Whether its fire or smoke damage, Hope Public Adjusters is here to help.
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From hail damage to wind damage and everything in between, we can help you with your storm damage insurance claims.
If your home or business has been robbed and vandalized, we can assist you through the claims process.
If you have recently suffered an insured loss due to fire, water, or weather-related damage, dealing with your insurance company is an unfortunate necessity, but it can be a massive headache. How do you know if you’re getting a fair value for your insurance claim? What if you are unhappy with the settlement your insurance company is offering you? This is where a public adjuster can help.
In order to understand what a public adjuster does, first let’s talk about what an insurance claims adjuster does in general. When you pay for a homeowners insurance policy, for example, you pay a premium regularly in exchange for your insurance company accepting the responsibility of paying out should you suffer damages to your home that are covered under the policy.
Read MoreHere’s how the insurance claim process works. When you contact your insurance company to report a claim on your policy, the company will assign a claims adjuster to your case. The company adjuster then comes to your home, inspects the damage, takes photos or videos documenting the damage, talks to the property owners, interviews any witnesses to the event, and reviews any other relevant information such as police reports or medical records. The adjuster also may seek out the opinion of independent experts, such as builders or roofers, whose expertise is relevant to the damage your home has sustained.
After gathering all of the information available, the claims adjuster will make an evaluation of the losses the policyholder has suffered and then submit a report with all of the supporting evidence and documentation to the insurance company. The adjuster will also make a recommendation of how much of the damage the insurance company is liable for and how much the policyholder should be paid for repairs or replacements. This process is basically the same if you are hiring a public adjuster. So what’s the difference?
The difference between insurance company adjusters and public adjusters is that a public adjuster does NOT work for the insurance company. In fact, a public adjuster has no relationship whatsoever to the insurance company. Public insurance adjusters, though, do more or less the same job as a staff adjuster at an insurance company. There is one major difference between them, however.
Read MoreThe insurance company claims adjuster works for the insurance company, of course. The problem with that is that the adjuster is then put in a tough position. They have a conflict of interest between ensuring that you as the policyholder get the full value of your insurance claims and being beholden to the company that employs them and pays their salary. Insurance companies are for-profit businesses, and therefore it is not in their best interest to give you more money for your claim than they absolutely have to (or can get away with.)
A public adjuster, you will remember, has no relationship with the insurance company. Public adjusters work for independent companies who do the same type of work, but the crucial difference is that they work for YOU, the policyholder. Like personal injury lawyers, the way that public adjusters make money is by being paid a fee, usually of some percentage of the claim that you win. The good thing about this setup for you is that this means your public adjuster will work hard to get you as much money as possible for your insurance claim. They do not have to worry or care about saving money for the insurance company. The more money you get, the more they get.
This is important because an adjuster representing your insurance company has an incentive to leave losses out of your claim or to take the low end of an estimated value, while a public adjuster’s incentives are exactly the opposite. Your public adjuster will make sure that every item you can claim will be included in your claim, that the descriptions and price ranges of damaged or destroyed items are accurate, and that you get fair compensation for the true value of your damages.
Public adjuster and independent adjuster sound like two names for the same thing, but there is a distinction. The truth is that “independent adjuster” is something of a misnomer, in that the “independent” adjusters are in reality working for the insurance company! The independent moniker simply means that they are not an employee of the insurance company. Independent adjusters are hired by insurance companies to fulfill basically the same purpose as a staff adjuster would. They simply take some of the load off the staff adjusters when there are too many cases to handle. What this means is that an “independent” adjuster has all the same drawbacks as one directly representing an insurance company. They have to consider the payout you are entitled to through your insurance policy against the payout that the company is willing to actually pay. They’re more mercenaries for hire than truly independent.
In the state of Indiana, as in many other states, a staff adjuster working as a direct employee of an insurance company actually is not required to have an individual adjuster license of any kind. They are instead permitted to work under the company license. Independent adjusters and public adjusters, however, have to follow different rules. In order to become a public adjuster in Indiana, a person is required to:
A public adjuster license in Indiana is issued for one year and expires each December 31st.
In a word, yes.A study by the Office of Program and Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, a research arm of the Florida Legislature, found that public adjusters can negotiate a settlement up to 747% larger than the insurance company’s initial offer! This is especially the case when insurance companies are sorting through thousands of claims at once, as in the case of the aftermath of a natural disaster, when they are trying to simply process and close claims as quickly as they can. This may be good practice for them, but it certainly doesn’t help the insured party if your claim is given a once-over and a generic estimate of damage because the adjuster is just trying to finish one claim to get to the next.
Read MoreA story in Forbes about a homeowner whose house fell victim to a wildfire also illustrates the value of public adjusters. After filing a claim on her homeowner’s insurance, the company offered the insured only $25,000, but after hiring a public adjuster, her claim ballooned to over $500,000. Large, expensive, and complex claims can especially benefit from public adjusters because your insurance company will almost always try to undervalue claims to get out of paying more than they have to.
The other part of the value of licensed public adjusters is that they can take a lot of the legwork out of the claims process on behalf of the homeowner. Public adjusters will take on the bulk of the work required to file insurance claims and make sure that paperwork is filed properly and on time. They make use of their experience with insurance policies and the claims process to maximize your settlement. They can also take on the task of dealing directly with the insurance company so that you don’t have to spend hours on the phone, emailing, or sorting documents. For busy working homeowners, this can be an important consideration.
Learn how we advocate for our clients through the insurance claims process.
Like personal injury lawyers, public adjusters typically work on a contingency basis, meaning their fee is a percentage of the total amount of your claim. This percentage can range between 10 and 30%. You don’t have to pay anything to use the insurance company’s adjuster, but paying that 20% to have a public adjuster working for you can net you 100%, 200%, or even more money for your claim, which makes the fee more than worth it.
Finding a public adjuster with experience, an adjuster license, and a good relationship with clients is pretty similar to finding any other type of professional to do work on your behalf. A recommendation from a friend or family member can go a long way towards finding someone reliable and trustworthy. You can also look at reviews or check the website of your local state or regional public adjuster association, or the National Association of Public Insurance Adjusters. Do some research to make sure that anyone you’re considering has an adjuster license that is valid for your state.
