Claims Adjuster Confessions
DAVID PISANIC: To understand the life of an Insurance Adjuster, you really do have to think about someone sitting in a cubicle, in front of a video monitor most of the day, talking on the telephone, feeding information into a computer, that is what an "inside insurance adjuster" does. And often at times, they have way too many claims to handle.
DAVID PISANIC: They are rewarded or they are punished for their performance based on whether or not they are able to move a certain amount of claims off their desk and if you happen to be one of them in a time when that company is overwhelmed, you can expect, you can assume, you can be assured that your claim is not going to get the proper attention because there is just not going to be enough energy to do that.
DAVID PISANIC: An insurance adjuster is not always concerned about whether or not you are getting a fair shake. He is mostly concerned about moving that file off his desk. The insurance adjuster will say "the only good file is a closed file" and the reason being is the longer the file remains open, the more it cost the insurance company. In other words, sometimes it costs more to investigate than it does to settle or to deny or whatever, you know I am saying, it is easy to make an answer, to give an answer as to what the solution is going to be here, but it is not really giving the person a fair shake.
DAVID PISANIC: Unfortunately, in many cases, insurance adjusters do not do the proper investigation and they make decisions based on what it looks like in the beginning rather than making a thorough investigation. They might just as well make a quick decision on it rather than to spend the time, spend the insurance company's money to investigate it thoroughly and in many cases, they are making the wrong decision. But they do not really care because they are able to move a claim from this desk to the next desk.
DAVID PISANIC: Some of the larger companies tend to segment or break up the job of the insurance adjuster, so one guy does a certain part of the claim where the property part and another guy handles the bodily injury, another guy takes care of subrogation or getting money back for the insurance company. It is much easier for the insured -- you -- to fall in the cracks because everybody is only looking at one little part of the claim. Nobody is really looking at the whole claim.
DAVID PISANIC: They do not have all the information. They think they have all the information because they do so many of these claims every single day and they all look exactly alike after a while.
DAVID PISANIC: We have to do our job completely. Obviously it is not always expedient for the insurance company to do that. They would rather take the easiest way out and, therefore, you are not getting the claims work that you need to have done.
DAVID PISANIC: If you think that they are not looking at your claim properly, you need to say something about it and unfortunately, most people do not. They just pretty much accept what the insurance company says this is what is going to be, then what am I am going to do.
