Homeowners Insureance

Home and Business Property Insurance Claim Help - Dealing With Your Insurance Company   by Adam Woodrow

Any time you have property damage to your residence, you have to go through your Insurance Company to recover money for your losses and to rebuild what was lost. If you are like a large sum of property owners, you walked away with a check from your insrance company with barely enough funds to cover half of the work that has to be done to get your home back in shape.

This happens because of a couple of reasons. The first reason this happens is because of the nature of the Insurance Industry. They are in business to make money. They also hire their own Insurance Adjusters to estimate the amount of property damage you have to your home and how much it will cost to fix it. Since the Insurance Adjuster in this case works for the insurance company, you have nobody that is evaluating the damage with your thoughts in mind.

The second reason that Insurance Companies underpay their property owners is simply because the average property owner doesn’t know any better. They see the insurance company and their Adjuster doing work, and when they come up with a payment number, it is automatically accepted that this is how much they should be paid for the damage.

A little known fact, is that all property owners can choose their own contractors and get multiple bids on conductng repairs to their home. You do not have to take the lowest estimate of the bunch. The lowst estimate could mean the work will also be the lowest quality. You, as a property owner, have the option of selecting the contractor with the highest estimate if you choose, and that is what the insurance company has to go by.

The problem with this option is that the average property owner doesn’t know how to go about this process. It can be very tedious, overwhelming, and plain confusing. The good news is that you can get an Insurance Adjuster that works striclty for the policy holder and has only your interests at heart. This type of Adjuster is referred to as Public Adjuster. A Public Aduster’s responsiblity is to work with and for the policy holder and to get every penny they deserve out of the insurance company. Property damage claims that are handled by a Public Adjuster include fire, wind, water, flood, hurricane, theft and many others.

In many states, a property damage claim can be reopened up to five years after it was claimed. If you feel that you were underpaid by your insurance company on a past insurance claim, a Certified Public Adjuster can help you recover those extra funds.

Overseas Travel Insurance - A Necessity
Overseas travel insurance, simply put, is travel protection. It is a hedge against unforeseen circumstances. Insuring mitigates risks while providing a financial cushion against adverse financial burdens. Says Anurag Edward, product manager - travel, ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd, “Travel insurance is generally purchased not sold. It is a conscious call on the part of the individual traveller or even the company to procure one for its employees for their trips abroad.”

The objective is to safeguard oneself from the risks of accidents, injuries, loss of goods, baggage and a whole range of potential calamities. Why is it so important? If you take just one example, say hospitalisation, overseas medical expenses are at least ten times higher and it will be tough going to pay the bills out of your pocket. Also, accidents and mishaps can occur anytime, anywhere and never with a warning. Therefore, it is important to identify the risks faced and insure oneself. As Gautam Bhagat, national accident and health manager, HDFC Chubb General Insurance Company Ltd puts it, “Travel insurance is nothing but a small price you pay for a huge coverage and assurance.” Currently frontline choice of companies selling travel insurance are made up of ICICI Lombard, TATA AIG, Bajaj Allianz, IFFCO TOKIO and HDFC Chubb in the private sector and New India Assurance, National Insurance, United India Insurance and Oriental Insurance in the public sector. In the two odd years post deregulation, the 0private sector has penetrated about 20 per cent of the market while the remaining 80 per cent is being served by public sector units (PSUs). Says Edward, “To penetrate the large PSU domain, we have embraced technology to the hilt and have developed web-enabled online policy issuance modules, which effectively makes the corporate, a master of its own turn-around times as, through this module, the corporate is able to print ‘Confirmation of Availability of Insurance’ at its own end, prior to each trip. And that is what the positioning of Globetrotter, our travel product, is - convenience to fly across the world with ease.”