About Insurance Adjusters

Video Transcript

Hello, my name is Jerry Buccerra. I’m with Barbary Insurance Brokerage, and today we’re going to be talking about a number of property and casualty insurance issues. Insurance companies have two kinds of adjusters, they have field adjusters. The field adjuster will go out and actually investigate the claim and take statements, take photographs, gather information, but usually, usually the field adjuster does not actually adjust the claim. They don’t make the finial determination, they’re not cutting payment checks to anybody. They’re role is to just be objective and to just deliver information back to the company. Then there will be an in house adjuster and that person is working for the company to make sure that the coverage provided is the coverage under the contract and so the first thing that person is going to do is review the contract and review the set of circumstances to make sure that there’s no reason to deny the claim. So they’re going to check and make sure you paid your premium, they’re going to look and make sure that the coverage was appropriate for the type of loss, it’s not excluded in some way, that the deductible is not higher than the damage. All of those little things that could influence whether or not they pay the claim. Adjusters sometimes deny coverage and mistakes happen. If you need to challenge an adjuster in some way, the first person to involve is your agent. Your agent is supposed to be your advocate in this situation. So work with your agent, explain to them what’s going on and then they can often step in and sometimes the contract language has been misinterpreted, maybe something was added to the policy and the adjuster is not aware of it because adjusters often do not have full copies of the policy in front of them. So a good thing to keep in mind when working with your insurance adjuster is that they are going to follow the policy language. That’s the legal contract that’s binding to them. So get to know your policy, work with your agent, work with the adjuster and make sure that they are following the letter of the law there and doing what you need and adjusting your claim properly.