Business Overview: Crawford & Company — Class B Common Stock (NYSE: CRD-B)

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Executive Summary

Crawford & Company was founded in 1941 and is headquartered in the Atlanta, Georgia area. It describes itself as the world's largest publicly listed independent provider of claims management and outsourcing solutions to insurance carriers, brokers, and self-insured corporations, operating in more than 70 countries with about 10,040 employees and generating $1.293 billion of revenue (before reimbursements) in fiscal 2024.

This file covers CRD-B, Crawford's Class B common stock, one of two publicly traded share classes representing the same underlying company (the other being Class A, ticker CRD-A). The two classes are economically substantially identical, but Class B carries the company's voting rights, while Class A is non-voting. Crawford's charter permits the board to pay greater cash dividends on non-voting Class A shares than on voting Class B shares, subject to certain limitations — though in practice recent dividend declarations (for example, $0.07 per share declared in May 2025) have paid the two classes equally. An investor buying CRD-B is buying the same economic exposure to Crawford & Company's claims-management business as a CRD-A holder, plus the ability to vote on the election of directors and other matters put to shareholders.

Crawford matters because claims administration is a structurally outsourced, fee-per-claim business tied to insurance industry cycles, catastrophe activity, and the broader "build vs. buy" decision insurers and self-insured employers make about handling claims in-house — a market where scale, geographic reach, and specialized adjusting expertise are the main sources of competitive advantage.

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1. Core Business Model & How They Work

Crawford earns revenue primarily on a fee-per-claim basis: insurers, brokers, and self-insured companies refer claims to Crawford, which investigates, adjusts, administers, or helps resolve them, and bills for that service. Claim referral volume — driven by weather events, economic activity, and employment/injury levels — is the central revenue driver, which is why total cases received (about 1.6 million in 2024, down 2.7% year-over-year) is a key operating metric.

 Insurer / broker /     ➡️  Claim referred to      ➡️  Field investigation,   ➡️  Fee-per-claim
 self-insured employer      Crawford (by segment        adjusting, medical         revenue to
 experiences a loss          and geography)              management, or             Crawford
                                                          repair network
                                                                 |
                                                                 v
                                                     Claim resolved / settled;
                                                     subrogation recovery where
                                                     applicable

• Revenue mechanics are not detailed in Item 1 of the 10-K but are explained in MD&A: Crawford is paid for services rendered per claim handled, rather than earning premium or underwriting income itself — it never takes on insurance risk.
• The business is inherently cyclical with claim volumes, which is why diversification across segments, geographies, and claim types (property, casualty, workers' compensation, disability) matters to revenue stability.

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2. Business Segments

                           Crawford & Company
                          FY2024 revenue: $1.293B
                                    |
      -----------------------------------------------------------------
      |                     |                      |                  |
  North America       International         Broadspire (30.0%)   Platform Solutions
  Loss Adjusting       Operations (32.4%)    U.S. third-party      (13.4%)
  (24.2%, ~$312.2M)    (~$418.6M)            administration        (~$173.7M)

North America Loss Adjusting (24.2% of revenue, ~$312.2M) — Field investigation, evaluation, and resolution of property and casualty claims for insurers and self-insured entities in the U.S. and Canada, including Global Technical Services for large, complex losses.

International Operations (32.4%, ~$418.6M) — The largest segment by revenue, providing similar loss-adjusting services across the U.K., Europe, Australia, Asia, and Latin America, and bundling in Global Technical Services, third-party administration, Contractor Connection (where applicable), and Legal Services in relevant markets.

Broadspire (30.0%, ~$388.1M) — Crawford's U.S. third-party administrator (TPA) business for workers' compensation, liability, property, accident and health, and disability claims, plus medical management services such as case management, medical bill review, and physician review.

Platform Solutions (13.4%, ~$173.7M) — Three U.S. service lines: Contractor Connection, a managed repair network of roughly 5,000 contractors; Networks, which provides catastrophe response and staff augmentation; and Subrogation, which recovers claim costs on insurers' behalf.

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3. Key Offerings

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4. Competitive Landscape

Crawford's own 10-K describes a highly competitive market without naming specific rivals, but characterizes competitors in three groups: many smaller local and regional firms, often competing on lower rates or local market knowledge; national and global independent firms, some of which are larger than Crawford; and the ongoing risk of new entrants and industry consolidation.

The most prominent large private competitor in the claims/TPA space is Sedgwick, a much larger (roughly 33,000-employee) privately held claims and productivity management company headquartered in Memphis — illustrating that Crawford, despite styling itself the largest publicly listed independent claims provider, faces at least one significantly larger rival in overall scale. Below that tier, Crawford competes against numerous smaller regional adjusting firms and specialty TPAs in each of its markets.

Demand for all players in this market is shaped less by head-to-head pricing than by the macro "build vs. buy" decision: insurers and self-insured companies choosing whether to handle claims in-house or outsource them, plus underwriting cycles, weather/catastrophe frequency, economic activity, and employment/workplace-injury levels.

                  Global / multi-line scale
                             ^
                             |
               Sedgwick  *   |   * Crawford & Company
           (larger, private) |     (largest publicly listed
                             |      independent provider)
     -----------------------------------------------------> Local / regional focus
                             |
                 Many smaller regional   *
                 adjusting firms & TPAs

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5. Strategic Strengths & Risks

Strengths / moat sources

• Scale and global footprint: operations in more than 70 countries let Crawford serve multinational insurers and corporations that need consistent claims handling across jurisdictions — a bar smaller regional firms cannot clear.
• Contractor Connection network: a roughly 5,000-contractor managed repair network represents a real relationship/network asset that would take years for a new entrant to replicate.
• Segment diversification: four distinct segments spanning loss adjusting, TPA services, and platform solutions reduce dependence on any single claim type or geography.
• Brand and regulatory licensing: decades of adjuster licensing across U.S. states and international jurisdictions represent a real, if unglamorous, barrier to entry.

Risks

• Larger private competitor: Sedgwick's greater scale (an estimated ~33,000 employees versus Crawford's ~10,040) means Crawford competes from a position of relative, not absolute, scale leadership.
• Declining claim volumes: total cases received fell 2.7% in 2024 to about 1.6 million, directly pressuring fee-per-claim revenue.
• Cyclicality: revenue is tied to insurance underwriting cycles, catastrophe frequency, and employment/economic conditions outside Crawford's control.
• Concentrated control via the voting class (CRD-B specific): because only Class B shares vote, control of director elections and other shareholder matters sits with whoever holds Class B, which can concentrate governance influence among insiders or legacy holders of this class relative to the broader (often larger) Class A shareholder base.
• Fragmented, price-competitive market: many smaller regional firms can undercut Crawford on price in individual geographies, limiting broad pricing power.

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6. Financial Overview

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7. Summary Conclusion

Crawford & Company's moat comes from scale, global reach, and specialized claims-handling infrastructure (including the Contractor Connection repair network) built over more than 80 years — advantages that protect it from the many smaller regional adjusting firms it competes against, even if they don't make it dominant against its larger private rival, Sedgwick. For CRD-B holders specifically, the investment case carries the same underlying economic exposure as Class A plus the shareholder voting rights that determine the company's board and governance — a meaningful distinction for any investor or activist seeking influence over Crawford's strategy, even though the charter has, in practice, not used its ability to pay Class A a higher dividend than Class B. The biggest forward risk for the business as a whole is continued softness in claim referral volumes (down 2.7% in 2024) colliding with a fragmented, price-competitive market and a scale disadvantage versus Sedgwick.