Claims Management
Ultimately, a claim begins when an insured has a loss; when the insured has experienced some tragedy in his or her life. When policyholders incur a loss, if it’s something devastating, like a hurricane, it may take them a couple of days before they even thinks to talk to their insurance agent or company. Typically the policyholder is going to report his or her loss quickly in the property insurance business. He or she is either going to report the loss directly to the insurance agent or to the company. This can be done over the telephone, via the mail or, increasingly now, the Internet.
Our internal claims staff receives a notice of loss and assigns the loss to an adjuster for review. Our company handles 94 percent of our claims with our own staff, either by desk adjustment out of our home office or by a field claims settlement with one of our field staff adjusters that are located across the country. Since we offer specialty personal lines products, it’s particularly important to us that we use our own staff. A manufactured home is not the same as a conventional home. Our adjusters need to understand the unique construction differences between the two and adjust the loss accordingly.
The loss is assigned to an adjuster, who is typically one of our employees but occasionally, where we don’t have enough business to support a staff person, an independent third party. The adjuster then makes contact with the customer and arranges a time to get together and inspect the loss. The adjuster performs a loss assessment and begins to prepare an estimate of the damage. He or she applies the applicable coverage, terms and conditions and the policy deductible, if there is one, and arrange to pay the claim.
In our case, we settle 90 percent of our claims within thirty days of when they are reported, and a great many of our claims are settled on our first contact with the insured. These are significant points of differentiation for our company vis-a-vis our competitors. A lot of companies write mobile homeowners insurance, but few of them have staff adjusters who are uniquely trained in handling mobile home claims the way our people are.
