Guides for loss assessors

A named storm crosses the country on a Thursday. By Monday a practice that usually opens four claims a month has opened fourteen, the phone has not stopped, and every one of those policyholders expects the same attention as the one you took on in a quiet week. Surge is when a loss assessing practice … Read more

Most new loss assessing practices are started by someone who has spent years on the other side: a loss adjuster, a surveyor, a claims handler who got tired of saying no. They know claims. What they usually do not know is how to run a firm, and the first year is spent discovering that the … Read more

Most claims do not stall because of a dispute. They stall because nobody touched them. The insurer’s handler has forty files, yours is not the loudest, and a week passes. A follow-up sequence is the loudness, applied evenly to every claim without you having to remember any of them. This is the sequence loss assessors … Read more

Every loss assessor has a story about the photograph. The one taken on the day, on someone’s phone, that proved the damage pre-dated the repair, and that nobody could find when the adjuster disputed the item. Claim documents are evidence, and evidence that cannot be found is evidence that does not exist. This is a … Read more

Count the calls your practice takes in a week and sort them by reason. In most loss assessing firms the biggest category by far is the policyholder asking what is happening. Not complaining, not instructing: asking. Each call takes five minutes, interrupts something else, and ends with you saying what you said last week. A … Read more

Since April 2019, firms that handle insurance claims for customers for a fee in England, Scotland and Wales have been regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority as claims management companies. Most loss assessing practices are therefore FCA-regulated businesses, with the obligations that follow: clear pre-contract information, a written agreement, fair communications, proper records, a complaints … Read more

Ask three loss assessors how many stages a claim has and you will get three answers, usually “it depends”. It does depend, but not much. Almost every property claim passes through the same six stages in the same order, and a practice that names them, tracks them and attaches a routine to each one gets … Read more

A property claim stalls for boring reasons. The adjuster is on leave, the file is with a different team, the insurer is waiting for a document nobody told you about, or the claim has simply slid down a queue. None of that is personal, and none of it moves without a nudge. This is the … Read more

Every loss assessing practice starts on a spreadsheet, and most of them stay there for a year too long. The question is not whether a spreadsheet can track claims (it can) but what it costs you when it does: the chaser you forgot, the photograph on the other phone, the policyholder who rang three times. … Read more

Loss assessor software is a small category with a loud sales pitch. Most of what is marketed to UK loss assessors is either an American claims platform with the dollar signs filed off, a generic CRM with a “claims” template, or a spreadsheet that has grown a login page. This guide sets out what a … Read more