Transcending Adversity
We are proud to say that every member of the Crawford team, at every level of our organization, has demonstrated exceptional fortitude in what have been incredibly trying times. Their unwavering commitment to our purpose and ability to transcend adversity has been nothing short of inspiring.
To Our Shareholders
For many, 2020 will be remembered as the year that changed everything. From social interaction to the way businesses operate, every aspect of society has been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It was also a year characterized by contentious political dynamics and civil unrest in response to social injustice here in the Unites States and around the world. Weather events brought about hardship as well. 2020 produced the most active hurricane season on record, and six major hurricanes wreaked havoc across the Caribbean and the South-eastern United States. Widespread flooding in the U.K. and deadly bushfires in Australia devastated communities and caused billions of dollars in damage. Crawford transcended adversity and delivered on its purpose to restore and enhance lives, businesses and communities.
As we took on our new roles of CEO and president during the beginning of the pandemic, we needed to ensure that business was not hindered or interrupted. To continue to provide top-quality, promptly, our dedicated employees had to adapt to the changing work environment and evolving needs of our clients. As a new executive leadership team, we prioritized the health and safety of our employees knowing that if we took care of our people, they would take care of our clients. We shifted 90% of our workforce to working from home. We sourced personal protective equipment for field adjusters and nurses, and we made new mental health resources available to all employees through our benefits programs.
We were also able to draw on the investments that we made in reimagined and simplified digital solutions over the years, ramping up our remote claims handling capabilities, helping our clients adopt self-service technologies and introducing new solutions to meet the unique challenges of a world on lockdown. In many ways, the challenges of 2020 highlighted Crawford’s resilience as our dedicated workforce, financial stability and innovation allowed us to transcend the challenges presented by a rapidly changing world. From a financial perspective, our 2020 results were stronger than anticipated and further positioned us to respond and adapt to a new economic reality and the evolving needs of our clients. We strengthened our balance sheet by reducing our total debt outstanding to $114 million and net debt1 to $69 million at year end, its lowest since 2013, and generated $93 million in operating cash flow, marking a 24% increase over the prior year and achieving its highest level since 2016. Further, in our high volume, low complexity claims business, we improved margins, which was a direct result of the hard work and dedication of our people.
In our first months of leadership, we conducted a refresh of our existing corporate strategy which reaffirmed our commitment to innovation, service, quality and expertise. We announced a new global business line organizational structure that aligns Crawford to three macro businesses – Loss Adjusting, Third Party Administration and Platform Solutions – a structure which will better enable our growth plans and envisioned future.
As part of this process, we created several new regional leadership roles, and we are delighted that these have been filled through internal promotions. This is a fantastic demonstration of the deep and eminent talent and experience within our teams. We will continue to establish clear promotional paths supported by targeted training programs for our people.
Of course, this does not mean that we will not look outwards in our search for exceptional professionals. In fact, in 2020 we expanded our network of catastrophe adjusters to support a top tier client. We also grew by acquisition, as we brought on board leading legal solutions provider, HBA Legal in Australia, as part of our ongoing expansion of our integrated legal services platform. Also, the acquisition of Chilean loss adjuster Crawford Carvallo established Crawford as the largest loss adjusting company in Latin America.
We are proud to say that every member of the Crawford team, at every level of our organization, has demonstrated exceptional fortitude in what have been incredibly trying times. Their unwavering commitment to our purpose and ability to transcend adversity has been nothing short of inspiring. We are immensely proud of what they have achieved and are grateful for the trust placed in us to lead them.
In 2020, we responded, we adapted, we innovated, and we delivered. In 2021, we will continue to forge ahead from a position of strength, finding new ways to create compelling outcomes and mitigate future losses for our clients as we aim to become the embedded partner of choice in the industry.