THE POLICYHOLDER'S ADVOCATE®
In Chubb Calls Competitors Cheap And Unfair, I congratulated Chubb for pointing out claims handling problems within the insurance industry. Anybody can advertise in a certain way to make profits. Who knows the truth?…
Continue Reading Chubb Insurance Company — Networking Regarding Claims Practice Claims
Dennis Wall is a veteran commentator on various claims practice issues and on advice to avoid bad faith accusations. In Hurricane Report: Acting in Good Faith,I found his point regarding what every insurance company should do when faced with partial payment situations following catastrophes to be dead-on:
The clear lesson from these recently enacted and revised state laws is this: Good faith claim handling — particularly of claims for policy benefits and proceeds in the aftermath of a hurricane or another catastrophe — requires prompt payment for any part of a claim that is reasonably covered.
What constitutes "prompt" payment? It may vary from place to place, depending upon the local law, but the same concept still holds true. A claim should be paid within either a reasonable amount of time or within a specific time period dictated by local laws — usually 30 days — of that portion of any claim that is reasonably proven as covered by the proof-of-loss statements. (emphasis added)
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Continue Reading Avoiding Bad Faith Accusations: Practical Suggestions From a Veteran Commentator
Adjuster Lisa sent me a video from The Incredibles which demonstrates a far too common occurrence at some insurance companies:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=aJeHhCYGZ_g%3Frel%3D0…
In several of my older posts, I wrote about different ways some insurance companies have tried to make a profit by changing the way a claims handling department is operated. The following posts touched upon ways that claims handling employees can be compensated for meeting different types of goals set up by the insurer that, in effect, turn a claims handling department into a profit center: The Big Picture in Discovery of Insurer Claims Practices; Don’t Forget to Consider the Severity of Your Claim; Don’t Forget to Consider the Severity of Your Claim: Part II; Plaintiffs are Entitled to the Claims File in a Bad Faith Lawsuit. Some insurance companies also determined that they generally pay less on claims when the policyholder or victim is not represented by an attorney. As a result, it has become more appealing to an insurance company to resolve a claim with an unrepresented individual, and some carriers have spent money, time and energy implementing policies or procedures with the goal of dissuading policyholders or victims from hiring an attorney.…
A very fine insurance defense attorney, Brian Hunter, made a comment to yesterday’s post, Do Insurance Companies Overpay Claims? with the following observation:
"Second, not only can claims be overpaid, they can be underpaid…."
Assuming this is true, and it probably is based on the law of averages, how can we have any meaningful data? What is the standard against which a claim is judged over- or underpaid? Is it the proof of loss, or the public adjuster’s estimate, or the appraisal award, or something else? Even if we use the most presumably objective of these, i.e., an appraisal umpire’s award, as a standard, then a good many claims I have seen resolved in that manner have been simultaneously underpaid by insurers and grossly inflated by the insured and/or public adjuster.
Of course, in most cases, an appraisal award is a legal fiction that may or may not bear a rational relationship to the amount necessary to repair the property; but it is certainly and merely an estimate. Frequently, the umpire’s award is an average of two competing estimates. Regrettably, few court-appointed umpires have any specialized training in the construction fields, and many have never written an estimate of their own nor done any kind of construction work. Maybe a better standard is needed.
What we do not have is reliable data in Florida during the past several years comparing claim payments with amounts spent by policyholders to actually accomplish like kind and quality repairs. (If I am wrong, I would love to see a source.) Changing the law to require insurers to pay actual expenditures, and not mere estimates of replacement cost (some honest, some not, all estimates nevertheless), would bring greater certainty to all the parties, I think. Yet this is opposed by the same folks, i.e. public adjusters, bemoaning the lack of accuracy in claim adjustment.
A blog, Overpaying Insurance Claims, caught my attention. The premise was described as follows:
I recently began questioning how much money insurers hand out needlessly because their adjusters don’t have enough training or are so overloaded with work that they can’t possibly handle all of the files they are assigned due in part to a claim a family member recently made.
A few months back, my sister’s dishwasher piping burst, which flooded her finished basement and the kitchen sub floor. She filed a claim and received immediate action because the loss was deemed an "emergency" by her insurance company’s claims triage unit. The field adjuster came out, estimated the damage, and made arrangement for repairs under the company’s preferred contractor program.
The glitch arose when she decided to replace the floor in the basement bath/laundry room with ceramic tile instead of the linoleum that existed before. Being the most honest person on the face of the earth, she was willing to pay the difference on the upgrade.
That’s where the insurance company lost out.
The repairs were made to everyone’s satisfaction and the contractor was paid. My sister called the adjuster and the claims office a number of times to ask how much she had to repay. After a number of excuses — waiting for paper work, too many other emergencies, “we’ll get back to you,” the adjuster is over booked — she resigned herself to accepting more than she felt entitled to.
Slabbed has been dogged regarding its reporting on the Mississippi qui tam litigation involving State Farm. A recent post, Rigsbys file “Motion to Reconsider Scope of Proceedings in Light of Evidence Adduced in Discovery” – ask Court for additional time to conduct Discovery into “the Scheme,” provides some insight regarding the flood adjustment techniques required by National Flood versus how flood adjusters in the field actually do their job.…
Continue Reading Flood Adjustment Methods Discovered in Qui Tam Case
In recent conversations with attorneys representing homeowners against insurance companies in claims practice disputes, a number of recurrent themes in discovery arise. Insurers typically raise relevancy, privacy, trade secret and burden objections when policyholders attempt to find internal documents explaining the how, what, and why of an insurer’s claims procedures. Policyholder counsel must make motions to compel in spite of these common objections or those claims procedures and the motives behind them will never see the light of day.…
Continue Reading The Big Picture in Discovery of Insurer Claims Practices
Last week in Don’t Forget to Consider the Severity of Your Claim, I wrote about what severity means in the insurance context. We also started to talk about how severity can affect whether the insured’s claim was handled fairly by the insurer. Let’s hear a little more about what some of these carriers have to say about it and whether it makes sense to you.…
Continue Reading Don’t Forget to Consider the Severity of Your Claim: Part II
Many of you probably think that I am referring to the extent of damage of a claim or a claim involving a total loss. The word “severity” naturally conjures up the thought of something that is serious or grievous. But I’m actually writing about something many of you probably don’t know all that much about. In the arena of bad faith litigation, severity is a way that insurers measure claims employees’ performance. And, of course, it doesn’t stop there – you knew there was an angle, right? Yes, severity can affect whether your insured’s claim was properly handled by the insurance company. Severity is one of the many, important factors that you should consider in your bad faith case against a carrier. Let me tell you more……
Continue Reading Don’t Forget to Consider the Severity of Your Claim
