Introduction to
"Insurance Claim Secrets REVEALED!"

Introduction

Insurance makes the world go around?

There’s a little song that says, “Love makes the world go around.” I hate to be the one to tell you this…but that’s not true.

There’s also a song in the musical “Cabaret”, that says, “Money makes the world go around.” That’s a little closer to reality, but still not all the way true.

Insurance truly makes the world go around.

Nearly everything that we touch, and nearly everything that touches us, is insured. Without insurance, most of the everyday products and services we just accept as normal could only be purchased by the wealthy. Without insurance, businesses could not protect themselves from liability lawsuits. There would not be thousands of ships that carry cargo between nations, as investors in the ships and the cargo could not be sure they wouldn’t be financially wiped out if their ships sank on the high seas.

If it weren’t for insurance, very few people would ever get a home mortgage or an automobile loan. Think about it….what bank would lend YOU money for a house when their collateral might burn to the ground? Same for a car…what bank would lend money when the car could be destroyed in an accident?

Closer to home, people who were found to be negligent in a court of law would be financially wiped out making restitution to their victims. People would be reluctant to even drive their car to the market for fear of getting in an accident that was their fault.

Our world would be very different, and our capitalist system of economics would be radically different without insurance. Just think of how the world economics worked just 400 years ago in the days before insurance was invented.

That’s what our world would be like today without insurance.

A significant portion of every adult’s income is spent for insurance. We insure our health, our lives, our vehicles, our businesses, our homes and our toys.

Have you ever heard the term “insurance poor?” That’s the feeling one gets when he sees a large portion of his disposable income paid out in insurance premiums. It usually also means that the person doesn’t think that they’re getting their money’s worth. I say that because people don’t usually complain about the price of something if they perceive that the value is worth the price. I’ve heard LOTS of people say that they‘re “insurance poor,” and I know how they feel.

Yet, for all of the money that consumers spend on insurance, hardly anyone understands how it works. Fewer still ever read the policies that they buy. That lack of understanding leaves the consumer very vulnerable, and likely to receive far less money in any insurance settlement than the amount that they are entitled to collect.

I’ll tell you a story about my own recent auto accident in Chapter Twenty Three, and how much money I could have lost if I had not been prepared. There’s also a story in Chapter One about my homeowner’s claim, and the thousands of dollars I collected that would not normally have been paid out.

But first, let me tell you a little bit about me.

I’ve been around the insurance business since 1973. In late 1972, my wife and I bought our first house for $21,500.00. Three little bedrooms, one bath, 1008 square feet on a half-acre lot. It wasn’t much, but it was ours. Naturally, we bought a homeowners insurance policy just before closing…the bank required it. In January of 1973, the Farm Bureau Insurance agent who sold the policy came to the house one evening to deliver the policy, and try to sell us auto and life insurance. I don’t remember if he was successful that night in selling us more insurance, but he asked me if I’d be interested in becoming an insurance agent.

I was nineteen years old, working as a laborer in my father’s construction company, in January in Michigan. I wasn’t real excited about working outdoors, and didn’t see much future in it. This guy was offering me inside work…wearing a coat and tie.

What do you think I said?

YES!!!

By the end of April, I had passed my state licensing exams, and gotten my agent licenses. I was on my way as a Farm Bureau Insurance agent. I was the youngest agent that the company had ever hired in their history. Soon after that, that agent and his manager moved down the street and started an independent agency. I joined them.

After five years, I went back into the family construction business, and eventually became Vice President of the three construction companies we owned. I always kept my licenses active, and sold various types of insurance on a part-time basis.

In 1986, I sold my portion of the construction companies back to my Dad, and went back into insurance sales full-time. I sold term life insurance and investment securities, and did pretty well.

In 1992, we moved from West Michigan to Atlanta, Georgia. Shortly after arriving here in Atlanta, Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida and Louisiana. The insurance companies were completely overloaded with claims, as were the independent claims adjusting companies that served those insurance companies. In those instances, insurance companies and adjusting companies rely heavily on temporary adjusters…”storm troopers,” as they are called. The companies look for people with either insurance experience or construction experience.

I had both.

A national independent adjusting company hired me immediately, and in a few days I was in Miami.

What an amazing experience catastrophe adjusting (CAT duty) was!! I remember, on my first day, standing on the roof of a one story house in Kendall, Florida, measuring and making a diagram of what was left of the roof. I looked up, and as far as the eye could see in every direction were roofs with blue tarps on them.

Even right then, I knew I would love claims adjusting.

I could hardly believe that someone was going to pay me a lot of money to look at damages and write estimates. I’d been writing estimates for years. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

(I hope that you have work that you love. Most of the people that I know don’t like what they do for a living.)

Once the CAT duty was over, I came back to Atlanta, and soon I’d found a full-time job with an independent adjusting company. I’ve been a claims adjuster ever since.

