by gertes » Wed Oct 20, 2010 11:16 am
What are the step by step tasks a loss adjuster undertakes to come to an amount of money that the insurance company hiring his service must pay to the claimant?
Isn't it inevitable that two or more adjusters working on the same loss claim will come to different amounts of money that the insurance company has to pay the policyholder?
Yrger
Isn't it inevitable that two or more adjusters working on the same loss claim will come to different amounts of money that the insurance company has to pay the policyholder?
Yrger
Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 01:14 am Post Subject: Anonymous playwrights and their drama of loss adjustment.
Here I am again to report to any interested readers, on my labor to get an equitable settlement from the insurance company, Oriental Assurance Corporation, that sold me the policy covering two homes in Provident Village, Marikina City, the worst hit area of the country during the Ondoy typhoon of September 26, 2009.
It is today as I write this post, January 8, 2011, a Saturday, local time in the Philippines is 05:21 a.m.
My two homes were insured by Oriental Assurance Corporation for 3 million pesos [one US dollar = 43+ pesos] each on the house and .5 million each on the contents, that adds up to a total of 7 millions of exposure from Oriental.
Every year my wife and I always left it to the sales agent of Oriental to get us the best protection, on whatever amount of coverage no matter the premiums we had to pay Oriental.
When we filed our claim, Oriental endorsed it to one of their adjusters firms, the Pacific International Adjusters.
These adjusters came up with the combined grand total liability of Oriental as:
for both homes as regards the house and as regards the contents.
On my objections, the adjusters offered instead another amount, namely:
I still refuse to accept.
So, to date I have not received any payment from Oriental.
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It seems obvious that the cards are stacked against me and all home insurance policy holders, when the time comes to get your claim settled equitably by the insurance company, which however put their socalled independent adjusters to front for them.
You can work your rear end raw with listings of your home contents destroyed by flooding, and with estimates from engineers on the cost of materials and labor for the restoration of your home, but the company's adjusters will just reject them and stick to their own computation, however to any intelligent and experienced person it is conspicuously unrealistic for being too low, compared to the actual losses you sustain and taking into account the amount of coverage you paid yearly premiums for.
They, the company's socalled independent adjusters, are in effect challenging you to go to court, for they know that in our country it takes a life-savings bank account to hire lawyers on the one hand, and eternity for a case to finally come to a decision, on the other hand.
So, if you be practical though you believe you are being victimized, you just have to accept whatever settlement they offer you however meager; otherwise it is going to be unending processes in the courts with interminable billings from lawyers.
Did I tell you, gentle readers here, that in this country of ours, The Republic of the Philippines, there are no public adjusters who are supposed to help you deal with the socalled independent adjusters who are serving insurance companies?
Read the Insurance Code, it provides also for public adjusters who are supposed to assist policy holders, aside from independent adjusters who are licensed to serve insurance companies.
Read: Chapter IV Title 5 Sec. 323. ADJUSTERS.
You are supposed to have your own kind of adjusters, so that you can deal with exploitative adjusters from the insurance company.
But the sad fact is that there are no public adjusters in the country; all adjusters are independent adjusters -- except two at the bottom of the list of adjusters in the website of the Insurance Commission, who are described yes as public adjusters, but these two are not into home insurance claims, they are instead into marine insurance claims, namely, into claims from ship owners for disasters in the seas.
And why are there no public adjusters?
Because according to what I was given as an explanation, there are no applicants applying for license to work as public adjusters, everyone is asking to be licensed as an independent adjuster.
I have talked with the actual top person in the Insurance Commission to suggest to her (Deputy Commissioner Vida T. Chiong):
At this point any intelligent reader here should be asking the question, how come the Insurance Commission never had any resourceful imagination to think up ways and means to motivate applicants to take up work as public adjusters?
Perhaps the people in the Insurance Commission do not have any imagination or they don't care.
So, what do I do now?
I believe I have to think of ways and means even by going to the Ombudsman to move the Insurance Commission to exercise resourceful imagination, as to make available to the insuring citizenry their right to the assistance of public adjusters, in order to deal with the independent adjusters fronting for insurance companies.
By the way, don't think that insurance companies are required to employ independent adjusters, they don't have to because they also have their own in house adjusters -- who will of course check on the work of their contracted outside independent adjusters; but they put up a drama of employing socalled independent adjusters outside, in order that they can appear so impartial, by relying on socalled independent adjusters outside, who however eat from their hands.
Another thing I can do is to file a complaint against the independent adjusters handling my claim, for there is this provision also in the Insurance Code:
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But this course of action will not get me any equitable settlement of my claim, it will just remove the present independent adjusters from handling my claim, the insurance company will just transfer my claim to their other independent adjusters firms to continue the drama, that has been written by some anonymous playwrights, to be enacted to my prejudice.
In conclusion, I believe it is best to exert my heart and mind in the advocacy to move the Insurance Commission, to use its resourceful imagination in motivating people to take up the work of public adjusters.
As soon as these public adjusters are available I will enlist their service, and thus I will have a level playing field with the insurance company and their independent adjusters.
Come to think about it, it is very very plausible that some very involved anonymous parties are into the drama of loss adjustments in the Philippines as playwrights, so that insurance companies always come out with a lot of savings from otherwise would be equitable settlements for their claimants, one of their gimmicks is the absence of public adjusters to assist home insurance policy holders.
Gertes
Posted: Thu Feb 03, 2011 03:32 am Post Subject: Yrger property claim
I have seen your request for help on several sites tonight.
I'm a Public Adjuster. Please find your insurance policy and then see if there is a section entitled"Your requirements in case of a loss" or something close to that. Read carefully as in the USA you , the insured, are required to proove your claim.
Hope this helps. Feel free to respond if I can help further.
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