In one slide, McKinsey told Allstate to try to settle 90 percent of its claims as quickly and as cheaply as possible. For the other 10 percent, policyholders or third-party claimants who didn’t take the Allstate offer or, even worse, hired a lawyer, the “boxing gloves” treatment was in order. They would fight in courts, for years if necessary, wearing down anyone who dared to sue.

McKinsey designed a system—the Claims Core Process Redesign—that pushed adjusters to make quick, lowball offers rather than allow them to come up with settlements that they considered fair. Adjusters, now tethered to a computerized claims system called Colossus, were reduced to little more than call-center workers reading prepared scripts. Pop-outs became rare. For homeowners’ claims, it was another computer program—Xactimate. But the idea was the same. Push claimants to accept less than the covered amount. Allstate says this characterization is “false and misleading” and that it overhauled its claims system in the 1990s to “pay claims more promptly and accurately.” McKinsey declined to comment.