The Independent Insurance Claim Adjuster Resource

We discussed and defined neighboritis in this post, in hopes to create awareness for a condition that should be alarming to all independent adjusting companies and adjusters alike.

Neighboritis occurs when a roofing salesman convinces one property owner in a neighborhood that their home was damaged by hail and then gives that property owner an incentive to “spread the word” to others in the area.   Often times the damages are not caused by hail or the hail had no effect on the condition of the subject structure components.  In some cases roofing sales people have been known to intentionally inflict mechanical damage the to roof while conducting a review of the roof condition.

The effect on adjusting companies and independent adjusters occurs in the following parts:

1. Generally, insurance professionals are paid on a flat rate to conduct surveys and adjustments of structural roof related insurance files or claims.  This occurs on a rising agreed fee schedule that motivates the surveyor or adjuster to seek out all damages.  The more damages found, the more likely that the reporting party will be able to bill a higher amount because the monetary value will climb to the next level on the fee schedule.
2. The insurance professionals who do not recommend replacement (deny a claim) of a roof for lack of damages are not immediately trusted by their clients and asked to re-visit the same property based on a contractor/salesman claiming that damages do exist.  Often times the reporting party is not allowed to request additional billing and is asked to re-visit on the principal that damages may have been overlook.  The reporting party wishes to service their client well and therefore provides an exemplary service by re-opening the file at no little or no cost, all in hopes to keep business from their client.
3. In the time lapsed between the initial survey and re-opening of the file, more than one roofer has likely set foot on the roof, or neighboritis has occurred; generally.  Perhaps a neighbor has had a roof replaced or a sales person had an opportunity to create mechanical damages.
4. The insurer fails to take a interest in hiring a forensic engineer primarily due to the cost of such a service.
5. The costs associated with creating supplement reports and re-opening files is never accounted for in the fee schedule.

This pattern, no matter how far a claim might be over-indemnified, has become the standard for all roofing claim scenarios.  More often than not, we are finding patters where insurers actually had a roofing sales person on their roof but that they did not admit it when initially asked or even in person.  The foregoing conditions are a direct result of neighboritis and insurers, along with the general public should be made aware of these facts.

Insurance carriers and third party administrators rely on independent adjusting companies in their growth stages, particularly if they wish to abstain from growing beyond a certain percentage of the market share (e.g, to not compete with large competitors).  Small adjusting companies provide a personalized level of service that small and start up property insurers require to maintain retention rates.  Carriers that discourage additional time and expense billing to affirm or deny previous findings are posing a risk to themselves in the future because small adjusting companies cannot consume the lost time spent on these issues and this results in a direct loss for the reporting/adjusting party.  In order for those adjusting and reporting companies to grow into sustainable businesses they must spend that time elsewhere (marketing, etc), or convert it into billable time; even if only breaking even.

An easy and responsible solution would be for insurance carriers to set a new billing standard for handling the re-opening of files which were initially denied.  First, these carriers would have to trust that independent adjusting companies would have no interest in falsely denying claims just to obtain additional billing.  One way to help support this would be to only allow additional billing at the actual cost rate (no profit) of providing a second survey, rather than at a normal T&E rate which is more profitable.  It keeps the adjuster paid for his time which allows insurers to require a different adjuster from the same company attend the re-inspection.  These ideas help keep small adjusting companies in business and prevents the larger ones from taking too much of the market share; all at a minimal expense to the insurer.

Do you have thoughts on this subject? Please leave a comment!

Lately we’ve had quite a few requests for information about Oil Spill Adjusters and oil-spill related damage surveyors.  We’ve even noticed that a few Underwriters at one particular Error and Omission Insurer have taken the time to briefly scout this extremely new and uncharted territory of insurance risk.

The Exxon Valdex oil spill that plagued Alaska in 1989 would be a great place to start in terms of developing some logic toward this discussion but from what we can tell most of the claims were handled internally by Exxon and in Civil Litigation.

Independent-Adjuster.com does not extend any support toward BP or TransOcean, or any other parties responsible for the Gulf of Mexico Deep Water Horizon Spill in handling their own claims or oil damage surveys.  Simply put, BP is in the business of profiting from various oil and energy related ventures.  These companies have an intelligent group of folks working to resolve these claims but one has to ask what their experience is in dealing with the unknown.  How can a company who is loosing millions by the day possibly have any interest in fair settlements of their claims?  Of course, we all know that fair settlements prevent legal woes and that the Plaintiff’s bar is veracious for lawsuits right now but that doesn’t mean their claims team is experienced in dealing with the general public, or that their own legal counsel is going to make any rational decision, or that the boards of directors are going to approve anything they receive. Will these companies

BP and TransOcean also know that the people in general are going to have a difficult time obtaining Plaintiff’s counsel with the right experience to defend against their own counsel in legal disputes.

