Working With A Public Insurance Adjuster To Determine Damage To Your Property
When you are ready to file a damage claim to your insurance company, you may feel like you need to get a third party involved to help determine the damage and how much it will cost to fix it. Working with a public insurance adjuster is an excellent way to get that third-party involved and work through getting the claim approved and paid by your insurance company.
Public Insurance Adjusting
Many people are not familiar with a public insurance adjusting service or what they do. The service offers insurance adjusters that do not work for an insurance company but are licensed and certified insurance adjusters and have the same training as private adjusters.
In many cases, these public adjusters are former insurance adjusters that worked for an insurance company in the past. This allows the public insurance adjuster to work on your behalf, knowing how the insurance company will respond to the claim and what they may allow or try to remove from your claim.
The public insurance adjustment service can intervene on the client's behalf to try and negotiate the claim if you are having trouble resolving it, and they will recommend you get a lawyer if you reach a point that they can no longer help you win the claim.
Determining Damage
The public insurance adjuster will inspect the damage to your property and help to determine how much damage there is to it. The adjuster will make a list of all the damage and then determine the average cost to repair the damage for you.
In most cases, the insurance company will have an adjuster inspect the damage as well, but if the two inspections are different, the insurance company will almost always try and use the assessment from their own adjuster. If it happens and the public adjuster finds more damage to the property than the insurance companies adjuster, it can take a lot of work to get the insurance company to pay for the additional damage.
Taking Legal Action
The public insurance adjustment service that you are working with may have a lawyer to help you negotiate with the insurance company. Still, if they don't, you can use the reports from the public insurance adjuster as evidence in court if you need them. Often, your lawyer can call the adjuster as an expert to testify in court that the damage is more significant than the insurance company wants to pay for.
If your lawyer approaches the insurance company with the certified report from the public insurance adjuster, the insurance company will often agree to the additional damage coverage.