Insurers and adjusters are using improved technology and lessons learned from the unprecedented demands of handling claims from Hurricane Katrina to improve the way losses are settled.

Bud Trice, vp of U.S. property/casualty catastrophe services at Atlanta-based Crawford & Co., said one of the biggest lessons to come from Katrina is the importance of getting the small details right.

“In the pre-Katrina world,” some claims information that Crawford adjusters needed was left out of electronic files prepared by data input personnel in the haste to get information into the system as quickly as possible, he said. That slowed the adjusting process, which made for bottlenecks in the midst of the immense catastrophe created by Katrina, he said.

“Now we are religious about getting every bit of information to the adjuster so they don't waste time in adjusting the claim,” Mr. Trice said.

Technology changes since Katrina have helped insurers better prepare to adjust claims after a major catastrophe, said Gerald Ritter, a principal with Quantum Global Advisors L.L.C., a claims services company in Chicago.

Improvements in Internet technology have paved the way for easier sharing of information through file-sharing systems. “Insurers are much more comfortable with that technology,” he said.

“The insurance industry was not as technologically advanced as it should have been” when Katrina hit, said M. Todd Richard, president and CEO of F.A. Richard & Associates Inc., a Mandeville, La., claims management company. “There were a lot of legacy systems out there” that have been replaced, he said.

“At the end of the day, insurance claims are basically an exchange of information,” said Steve Dimakos, a principal with Quantum. “To the extent that technology can speed that up, it makes things better.”

“As an industry, we are much more in tune with technology,” said Mr. Richard. “If a Katrina-type storm occurred today, the marketplace would be better able to respond.”

The industry learned that a catastrophe as large as Katrina means adjusters will be in short supply if there are not enough under contract in advance, experts noted.

“The insurance industry was taxed very heavily” to find adequate adjusting manpower to handle Katrina claims, said Mr. Dimakos. “Katrina was unique in a lot of ways. It destroyed whole neighborhoods and the area lost a lot of population,” he said.

Devastation that vast strained adjusters to the point that some insurers were forced to hire those with little or no experience to handle Katrina claims, Mr. Dimakos said. “You could see how low they had to dip,” he said of inexperienced adjusters some insurers were forced to employ.

“We can all say they should have hired more people,” Mr. Dimakos said. “But from an insurance company's perspective, how many people can you have sitting around doing nothing” until a catastrophe strikes? “Their model is such that they tap all their local resources and then move outward. It's easy to criticize, but I don't know how else they could do it,” he said.