There’s a position in the claims adjusting field that’s called a “General Adjuster,” or GA. It’s kind of like being a General in the military. The GA position is as high as an adjuster can go. To qualify, you have to take a lot of insurance coursework, have a peer review of your claims handling work, and have a depth of experience.

It normally takes an adjuster at least ten to fifteen years to attain this position. I made it in four years. Now, I’m an Executive General Adjuster. That means I handle the most complicated and huge losses, and supervise the work of other adjusters.

I’ve had some of the best training in claims that a fellow could possibly get. The companies I worked for kept sending me to various schools, each one more advanced than the last. I also did a lot of study through trade institutes. That helped me rocket forward in the claims business.

For a couple of years, I even did work for an insurance company as Home Office General Adjuster and property Claims Examiner. I got an insider’s look at how claims are processed in an insurance company claims department. Boy, did my eyes get opened by that experience! It’s one thing to investigate a claim as an adjuster, and then send a report to a claims examiner at the insurance company. It’s a whole different experience to be the claims examiner, making the decisions on what is covered and what is not covered…what claims get paid, how much gets paid, and what claims get denied.

One of the most important things that I learned as a Claims Examiner was that people were usually not very impressed with the adjuster that handled their claim. The best adjusters are detail oriented, curious and self-motivated. Unfortunately, many adjusters are not thorough, seldom curious, and somewhat lazy. Most of the reports I received were mediocre in quality. There were a notable few adjusters who did a superb job.

I think I’ve adjusted just about every kind of claim you could think of…homeowners, automobile, worker’s compensation, ocean cargo, trucking, inland marine, jeweler’s block, liability, business income, commercial property…and loved every minute of it. The money hasn’t been bad, either.

An Executive General Adjuster bills his hourly time at $165.00. That’s my hourly rate.

Friends, I’m haven’t told you all of this history to brag. I’d just like you to know that I know what I’m talking about in the insurance sales and the insurance claims businesses.

Just like you, I’ve been an insurance consumer all of my adult life…even earlier, as a teenager with my ’59 Jeep. But, unlike most of you, I’ve had the chance to experience both sides of the insurance world…. as a consumer, then as an agent and adjuster.

That’s why I am so excited about writing this book!

Here’s exactly why I wrote this book. Most of the people for whom I’ve adjusted claims had never had a property or casualty insurance claim before. (We’re not dealing with health, life or worker’s compensation insurance in this book. We can get to those topics in my monthly newsletters. Click here if you’d like a free subscription. Or if you‘re reading the paperback book, look on the back cover for my website address. Please register for the free newsletter there.). Most of those same people had NEVER read their policy, even after filing the claim. They had no idea what the claims process was, and they relied on me...the adjuster…to walk them through the process.

It is for you, and people just like you that I write this book. Many times, people who have had a loss are on the raw edge of emotion. It is natural to be fearful in a situation where you don’t feel you’re in control…where you don’t know what will happen next, and you’re scared you’ll be “ripped off.” Most everyone has heard a story from a relative or friend about an insurance claim that went badly.

People like that need solid advice and a strategy on what to do to get their claim paid.

They need to understand the claims process completely so that they are not at the mercy of the insurance company, the claims adjuster and the claims examiner.

They need to be paid every dollar that they are entitled to collect.They need to have peace of mind knowing that their claim was handled correctly.

Insurance companies rely upon the ignorance of their own policyholders. So do many claims adjusters. An uninformed policyholder will rarely argue with an adjuster, because they don’t know what they don’t know.

Let me repeat that phrase so you can think about it long and hard.

MOST POLICYHOLDERS OR CLAIMANTS DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY DON’T KNOW.

They don’t know what is in their insurance policy, and they don’t know the claims process, and that lack of knowledge can cost them thousands in settlement dollars and all of their peace of mind.

Everything that you must do to file a claim is in your insurance policy. WHAT’S MISSING IS HOW TO DO IT.

Think of it this way: I hand you a blueprint for a small house, and tell you, “Build this house over there on that lot.” I’ve told you WHAT to do…I’ve even given you a document that tells you what must be done. WHAT’S MISSING IS HOW TO TAKE THAT BLUEPRINT AND BUILD THE HOUSE.

Do you know how to pour concrete or lay cement blocks?

Do you know how to install shingles?

Do you know how to install electrical wiring?

You may build a house, but it probably won’t look anything like what’s on that blueprint.

If you’ve never built a house before, you won’t know what to do first…or next…or last.House building takes experience. Or it takes very detailed instructions on how to build a house…step by step with no steps left out. If you have NO EXPERIENCE in house building, then you must either rely on someone who does have that experience, or you must follow step-by-step instructions…or some combination of both.

