Where Policyholders Get Their Reputations Back

Identity Theft 911 takes on the thorny task of resolving identity thefts on behalf of policyholders.

Best’s Review: Could you explain how you work with the insurance industry on a company basis?

CHRISTENSON: We are a vendor of the insurance industry. We take a little different approach. We work very closely with the company’s policyholders. Some of our insurance companies prefer to position themselves between us and the policyholder. By that I mean, we respond when a policyholder calls and says: “Listen, I think I have a problem with identity theft. I have something on my credit report that I don’t recognize.” Other policyholders often say: “I got a call from a collection agency and they’re saying that I bought the car, but I didn’t buy a car. Please help; I don’t know what’s going on!”

Generally speaking, what will happen is that the insurance company will then verify the policyholder’s coverage. By the way, some of our providers will gift the service to their homeowners and auto owner customers. We have others who sell the service and usually that’s because they have an endorsement that goes along with it. Once they’ve verified coverage, then the insurance company does what’s called a warm transfer and their claim person transfers that policyholder directly to us.

The insurance company does not provide us any private personal information on the policyholders; we work directly with the individuals and obtain the relevant information.

The policyholder then works one-on-one with an identity theft advocate. Once the call is transferred to us, the insurance company disconnects and they are finished with the case other than reading our monthly status reports. At the end of the day we do a survey and we give those results back to the company.

BR: What types of coverage or endorsements would apply that your services might be called in?

CHRISTENSON: If they’re selling an endorsement, it’s going to be an identity theft recovery endorsement. The typical endorsement that you see out there will be based on roughly $25,000 in coverage. The bulk of that endorsement is usually going to things like legal fees and lost wages. We have some insurance companies who do not provide an endorsement, but they still use the service. The idea is that in the event that something isn’t resolved through the service, then you have that endorsement that can pick up and take over. You may have instances, particularly during criminal identity theft, where you may need to bring in an attorney. If you have arrest warrants out, generally speaking we are going to have to use the services of an attorney. So it really depends on the case. What happens is the policy covers any expense that may have been incurred and our service takes care of the rest. Our job is to clean up the mess. We make sure the policyholders can go on with their daily lives, so that they don’t have to do anything that’s out of the ordinary to take care of the problem.