How a Professional Adjuster Will Normally Handle an Insurance Claim
Insurance companies pay out many billions in claims every year, and it takes plenty of hard work to ensure accuracy and timeliness. Dedicated professionals focus on making sure that insurers will both serve their policyholders well and not end up disbursing funds to which particular claimants are not actually entitled.
Insurance claims adjuster work of the most usual kinds can be broken down into a few distinct categories. Each of these types of effort serves a particular purpose and contributes to the quality of the ultimate result.
Three Basic Types of Claims Adjustment Work
While the details inevitably vary from one claim to the next, the various types of work the average insurance adjuster performs will include:
Interviews. The first step toward enabling an accurate adjustment of a claim will often be to speak to those involved. An adjuster will almost always wish to talk to the actual claimant to make sure that all of the information that has been provided is accurate and up to date. In many cases, interviews with witnesses to the accident or disaster in question will help to fill in the developing picture further.
Consultation. An adjuster will also typically wish to speak with independent authorities who might be able to add some perspective of their own. After an automobile accident, for example, an adjuster will often end up consulting with police officers who might have arrived at the scene not long after an incident. While these additional parties might sometimes be able to provide eyewitness testimony, their professional takes on relevant matters will just as regularly be sought instead.
Inspection. Actually looking at the damage in question and the scene of the incident will almost always be helpful, too. Even when this might not be possible in a direct fashion, assessing photographs and the like can sometimes be useful, as well. Combined with the conversations that preceded it, this step will almost always allow an adjuster to come to an accurate assessment of the situation surrounding the current claim.
Putting All the Pieces Together
At this point, an adjuster will normally have enough information to work with. Whether for an Independent Adjuster or one working full time for a particular insurer, the next step will normally be to write up a report and recommendation regarding the claim. All this will normally happen quickly enough that a claimant will not be forced to go for overly long without compensation since any avoidable delay could easily lead to further damage in its own right.
