The List 1. 0 Reasons Why Insurance Companies May Have Underpaid Sandy Victims. In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, many insurance policyholders were denied coverage after engineering reports determined that their damage supposedly pre existed the storm or was due to natural earth movement rather than raging floodwaters. Other storm victims say their insurance companies failed to include coverage for sales tax and that their adjuster estimates vastly undercounted how much it would actually cost them to rebuild their homes. E Gas Sly Injection Software Downloads. Now the unfolding scandal and the complaints of those Sandy victims have led to a growing number of lawsuits and congressional hearings, forced FEMA to conduct an internal investigation, and sparked calls for substantial reforms to the. National Flood Insurance Program. But this mystery remains Exactly why would insurance adjusters and engineers intentionally go out of their way to shortchange and deny policyholders coverage The confusion revolves around the fact that most flood insurance claims unlike other types of insurance are paid using federal taxpayer money, so private companies processing the claims would have little financial incentive to underpay their customers. As federal inquiries continue, more information is likely to come out over the coming months detailing just what happened and why. In the meantime, experts interviewed for this article have floated a number of theories and partial explanations for what may have transpired behind the scenes. Unbalanced penalty structure. Theories abound in the absence of clear information about just what went on behind the scenes in the aftermath of disastrous storm. How To Update Xactimate Pricing Software' title='How To Update Xactimate Pricing Software' />Since private companies process flood insurance claims on behalf of FEMA issuing payouts from federal coffers theyre on the hook for repaying any excess money if government auditors later find those payments were issued in error. Sg Series Ups Manual here. But critics point out that they dont face equally severe penalties for underpaying policyholder claims. The only thing that motivates these guys is fear of pain, said David Charles, whos worked as an adjuster for close to four decades, and now represents homeowners and business owners fighting their insurance companies. Charles and others speculate that this unbalanced penalty structure has led to insurers, in the aftermath of Sandy, systematically rejecting legitimate claims and otherwise paying less than they should. A federal task force is currently examining how to balance the sanctions in the future, so insurers would be penalized equally, whether they pay out too much or too little. Business as usualOriginally, the notion was that insurance companies paid what they owed. No more, no less, said Jay Feinman, who teaches insurance law at Rutgers. But over the past few decades, companies have brought in management consultants whove dramatically changed the economics of the industry. Weve seen a transformation where claims become a profit center. Go to Most Popular General Billing and Payment Contractor Pricing Plan Delivery Questions GutterReport EagleView Construct Extended Coverage Memberships My. Post Home Insurance Claims Advice and Help Question below Or, get answers at your finger tips including personal consultation and confidence building with Ron. Kilauea Mount Etna Mount Yasur Mount Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira Piton de la Fournaise Erta Ale. Xactimate is a powerful program designed for performing property claims estimations. The program allows you to access the most uptodate and reliable. Xactware provides claims estimating, contents replacement, packout, packback, claims management, property preservation, remodeling, and roof data software. Find out the system requirements for Xactimate version 28. Job Interview Practice Test Why Do You Want This Job Answer this job interview question to determine if you are prepared for a successful job interview. Theres an attempt to reduce costs by paying less and delaying payment of claims, he said. To be clear, these changes apply to claims for homeowners coverage which companies pay out of their own pockets but not to federal flood insurance policies, where they have no similar profit motive. Still, notes David Charles, many of the same adjusters and engineers handle both types of claims. He thinks that if its their standard operating procedure to deny homeowner claims, theyll likely reject many valid flood claims as well. Giving insurance companies what they want. When homeowners filed 7. New Jersey including some 1. So they brought in teams of outside engineers hired guns who travel around the country from disaster to disaster to assist with damage inspections. Following up on the previous theory, many of these engineers are used to dealing with homeowners insurance claims, where theyre under pressure from their firms to write reports that make the insurance carriers their clients happy, said Chip Merlin, an attorney representing hundreds of Sandy victims in the state. If the insurance companies get reports from these engineers that side with the policyholder and they have to pay more money, those honest engineers get de listed because the engineering firm wants to keep business with the insurance carrier, he said. So you end up only with those that write what I would say are conservative reports that help the insurance company pay less on claims. Thats a big problem in the industry. Quantity over quality when it comes to inspections. Merlin thinks that many of the current problems stem from how adjusters and engineers are paid in the first place. We dont pay them to get an accurate estimate. They get paid on a percentage basis of the amount of claims that they do. So they try to write not just one home a day. Theyll try to do about eight of them, he explained. Were incentivizing the adjusters to go out there and write massive amounts of estimates very quick, way too shoddy, not with the outlook of them fully getting all the money to the policyholder, but in a system of compensation to the adjusters that prohibits that. He recommends reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program that would allow adjusters and engineers to spend as long as they need to do a thorough job, so all homeowners get the consideration they deserve. Inspectors were overtaxed and exhausted. Many storm victims have complained that engineers deemed their homes not substantially damaged or concluded that their damage was caused by long term settlement of the earth even though those inspectors never even looked in their crawlspaces. While the financial incentive to rush through and move onto the next house was probably a significant factor, there was also the human element, suggests Amy Bach with United Policyholders, a national insurance consumer advocacy group. With Sandy, the damage was so widespread and so awful, she said. Going into houses that are wet and smelly and soggy and dark, most people want to get in and get out. Its not like you want to spend time looking at every nook and cranny. So some of the underestimating of Sandy damage was unintentional. Possibly unqualified or poorly trained inspectors. Datalogic Touch 65 Light Usb Driver. When contractor Larry Steimel observed an insurance adjuster inspecting the home of one of his clients who had experienced flooding during Sandy, he was taken aback by what he saw. To me, it seemed like she was very inexperienced, he said. If I remember right, there were some things that she didnt even know what they were, some building components that she really wasnt aware of. As if thats not concerning enough, lack of construction expertise is just the tip of the iceberg, said Amy Bach. The National Flood Insurance Program policy is very specific. Its got a lot of nit picky rules. And some of these adjusters are just not that experienced with it, she said. Then there were some that werent adjusted properly because the adjusters were using Xactimate or a similar software program for estimating the repair costs, and the accuracy of the estimates these software programs produce is only as good as the training that the individual adjuster had in using the software. Valid policy exclusions and denials. Its worth noting that one reason policyholders may have received less than they were expecting isnt necessarily because they were shortchanged some were legitimately denied.