to 15 months of time.

Who Should Pursue an AIDA Designation? Underwriters, claim managers, insurance data managers, regulatory compliance specialists and business managers and executives. &

Courtney DuChene is a staff writer at Risk & Insurance. She can be reached at [email protected]

Step One: Going Back to the Literature on Recovery Processes

Joseph Berardo, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, Carisk Partners

Outlier claims can sometimes get lost in a large book of business and fail to get the dedicated resources they deserve. The first step to rein in these claims is to bring them to the forefront.

“First, we had to define what ‘delayed recovery’ means. Using historical claims data as well as clinical best practices, we can establish the expected recovery timeline for different injury types,” said Alana Letourneau, M.D., MBA, Senior Vice President of Clinical Strategy, Carisk Partners.

Cases that fall outside these boundaries are flagged for closer inspection. To zero in on the factors complicating recovery, Letourneau and her team turned to research literature surrounding different potential triggers, examining U.S.-based clinical studies and data models from the past five years.

“We were looking only at high quality studies with a preference for level one and level two evidence, including meta-analyses and systematic reviews. We broke out the research according to risk categories within medical, psychological and social determinants, paying special attention to pain, opioid use, and mental health diagnoses,” she said.

Step Two: Drawing Data from Research

Chronic pain diagnoses and opioid use for certain durations were two of the strongest medical predictors of delayed recovery. Polypharmacy, or the prescription of multiple drugs to treat a single condition, is also a risk factor. A history of mental health challenges or substance abuse issues likewise indicate an increased likelihood that physical recovery will not follow a straight line.

Social determinants are a little trickier to identify as they aren’t always captured in clinical documentation, but some metrics serve as useful proxies. Carisk’s proprietary approach, Pathways™ 2 Recovery, engages the patient and enables the gathering of critical information that helps inform the strategy leading to the best outcomes.

Data gathered around these risk factors are added to 20 years’ worth of historical claims data housed in the Carisk Intelligent Clearinghouse, which currently comprises more than 9 million claims. Over the long term, the goal is to use this data to build a predictive model powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

“If we can flag some of these warning signals early, we may be able to get out in front of these claims and reduce the incidence of ongoing, unresolved claims,” Berardo said.

Step Three: Delivering Holistic Clinical Care

Alana Letourneau, M.D., MBA, Senior Vice President of Clinical Strategy, Carisk Partners

While the predictive model remains a work in progress, steps can still be taken to change the trajectory of currently open cases. Carisk turns these claims around by deploying behavioral health expertise from the start.

This approach is exemplified by Carisk’s proprietary Integrated Health Assessment. This assessment goes beyond injury status and medical history.

“The Integrated Health Assessment is the first place where we’re able to focus on the full 360-degree view of that patient from a medical, psychological, and social needs perspective,” Letourneau said.

The conversation begins by asking injured workers about their strengths, rather than their limitations. This offers two advantages. First, self-identified strengths can be leveraged later in the recovery process, used as set points that continually reinforce a positive mindset. Second, a focus on positivity helps to establish trust and rapport between the injured worker and the clinical team — something often lacking in unresolved claims.

The Integrated Health Assessment is also an opportunity to learn details about the injured worker’s psychological health and social environment that haven’t been captured in medical records or other case documentation. In some cases, this can unearth key sources of stress and trauma that must be addressed in order to physically recover to continue.

One older patient, for example, has suffered a low back sprain and was subsequently out of work for a decade, over which she had developed severe depression with suicidality. During the Integrated Health Assessment, it was identified that she was living with her grandson, who was struggling with his own addiction and mental health issues. The patient felt that she couldn’t focus on herself because she was so worried about her grandson.

“We worked as a clinical team to connect that grandson to services and to care, and once accomplished, the patient was able to get herself to a better place. She started seeing a therapist, seeing friends, going to her church … all things that she hadn’t done in years.”

Extra care is also taken to match injured workers to providers with specialized expertise and similar backgrounds.

“We select providers based on different categories including discipline, years of experience, gender, location, culture, and language that they speak. We want to make sure the provider is going to be a good fit because trust and rapport are critical to help move the injured worker forward,” Letourneau said.

The Benefits of a Behavioral Approach

“Somebody once said to us that any behavioral health element in the workers’ comp space was the result of someone backing into it, as sort of a last resort. We take the opposite approach. We’re a behavioral health company first,” Berardo said.

Some of the outcomes produced by a holistic approach include fewer hospitalizations, less intense pain, increased physical function and quality of life, and decreased depression, anxiety and trauma scores. Quantified and tracked over time, these metrics add to the richness of data that will guide future efforts at earlier intervention.

With the predictive model slated to go live by the end of the year, the ultimate goal is to prevent any cases from going off-course in the first place, preventing not just unnecessary expense, but also the accumulation of trauma suffered by the injured worker.

“The combination of our 12 years of operating a NCQA and AAAHC accredited behavioral health company, our willingness to take risks in this space, and the investment we’ve made in technology is what makes us uniquely equipped to take on this category of unresolved claims in the workers’ comp space,” Berardo said, “no one in this space has the experience we bring to these patients.”

To learn more, visit https://www.cariskpartners.com/.

This article was produced by the R&I Brand Studio, a unit of the advertising department of Risk & Insurance, in collaboration with Carisk Partners. The editorial staff of Risk & Insurance had no role in its preparation.

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6 Prominent Insurance Designations and How They Can Benefit Careers