Florida Department of Insurance Says Anybody Hired By a Licensed Public Adjuster Can Participate in Preparing an Insurance Claim By Writing the Insurance Estimates of Damage

The Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS) has issued an email authorizing Florida licensed public adjusters to hire anybody to make estimates of damage. This email corrects my latest two blogs which indicated that the OIR wanted to prevent those not licensed from working on insurance claims by determining valuations of loss and estimates of damage.

How one can write an estimate of a building, equipment or personal property loss without investigating the loss is beyond my understanding—but not beyond those running the Florida Department of Financial Services. The Florida DFS will allow any third party, including a person who has lost his or her license to work as a public adjuster, convicted felons, unlicensed contractors, contractors who may have lost their licenses, and unqualified people, to write estimates of damage. The only requirement is getting a public adjuster to hire them.

Here is the text of an email from the DFS in response to a public adjuster’s inquiry prompted by my prior two posts on this matter. He lists no qualifications for the third-party a public adjuster can hire to write an estimate for a first party insurance claim:

Hiring a third-party to prepare an estimate on your behalf would not be a violation, so long as that individual provides the estimate to you and does not does not otherwise solicit, adjust, investigate, or negotiate for or attempt to effect the settlement of a claim.

Thank you,

Jeffrey L. Young, MPA
Regional Administrator
Bureau of Investigation
Division of Insurance Agent & Agency Services

The impact of the Regional Administrator’s ruling cannot come at a better time for those who do not have public adjuster licenses and have no intention of obtaining one but are eager to start working on Florida insurance claims. They can make a deal with a public adjuster for a percentage of the settlement or of the estimate amount and provide those estimates to the public adjuster.

So, let’s look at the practical impact. Public adjusters who do not have enough in-house manpower or finances to hire or oversee licensed public adjuster estimators can simply hire third parties to make as many estimates as possible. Those public adjusters essentially turn their businesses into solicitation and negotiation businesses. They will give up a part of their fee but make a lot more money because they handle matters in volume.

For policyholders who are supposed to be protected by this regulatory scheme, this may not be so good. They will hire a licensed professional to assist in the claim, but the loss evaluation estimates can be done by a person who is not subject to the professional competence and integrity requirements that are required for the job. In sum, the DFS does not care who determines the amount of estimated loss so long as it is sent to the insurance company by the licensed public adjuster.

For all of you who were upset with me for explaining who could not write estimates for insurance claims in Florida, including those with criminal backgrounds, I apologize because I must have been mistaken. The law that I helped to draft is apparently not the law—at least according to those who are supposed to enforce it.

Obviously, I do not think this is best for policyholders. I have always suggested that the public adjustment trade should look at rules and regulations from the viewpoint of the policyholder—What is best for the policyholder even if it is not economically best for the public adjuster in the short term? The profession of public adjusting certainly took a step backwards with the Department’s view of the matter.