Damage Hit? Just Ring Our Bell if You’ve a Property Insurance Claim

Large home or commercial property insurance claims, resulting from a fire, flooding, escape of water, or incidents like subsidence or vehicle impact, are hopefully, for most homeowners or commercial property owners, a one-hit wonder. Many of us, unless in a flood zone, would often not suffer a repeat property loss.

Whether you have to make one significant claim – defined as valued over £10,000 – or more than one, ensure you get things right and are not left out of pocket by the time your insurance claim is settled. Getting a rightful entitlement from a home insurance policy or commercial insurance policy is, unfortunately, not the outcome for many.

To help you understand the process, whether your damage can be deemed one-hit or not, Property Claim Assist is using National One-hit Wonder Day to outline some things you need to understand, when you embark on the process of making a property insurance claim.

Once you notify your insurer of a home insurance or other property claim, the person sent to assess your claim entitlement is a Loss Adjuster. That Loss Adjuster is not impartial but rather torn – there to calculate the financial loss and repairs required, but unfortunately doing so whilst being paid by your insurer, whose aim is always to keep claims costs as low as possible.

Loss Adjusters are not acting in your interests. If you want the reassurance of knowing they are offering a fair insurance settlement, or good quality of repairs, you need your own independent representative – a Loss Assessor. Property Claim Assist’s Loss Assessors are challenging Loss Adjuster settlements every week, often proving clients’ entitlements, defined by their insurance cover, are way beyond what the Loss Adjuster is offering.

If you suffer serious property damage, it’s a bad day. It can become even more stressful if you cannot obtain answers, get your insurer to respond, or secure a Loss Adjuster visit. After the 2021 London floods, we stepped in to help policyholders who had spent three months in limbo, with no action from their insurer.

Even now, insurers are hiding behind the excuse of Covid-19 when it comes to service performance. Claims staff are often working from home, extremely inefficiently, and claims are simply not being processed to acceptable timescales.

Appointing your own Loss Assessor (absolutely your right to do and costing you nothing if you work with Property Claim Assist and use our trusted tradespeople to handle your repairs), will force your insurer to act. We do not let them ignore you, once we are driving your claim.

You absolutely have the right to have your own independent representative handle your property insurance claim. Insurers will not publicise this right and there is a veil of silence about it in the media. People will try to suggest you are trying to defraud the system, by asking for too big a payout. That is absolutely not what Property Claim Assist does. We are Chartered experts and interpret your insurance policy in the spirit in which cover was supposed to be offered when the wording was drawn up by the underwriter.

Loss Adjusters will typically not do that, as it is not to the insurer (their employer’s) benefit to pay out everything to which you are entitled. The key word here is ‘entitled’. Why would you pay for an insurance policy and walk away from a claim with maybe half or a third of what your cover should provide? Unfortunately, that happens all too regularly. Don’t let it happen to you!

It is relatively easy for insurers to not pay out your full property claim entitlement, because insurance policies are written in jargon – insurance terminology which it often takes an expert to interpret. Loss Adjusters may seek to baffle you with that terminology and claim wordings mean you are not entitled to compensation for your loss. If you have your own claim representative, your own Loss Assessor, there is total transparency. We understand the wording inside-out.

Managing your own larger home insurance claim can be challenging, time-consuming and stressful, often far too much for an elderly person, someone with a mental or physical health issue, or anyone finding it difficult to process information, to take on.

At Property Claim Assist, we feel extremely strongly about this and believe many individuals are not treated fairly by the insurance industry. We have even produced our own booklet, ‘Entitled to More’, outlining our viewpoint. It is well worth reading.

If you have an elderly or vulnerable friend or relative who needs help, we will treat them with respect and empathy and assist them every step of the way. This is one reason why we set up our company and something about which we are passionate.

The UK has had the driest first half-year since the 1970s and suffered drought. That creates the perfect conditions for property subsidence, which can result in a property claim lasting years. We firmly believe nobody should attempt to handle a subsidence claim without their own Loss Assessor representative to negotiate at with the insurer’s Loss Adjuster. The repair work required to correct subsidence is in-depth and complex. Allowing it to be handled at the least possible cost to the insurer could affect the long-term health of your property.

It’s also worth pointing out that, if you suffer serious property damage, you may find yourself project-managing the repair works that result. If that is the case, you assume health and safety responsibilities that we would doubt you would want to take on. Appointing our team at Property Claim Assist removes you of this legal responsibility.

As we said, insurers are simply not currently providing the claims service customers deserve. Should you suffer any property damage over a holiday period like Christmas, your chances of getting a proper response are virtually nil. If you need help, we can set the ball rolling and also advise on how to secure your property and limit the damage. We can also put the pressure on the insurer to actually act, as soon as they get back to their office.

To conclude, as a company, Property Claim Assist can say ‘I’ll be There for You’ … ‘Just Ring My Bell.’ Property and home damage can occur at any time. ‘You Might Need Somebody’, so keep the number 0333 577 2720 in your phone, filing cabinet or drawer.