BP and TransOcean’s interest, despite their wealth of advertisements about helping the community recover, is to raise their shareholder value.  If the company remotely cared about anything else then I would not be writing this article in the first place, especially considering the recent news of failed emergency alarms and other disgusting practices.  It should be noted that most corporations only interest is to survive and increase shareholder value.  We firmly believe that the interest of the responsible companies only interest now, if not at all the times previous to the Deep Water Horizon Spill is to increase shareholder value.

Based on the foregoing it is clear that an impartial or unbiased and fair settlements cannot be created in having the responsible parties handle their own losses. BP and the responsible parties should be inviting experienced claim professionals, including those with residential & mechanical experience, and a group of common working class from the area to form a committee for the betterment of handling these losses. If anything, the National Association of Independent Adjusters should be using their political leverage (or lack of) to force this issue into court.

We do know for a fact that a lot of working class fishermen and others took settlement offers related to the ’89 Valdez spill.  What we fail to recognize is the financial disaster inflicted upon the people, business and economy of that region by accepting settlements far short of what was truly required to make up for so many lost years of fishing and other affected industries.

BP has a right to try and settle their own claims but the responsible parties for the loss know well and good that the Civil Courts are going to be inundated with suits.

There are so many points to be made in discussing the various issues and coverages surrounding Oil Claims that we are going to divide them up into the following categories:

• Residential Property Claims (the potential for them combined with wind and oil in hurricane or greater gale force winds)
• Commercial Business Losses from Oil Claims
• Subrogation in Oil Claim related Losses
• Potential for Litigation
• General Oil Damage Survey Information

We are currently working on the above captioned articles and will post them throughout the next two weeks.  Thanks and stay tuned – we’d love to see your comments below!

Our Denver insurance claim services office has taken notice to the rapidly evolving concept that, at least in Colorado, there has been an immense growth in the number of roofing related businesses over the last few years.  Unfortunately we can’t speak for everyone but some of colleagues in the area contribute this increase is a direct result of population growth in Colorado over the same time line.  A quick glance on Google’s Public Data chart shows a massive 5.93% growth rate from 2005 to 2008 for the state overall.  When comparing to the highest concentrated advertisement area from these roofing related businesses we turn to Denver’s population charts to find that it also grew at an astounding 5.89%.


We know that population growth was evident throughout the area but does that mean the number of roofs in the area grew so rapidly that it caused a major and rapid amplification in the number of roofing businesses?  What about the number of roofing businesses that claim to specialize in hail or wind related damages?  While we’re working on compiling data about the actual number of roofing related businesses (read as businesses with “roofing” in their name), several questions remain about the legitimacy of these companies advertising themselves as insurance experts.  Some have even gone as far to say they have independent adjusters on staff, or that they have public adjusters waiting to prove the need for their often excessive costs of $600 per square foot on regular 3 tab asphalt composition residential roofing.

What do you think of these roofing related businesses? Assuming all of the damages were legitimate – are the costs that some of these companies associate with them? Read more…

There are essentially four (4) basic types of adjusters involved in the average insurance claim for property damage.  The use of independent adjuster, staff adjusters and field staff adjusters varies with the risk that the insurance carrier is insuring.  Public Adjusters, which are rarely needed or required in the average property or homeowner’s claim for damages, are hired by the insured (property owner).  We’ll be reviewing why Public Adjusters aren’t really necessary in the near future.

Let’s start with the average property owner’s claim for common cause of loss perils not in a catastrophic situation.  In small to mid-size insurance carriers there is usually a staff of adjusters based out of a home office that are commonly or duly known as carrier claim representatives.  The carrier claim reps usually work out of a central office and handle the administrative portion of the claim such as gathering the proof of loss, witness information (if any), underwriting concerns, and last but not least: printing of the claim payment check (indemnification).
Read more…

A few weeks ago we posted a short article about the earthquake that occurred in Chile. Although we may briefly cross paths with catastrophe claims and catastrophic adjusting it’s really beyond the scope of our intended subject matter for this website but we are interested in hearing from you about any experiences you may have had as an insurance claims professional in other countries.

As a North American based website we don’t often hear about the various insurance coverages that exist beyond Inland Marine and Floater policies from global insurers. We’re certainly interested in hearing about any national or regionally based Australian (we heard they recently encountered some hail) South American, European, African, Asian or Russian based Residential Property and Casualty carriers including any information about their foreign auto lines. Read more…