Initiating an Insurance Claim
Initiating an insurance claim is not difficult, the insurance company is not angry with you for needing to draw upon the policy you have being paying for every month or year.
The call should be made to the Claims Department of your insurance carrier, not to your insurance agent. Agents don’t handle insurance claims. They will generally refer you to the claims department. To find the number, simply do an internet search for Claims Department and the name of your insurance company.
Before you call your insurance company, you need to gather a little information. They will ask for your:
Name
Policy Number
What type of damage you sustained – Hail, Wind, (there are numerous others such as broken pipes or property damage because someone drove a car into the house and so on. Four out purposes hail and wind are our concerns.
Date of the event that caused the damage – if you don’t know the exact date, give us a call. We have hail and wind maps that give us the information about damaging events. We are happy to help.
At the end of the telephone call, you have with the insurance claim department they will either tell you that an adjuster will be calling you within a specific time period or they may set up a date and time frame at that time. Please make note of this information and convey it to us. We will meet the adjuster to act as your advocate , helping the adjuster identify all of the storm related damage.
If the claim department sets the date and time for the adjuster’s inspection or if the adjuster calls at a later time to set up the inspection,
make sure whomever you are speaking with understands that your contractor – Jack Caton Roofing – will attend the adjuster’s inspection on your behalf. If you are told that the inspection will be some time on a specific date or sometime within a 2-hour window. Remind them that you need a one-hour window at the most and get the contact information for the adjuster. We have very good relationships with many of the adjusters. They know and trust us and do their best to accommodate our work schedule.
Keep us informed – Once you have the day and time of the adjuster’s inspection, let us know and give us the contact information for the adjuster. If anything changes, let us know that too.
The Adjuster’s meeting – Property must be accessible.
The adjuster will need access to the front, sides and rear of the property. If you have locked gates or unfriendly dogs in the back yard, make sure there is easy and safe access to all parts of the exterior of the property. If there is damage to the interior of the property, the adjuster will need access to the interior as well.
It generally takes somewhere between a half an hour and an hour, depending on the size of the property and the extent of the damage for the adjuster to complete his or her inspection. We will send you a form to approve that stipulates that you have engaged us to act as your advocate with respect to this insurance claim. Without it, the adjuster cannot share any information with us. Even with it some adjusters are reluctant to be forthright.
If the property owner is present for the adjuster’s inspection, he or she should go over the details of the inspection, what is covered, what is not, how much your deductible is and how much the claim is and how it is all paid for by the insurance company.
Some insurance company adjusters are able to complete the insurance claim paperwork at the time of their inspection. Others must complete their claim information and submit it to the claims department, that will reach out to you, generally within a week. Many of the adjusters that can complete the claim on the spot are also able to print a check for some of the damage.
HOW AN INSURANCE COMPANY PAYS A CLAIM
After the claim has been approved the insurance company will email or snail mail you the Claim Estimate – It is only an estimate and subject to change as the claim is reviewed by the property owner and the contractor to make sure it is inclusive and has the correct values.
Most but not all insurance policies have full replacement value coverage. This is referred to as Replacement Value Cost coverage. Others may be Actual Cost coverage.
Let’s take a simple claim that totals $20,000. In this instance the owner has a $5,000 deductible. This means that the owner will pay $5000 of the cost and the insurance company will pay $15,000… if they have Replacement Cost Value coverage (RCV).
Along with the insurance company Claim Estimate the insurance company will issue a check for the full $20,000 less the $5000 deductible, less the depreciation based on the estimated age of the roof compared to the anticipated life of the roof when it was new. Let say that they depreciate everything on the claim at 40%. 40% of $20,000 is $8,000. The first check the owner will receive of that $20,000 will also have $8000 deducted from it, reducing the amount to the first check to $7,000 – $20,000 – $5,000 (deductible) –
$8,000 (depreciation) = $7,000 – the ACV (Actual Cash Value).
If there are supplements and if all other items on the claim estimate are correct, the property owner will receive the check for the Recoverable Depreciation (RC) $7,000 when the work has been completed and the insurance company has received an invoice.
WE TAKE CARE OF ALL OF THE INSURANCE COMPANY PAPERWORK AND DEAL WITH THEM ON YOUR BEHALF – YOU DON’T HAVE TO LIFT A FINGER.
The claim is written in a kind of code that is indecipherable to most property owners. It is confusing and a little daunting. We will go over your claim with you so that you fully understand it and are comfortable with the outcome.
If the homeowner above has an ACV (Actual Cash Value) policy, there will be not recoverable depreciation. $7,000 is the total of what the owner will receive.
Because we are good at what we do and understand the insurance claim procedure exclusively well, we often can work with the insurance company to stretch some things here and there to help get as much as possible toward replacing the roof.
If you have an ACV policy, you need to know about HAIL-B-GONE.
Of course, every insurance claim is different and each insurance company has a different way of doing thing. We deal with all the insurance companies regularly and are familiar with the way they work.
CONTRACTOR’S OVERHEAD AND PROFIT
If there is extensive damage to a property that includes three trades in addition to the roof, the contractor is entitled to Overhead and Profit. Each of these is 10% of the amount of the claim items. These may include siding or painting, windows and or screens, fencing, gutters and downspouts and so on. Overhead and profit is called Contractors Overhead and profit because it is for the contractor who takes care of getting the right people to do the other work, who are capable and proficient. You need deal with only one contractor, Jack Caton Roofing.
WHAT TO EXPECT
Along the way toward doing the work necessary, we will keep you informed by phone, by text and by email, letting you know what to expect, when to expect it and how to prepare for it. Many of the men and women who work on your roof may be from south of the border. They are skilled craftspeople and are all business. We do not allow smoking on the property, or music to be played. We expect our crews to keep the workplace as neat and clean as possible while they are working and for the premises to be litter and nail free at the end of the job. Our crew chief will ask that you walk around the property with him to double check that the yard, driveway, walks, and patios are free of debris and you are happy with the work.
The Jack Caton Roofing Team is a licensed and insured contractor. We pull the building permit in our name, we don’t ask you to pull the permit.
HOW WE GET PAID
We ask for a deposit. If possible, we ask for 50% of the job. In the case of the example above the property owner would not get $10,000. That is fine we will work with what you have. For some people who are paying cash for a roof or are have a fully approved contract for the sale of their property, we can defer payment for the roof until the closing on the sale and we are paid by the title company from the proceeds of the sale. We will do everything we can to make sure you get the roof you need in the time frame you need in the most comfortable manner possible.