That principle is exactly the same in filing an insurance claim of any type. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the United States, or Canada, or Brazil, or Panama, or Germany, or France, or Egypt, or South Africa, or China, or India.

It doesn’t matter if your claim is a Homeowner, or Auto, or Commercial Property, or Liability, or whatever kind you may have. If you have NO experience in filing a claim successfully, and getting every dollar you’re entitled to collect, then you must rely on either someone who does have that experience, or you must follow the step-by-step instructions IN THIS BOOK…or some combination of both.

Insurance companies can increase their profits on your lack of knowledge. (To read about other ways insurance companies increase their profits at your expense, read Chapter Two.)

I believe that what you don’t know can hurt you…it could even change the course of your life for the rest of your life. I believe that your lack of knowledge about the claims process could change the destiny of your children’s lives and generations into the future.

For example, consider a family who owns a home. The house burns to the ground, and everything they own burns with it. The family didn’t know that they had to keep their home insured to value, and did not have enough coverage. So the insurance company hits them with a co-insurance penalty that reduces their settlement by a big percentage. (This topic is explored in Chapter Twenty One.) The family did not do a good job of taking inventory of their contents, because now they are forced to do it from memory, as the contents are now ashes. The contents are not insured for replacement cost, and the contents portion of the policy is settled for Actual Cash Value, or depreciated dollars. Their choice is to either take money out of savings, children’s college funds or their retirement savings to pay the difference. Another choice…if they don’t have any savings, is to simply rebuild or buy a smaller house and replace their belongings with a lot less belongings. That is, after paying off the mortgage of the house that burned.

Or, they could just rent a house forever.

Mom and Dad have their lives permanently altered for the rest of their lives. Because of the fire, there’s no money for college, and the children don’t go to college.

Everybody in that story suffered because Mom and Dad were not prepared. Even the grandchildren yet unborn will have their lives affected because their parents did not get a college degree, and that affected their parents’ ability to earn a higher income.

You see? One loss, not properly handled, can affect your destiny and your children’s destiny, and generations to come. You may accuse me of melodrama, but this stuff happens regularly.

Read this book, and make sure it doesn’t happen to you.

Remember the scene in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz,” where Dorothy and her friends are standing before the Wizard? He’s making big noises, and shooting off fire, and scaring them silly. Just then, Toto tugs on a curtain off to one side, and reveals a rotund little man behind that curtain throwing switches and moving levers. At this point in the story, Oz thunders, “PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!!!”

The insurance claims process is a lot like that. The companies don’t want their policyholders to question the claims procedure, or figure out that it can work very differently from the way that it looks. Insurance companies and claims adjusters want policyholders and claimants to be compliant and trusting. That decreases the size of the settlements, and increases the profits of the insurance companies.

I’m going to be your “Toto.” In this book, and at my website, I’m going to pull back the curtain and show you how things really work. I’ll show you how you can take control of your insurance claims and your policies, and add hundreds…even many thousands of dollars…to your insurance claim settlements. These are dollars that you are ALREADY entitled to collect from your policy.

In addition to the “how-to” parts of the book, I’m going to include some stories of claims I’ve actually handled over the years. They’re stranger than fiction…some are kind of gruesome…and all true.

Dorothy had a little dog and three friends that helped her get to the Land of Oz. That was her team. Let’s stop for a minute and think about teams.

I started playing baseball on the Pee Wee League team in Kent City, Michigan, in the summer of 1962. I was 8 years old. I was always a second string first baseman, because my cousin Thomas was better than me at everything…hitting, running, fielding. All of the kids on that team were from that little village of about 600 people in West Michigan, and we had been playing together since kindergarten.

We won the league championship that year…and the same boys kept playing together as we got older. Our coaches were Don Kik and Pete Imkamp, and they administered discipline and love in equal doses to a bunch of small town boys.

We won every championship every summer until I was 14…Pee Wee League, Little League, Pony League, Junior Varsity. The summer I turned 14, we moved to a bigger town (a whopping 2,500 people) where my Dad had a construction business. As a sophomore in the spring of 1969, I finally became a starting first baseman. I played on the Junior Varsity at school, and that team won the conference championship.

I never knew what it was like to play on a baseball team that was not the champion. But remember, I wasn’t the star on any of those teams. I was an average player on a championship team.

But I still got to share in the glory…just like a star.

Have you ever been on a sports team? Did you play Little League baseball, or Youth Soccer, or football, or basketball? If you did, you know how important it is to have great players on your team.

You also probably remember how painful it was when your team lost.

Friends, the stakes are way too high when it comes to handling an insurance claim.

You cannot afford to have your team lose now.

When it comes to your insurance coverage…no matter what kind of insurance…you need to have a team. But…

WHO DO YOU HAVE ON YOUR TEAM?

The insurance company has well trained adjusters who are experts in the claims process.