When needed, insurance is a great thing to have, a product that protects people and businesses from serious financial loss. As we all know, an insurance policy can be purchased for a variety of coverage types such as homeowner’s insurance, automobile insurance, health insurance, annuities, business insurance, expensive asset coverage, and the list goes on.
Within the primary categories for insurance coverage are multiple subcategories. For instance, under homeowner’s insurance, you could also purchase a policy for rental property, flood insurance if the property were in a flood zone, insurance to coverage expensive artwork, jewelry, or firearms, etc. For automobile insurance, you could add on another driver, or choose from liability versus full coverage.
In some cases, insurance is more of a luxury whereas in others it is protection mandated by the government. For instance, you could purchase a life insurance policy to ensure your family is financially protected upon your death. This type of policy is not required by law but elective coverage. However, homeowner’s and automobile insurance is required although people would have several options as to the type and amount of coverage.
Because there are so many variances when it comes to insurance, the first step would be to purchase any policy through a reputable insurance agent or company. Even if you found a policy for the type of insurance protection wanted or needed for less money, unless the issuer is solid, you could be taking a huge risk. That is not to say that smaller or new insurance agents and/or companies are dishonest or bad choices but unfortunately, many of these will eventually fall by the wayside. Instead, you want to know the issuer of any policy you buy will be around to provide you with guidance, support, and answers, and help with insurance claims whenever needed.
Filing Insurance Claims Properly
Most importantly, you want to know that if you ever needed to file an insurance claim, the process would be seamless and the policy paid out in a timely manner because you made a wide choice for insurer. The old saying, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch”, certainly rings true when it comes to insurance claims. Sadly, the insurance industry is bilked out of millions of dollars annually because of insurance fraud. For honest people who purchase insurance and depend on it, fraud has created serious challenges in getting insurance claims filed and processed in an efficient manner.
However, when you buy an insurance policy through a reputable issuer, they have different plans in place to prevent customers from being affected by insurance fraud. Even so, as the consumer you have both right and responsibility to learn about things you can do if ever faced with filing an insurance claim. Even with support from the insurance agent or company, you still need to do your part. As you will see from the information provided below, you have viable solutions to get the payout deserved but quickly and without incident.
As an example, if you were injured in a car accident whereby the other party’s insurance covered damage to your car but also your medical expenses, you have two primary options for coordinating efforts with your insurance provider. First, you could go through the expense and effort of hiring an attorney. Although any out-of-pocket money would be reimbursed, you could end up paying money upfront to get things going. Typically, an attorney would get involved if the accident were severe, such as someone becoming disabled or a person losing life, or if the other party’s insurance company tried to stall.
Insurance Claims Negotiations
The second option would be to negotiate, something most people are unaware of as being an option. For instance, if the insured party’s insurance company offered you an amount of money to close the case that you know is below what you should receive, be prepared to negotiate. Let us say your vehicle had a blue book value of $10,000 but after being totaled, you were only offered $7,000. Obviously, a settlement such as that would be unacceptable. Because the company came in with a settlement offer well below the documented value of your car, you would actually have some negotiating power on your side.
Now, insurance claim negotiations could also be done for the policy that you purchased. Although this would not happen as often, it could. The bottom line is that spending a little time to conduct research on your end after a home fire, car accident, incident at work, etc would arm you with information for negotiation. You should never feel bad about going back and forth on a settlement amount but more than likely, the other party’s insurance company would try to do anything possible to make you feel guilty for negotiating.
Another thing you could do to help any insurance claim process quicker would be to understand the system by which the company uses. Each insurance company has a slightly different process but overall, the system works much the same. By understanding the various steps involved for a claim to be processed would result in two things. For one, it would allow you to understand the process so while one step might have otherwise seemed as if it was taking forever might now be clear as to why the amount of time is needed.
In addition, it would be beneficial for you to understand the claims handing process at least at a high level so you could be prepared without being asked. Although your insurance agent or company would provide the bulk of documentation and information to push a claim through, chances are good there would be other things you could start doing instead of waiting weeks to find out you could have submitted statements, receipts, etc. While some people feel all the work should be done by the agent or insurance company, and while in theory this might be true, if you want an insurance claim to go through quickly and accurately, be prepared to assist.
While this might seem like a given, honesty is always the best policy when it comes to insurance claims. Although not at fraudulent level, you would be amazed at how many people bend the truth just enough so things go more in their favor. To the person filing the insurance claim, a little white lie or untruth seems harmless and while it might be, it could also come back to haunt the entire process and results. Therefore, it is essential that the insurance agent, company, and adjuster have full facts and that nothing be enhanced or omitted.
A perfect example involved at 30-year-old woman who had slid off a rainy road, hitting a city light pole. Fortunately, she was uninjured but the car sustained more than $4,000 in damage. After receiving the police report and gathering necessary documentation, the woman filed the insurance claim so she could have repairs done to her car as quickly as possible since it was her sole source of transportation. The deductible was paid, the car fixed, and she believed the insurance claim was closed.
However, she was more than surprised after receiving a letter and bill in the mail for thousands of dollars to replace the damaged light pole. After all, it was an accident and she had great insurance coverage. However, while not done fraudulently, the woman failed to mention that the reason she slid off the road and hit the light pole was due to texting and overcorrecting after running a red light.
Had it not been for the camera installed on the stoplight, no one would have been the wiser. Because her act was listed as providing erroneous information to the police and knowingly hiding all the facts about the accident, although she was not trying to defraud the insurance company, she was penalized financially but also lost points on her license. If she had been upfront about all the details, she would not have been penalized nearly as severe.
No person on the face of the planet wants to deal with an insurance claim but thankfully, people in the United States have the option of buying protection in the form of an insurance policy. Therefore, while getting an insurance claim taken care of requires time, and the process can be challenging and frustrating, it would be helpful to be patient and kind throughout the process. Depending on the type and degree of the insurance claim, you could very well be stressed to the maximum and even angry but trying to work with the system instead of against it will usually make things go smoother.
Losing your home in a fire would definitely be a horrific situation to deal with or having a brand new car totaled would be enough to ruin anyone’s week. As mentioned above, being patient and understanding does not mean that negotiations are out of the question. It simply means that by industry standards and current law, insurance claims must go through a specific process that consists of multiple steps. Because this process takes time, being demanding or unrealistic about expectations would only create unnecessary stress to you and prove destructive toward getting the insurance claim processed.
