Working at CEA

Tom Welsh Chief Executive Officer (Interim) leads the organization in the development of strategies and public policy initiatives to achieve CEA's vision and mission. The Executive department also leads a variety of priority projects that require collaboration with external stakeholders and leadership across the organization. Projects include innovative partnerships to support CEA’s insurance and mitigation missions, including earthquake response planning, and collaborative efforts to enhance the insurance industry's overall readiness and response to a major California earthquake. Defining and promoting CEA’s work culture and values and ensuring they are embodied throughout the organization is also a critical priority.

The Communications and Public Relations department works to fulfill CEA’s strategic goals to educate, mitigate, and insure through a variety of different channels, including business to consumer and business to business communication, public relations, media relations, marketing, advertising, graphic design, social media, website content, community outreach, and reputation and crisis management.

Within each of these channels are numerous strategic decisions and applications. Our goal is to provide a professional, consistent voice to our partners, agents, policyholders and the people of California.

We also have a robust internal communications program, which includes an intranet, a weekly newsletter, All Staff meetings, social events and more.

The Finance department works to ensure financial sources are available to pay claims for policyholders based on the annual risk-transfer strategy approved by the governing board. The accounting unit is responsible for maintaining the budget including receivables from the participating insurers, expenditures to vendors, and compliance with regulatory requirements.

Insurance Operations

The Insurance Operations department is the CEA’s insurance subject matter experts. Insurance Operations works closely with internal stakeholders to develop and implement CEA projects relating to programs, products, and rates. The department collaborates with participating insurers to ensure implementation of CEA policies and procedures, including those derived from statutes and regulations, in support of the CEA’s strategic goals of educate, mitigate, and insure.

Insurance Education & Sales Support (IESS)

The IESS team is composed of four main functions: Agent Training, Info Desk, Agent Outreach, and Web Application Development.

These teams work to provide agents, insurance professionals, and customers with education and information related to CEA policies, providing support through educational courses, telephone and email assistance, and high-quality websites with online tools and resources.

Claims

The Claims department works to ensure fair, timely and consistent claim handling by our participating insurers. Claims oversees all CEA claims related activities including the development of earthquake claim handling material and conducting detailed claim audits. The department collaborates with our internal stakeholder’s as well as the participating insurers on CEA policies, procedures and training, including those derived from statutes and regulations.

Readiness and Response

CEA’s Readiness and Response team supports the organization’s post-event response after a damaging earthquake impacting its California policyholders.

Steered by an overarching set of guidelines (the Earthquake Response Framework) that outlines the organization’s response to a damaging earthquake affecting CEA policyholders, the team utilizes a cross-departmental structure to organize and initiate post-event activities and key functions. Collectively, these activities enhance CEA’s readiness to support our policyholders and participating insurers post-event.

Activities managed and maintained by this team include:

• Preparedness, training, and testing of personnel and claims systems.
• Activation, incident management, and organizational response.
• Post-event maintenance and improvement of earthquake response.

The Information Technology (IT) department is organized into five teams: security, architecture, operations, implementation, and administration.

IT’s goals are to support the CEA mission by providing effective strategic and tactical planning in the use of technology; providing available, reliable, secure, & governed technology solutions; maintaining a flexible IT environment able to adapt to changes in scale and configuration; and creating and fostering a culture of continuous improvement & learning.

The Internal Operations Department supports the CEA’s mission by providing several key programs and services including but not limited to: human resources, business services, facilities management, equal employment opportunity, training, enterprise project management, and business continuity.

Internal Operations leads the organization in bridging the gap between business and technology, change management, and setting up the organization for growth and modernization.

Centralized Policy Processing (CPP)

CPP is a policy and claim administration platform for managing earthquake policy data from 11 of CEA's  20 participating insurers (PIs). CEA uses the CPP platform and other technologies to collect, manage, and report data for CEA's book of business.

CEA’s Legal & Compliance Department is a collaborative group of professionals that serve the legal, compliance, governance, legislative and audit needs of the CEA enterprise. Key functions and responsibilities include:

• Protecting and promoting CEA’s interests with the California Legislature and Congress
• Assisting in the development and implementation of policies and procedures that ensure CEA operates with a culture of compliance and integrity
• Providing expert legal advice and services to our organization

CEA’s Mitigation and Research Department works with like-minded groups and organizations to:

1. Develop comprehensive guidelines for the seismic retrofit of single-family dwellings;
2. Execute and promote the growth of the California Residential Mitigation Program (CRMP); and
3. Develop, promote and sponsor research projects focused on seismic safety and making earthquake insurance more affordable and accessible for Californians that own or rent residences.

The Enterprise Risk Management and Actuarial departments are responsible for CEA’s enterprise risk management program, including earthquake response planning. This team actively works with the Executive Management and Risk Owners of each business function to identify, mitigate, monitor and report on key risks of daily activities in support of CEA’s organizational resilience and strategic goals—as well as to respond to situational risks in a timely and accurate manner.

Actuarial analyses in the department includes planning and directing a program of actuarial estimates and analyses relating to the CEA’s rates, products and financial structures, oversight of catastrophe loss model updates; and, evaluation of legislative and/or regulatory changes.