AF recently facilitated its most recent Arbitrator Workshop webinars on March 15 and 16. The purpose of these 30-minute workshops is to drive decision quality by:

1. Sharing information with arbitrators on recent decision quality trends and drivers.
2. Answering questions arbitrators may have on hearing cases.

The March workshops, attended by 279 arbitrators, focused on:

• The impact of policy limits rulings and how they affect the final award.
• The effect of additional exposures rulings on allocating policy limits.
• Understanding when and where prior payments are applicable to a decision.

Key takeaways from this workshop include:

• Policy limits rulings must be accurate for a proper award.
• An additional exposure can be valid whether it is paid, unpaid, or unknown.
• Additional exposures affect policy limits differently when they are paid versus unpaid or unknown.
• If an additional exposure is unpaid or an unknown amount, the arbitrator will have to decide if it places the filing out of jurisdiction if the policy limits are in jeopardy. 
• Credit for prior payments can only be applied in the payment section.
• Credit should only be given for checks supported as paid/cleared, or when an EFT has been sent.
• Credit can only be given for payments issued toward damages sought in the filing.

Attendee Feedback:

“Thank you for doing these training sessions – they provide great information and the fact that you dedicate so much time to questions is excellent. I feel this will bring different companies back to the same page on these topics.”

“[I] enjoyed attending and getting new/refreshed information. [I] will attend in the future.”

“Always appreciate being kept up to date on ‘hot topics.’ It’s nice to be kept in the loop regarding any issues you're continually seeing from members. Thanks so much!”

View our 2023 Arbitrator Workshop schedule and enroll in future webinars.