Insurance Fraud Post Disasters
The property insurance challenges are everywhere these days. This includes being able to find insurance, the price of insurance—and finally, when you suffer a loss, being paid for your property damages that you have paid premiums to a company to cover.
60 Minutes had a segment on Insurance Fraud
The issue being that an adjuster comes to your home, assesses the damages to your property. Sends those damage estimates to the insurance company that ordered the assessment—and then, the company only pays a small fraction of the amount of damages/reimbursement due you to cover your losses. The only way you can fight that claim is to sue the company!
Which brings me to “buyer beware.” I recall my young 20-something daughter paying for her own car insurance back in the day. She did some research to find that she could get a cheaper policy. My advice to her was this, “When it comes time to make a claim for a loss, will they pay?” The old adage of, “You get what you pay for applies.”
No matter where you live today, don’t fall for cheap insurance policies from fly-by-night companies that are under capitalized and won’t be able to cover disaster losses on all the properties that they have under coverage. Check with your state’s insurance commissioner and verify the track record for any company that you are considering purchasing a policy from.
My own car/house insurance policies are with USAA. I’ve been with them for 52 years. Recently they sent me a letter wanting to verify the type and age of the roof on the home we own. That is “due diligence” since it is the roof that protects everything under it. Actually, we will be replacing a roof on an outbuilding with another metal roof later this year. I opted for a heavier gauge metal to provide more protection from hailstorms. Not that those are common where the property is located—but, with climate change the past is not a good predictor of the future.
