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How To Protect Yourself When Dealing With Your Insurance Company
Author David Schneider | May 23,2007
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Every now and then you may face a situation where it ends up being you versus the business insurance company. Often times it is simply a misunderstanding of the insurance policy, or its exceptions, that produces the gap in understanding what it says and what one thinks the policy provides. Of course, these situations lead to very strained relationships with the insurer, but there still are ways that you can go about confronting them and possibly win the day - and the payoff. Here is what you need to do.
Get It In Writing
When your insurer indicates that it is not willing to pay on your claim, you need to get their reason in writing from them. Generally, they will normally provide this without your asking. But if they do not, then ask for it. This will give you a starting place, a reason that you can investigate to see if it really is a valid reason.
Continuously Document Your Assets
About the only way that you can prove what you say you have is to provide an up-to-date documentation of it. This means that you need to create documentation for all equipment, supplies, raw materials and inventories for all your buildings. There needs to be a date purchased, cost, value assigned, renovation and more. There also needs to be a way to record and remove items that may be sold, sent to another building, etc.
You should always have more than one copy of this documentation. Keep one copy outside of the building in a secure place, like a safety deposit box.
Being able to prove that this document was constantly amended and kept current, will be the one thing that you can produce to verify that you actually had those contents in the building at the time of the claim. There really is no other way - especially if the building has burned down to the ground. So, the more detailed and more often updated, the better.
See Your Insurance Agent
Once you have received the letter from the insurer giving their reason for rejection, you can take it to your insurance agent and get their opinion. They can also look over your policy and see if there is a legitimate reason for the rejection. If they disagree with the reason given and you agree then you know that you have justification to pursue a legal solution.
Use Separate Claims Adjuster
If you ultimately feel that your insurance company has not paid you what it owes, then it would be a good idea to hire a separate claims adjuster. Your claims adjuster can then talk with the insurance company's adjuster and hopefully come to an agreement. It may be a compromise solution, but that should still get you more money.
Go To Higher Managers
If your claim is still not settled in a satisfactory way, then you need to go the next level manager. This means you will start with the manager of the branch you are dealing with, and then go to the regional manager - and then the state level manager.
Get A Lawyer
After all else has failed, and you have not had your business insurance claim satisfied, then it is time to get a lawyer. You want to hire a lawyer that has experience in settling business insurance claims and has won at least many of them. Remember that the insurer has a lot of money and will use it to hire the best lawyers, so you need to get one with some victories under their belt.
One other thing that you can do to help protect yourself against possible rejections on a business insurance policy is to look over the company before you decide to be insured by them. Go online and look up some of the complaints as well as their track record. One place that will give you good information will be the Better Business Bureau.
If you feel that you may need to find a good business insurance agency, then you can start by going to QuoteMatch.com and get a few good quotes. All you need to do is to fill out the no obligation form to get the process started. Several business insurance brokers will send you their best quotes and you will just need to pick which one will work best for your situation. |
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