Staking a Claim

Insurance litigation is costly, and in today's tough economy companies need to protect every dollar. Trial attorney and risk management consultant Bernd G. Heinze, CEO of The Heinze Group LLC in suburban Philadelphia, helps insurance companies and policy holders save costs and maximize the outcomes of claims and litigation.

"We work as a business partner rather than a vendor with policyholders, investors, claim professionals in the insurance companies, and attorneys involved in litigation and commercial arbitrations," Heinze explains.

The Heinze Group was designed with adaptability and flexibility in mind. "Rather than forcing our customers to fit in a template we developed," Heinze says, "we adapt ourselves to them and bring with us the experience and intellectual capital of all the people on our team."
Heinze started his career as a legislative assistant for U.S. Rep. Jack Kemp, a popular N.Y. congressman who was a one-time presidential contender and champion of supply-side economics. 

Heinze later entered law as a trial attorney working in the insurance industry, where he recognized a niche potential. "I realized there might be an opportunity to complement the insurance claim professionals as well as the attorneys that are being retained to represent either the insurance companies or their policy holders. That turned out to be the opportunity that built this business," Heinze says.

"When we started the Heinze Group, the thought was to do more consulting activities for insurance companies, but the more our name got around and our reputation for objectivity and fairness continued to develop, the more we started to receive requests to consult or be expert witnesses for policy holders and the attorneys that represent them across the country."

"It is an entrepreneurial way to look at claims and lawsuits in a commodity-value-based approach rather than a process-based structure," Heinze continues. "We use a different type of method by managing to the desired outcome. When a lawsuit or claim comes in, we use our collective courtroom and boardroom experiences to triage it; we work with the clients, claims people, investigators, agents, brokers, the senior management, and the attorneys involved. We develop budgets, a strategy, and a desired outcome with time sensitive and performance benchmarks and budget protocols built in."

Because finding cost-effective solutions is so important during troubled economic times, Heinze says their business has actually seen growth. "People continue to engage each other in litigation. The work of insurance companies in managing claims continues to develop even in bad economic times—perhaps more so. Our customers are pressed to maximize their operating and expense ratios. So we craft solutions to direct valuable resources and the investment of dollars to achieve superior results. It maximizes the potential of securing the desired result, and ensures that the budget is adhered to,” Heinze says. "We are essentially taking an outsource management approach to help our customers keep their focus on what they do day-to-day, while we are entrusted with developing the solutions and managing the results that we have put our name to at the outset of the process. We bring them the results that are, hopefully, better than expected," Heinze says.

The company offers additional value through process counseling. "Our customers save money and are able to enhance their results by virtue of the performance reviews and audits we have performed on claims and litigation portfolios. Another benefit of what we do is that we can take on entire lawsuit portfolios that may have higher value exposures or age to them, and work at resolving them to better-than-expected results."

In larger exposure claims, or where the policy holders have a large retention or have their own money at risk, the Heinze Group also works to protect the reputation of those individuals and companies. "In an employment liability lawsuit, or a directors and officers lawsuit, where the individual people are named as defendants or the company's reputation is at stake, their bottom-line capital is also at risk," Heinze explains. "We've been able to develop and manage solutions to protect those reputational risks and resolve lawsuit to the benefit of the policy holder."

Heinze attributes his success to his parents, both post-war immigrants from Germany, and his time on Capitol Hill with Kemp. "My parents instilled excellent values that helped to give me the opportunity to start my own business,” Heinze says. “They were my greatest mentors for developing a passionate work ethic and realizing that integrity does matter. You have to live it every day and bring the values of honesty and fairness to your work. When you have your own business, you are judged and either rise of fall depending on what you deliver."