Your Insurance policy is a contract between you and your insurance company. When you make a premium payment, this is your confirmation of agreeing to the terms of this contract. Your failure to properly execute your duties required by the policy terms could be grounds for the denial of your claim. When you work with SCSI, we will inform you of your requirements and help you get compliant with your responsibilities for reporting, mitigation, preservation of evidence and meeting policy deadlines as required. It is important that  you understand that every communication you have with the insurance company – phone call – site visit – email sent to you, prior to your claim adjustment being finalized is a fact-finding mission by the insurance company intended to minimize the cost of the loss to the insurance company. When you work with a public adjuster you can be sure that you won’t be the reason your claim is denied!

If you are like most of our customers, you have never taken the time to read your insurance policy cover to cover – and we don’t fault you for that. Most insurance policies exceed 150 pages in length. A lot of that language explains conditions that are located somewhere else in the policy – causing you to move ahead and back in your review, ultimately causing you to get “lost” in the language. A big portion of the policy lists exclusions to the policy, that are later added back in (endorsements) to the policy that you have to pay a premium to include back in. It is no wonder that most insureds – and in a lot of cases the agencies that sold these policies have little certainty of exactly what coverages they have! Our in-depth review of your policy will help you understand your coverages. We can help you understand prior to filing your claim where you may have issues with your policy language and the damages/loss you have incurred. Sentinel Claim Services will thoroughly review your policy, document and estimate your loss details so that they can be summarized and presented in the most effective way possible.

Staff Field Adjuster –  A staff field adjuster is a full-time employee that works for the Insurance company directly.  These workers will be on their payroll, receive a salary and benefits. Staff adjusters are trained to respond to claims for their Insurance company. The Staff Adjuster will meet with Insureds at the claim location to analyze the damages that are being claimed and will work with other Insurance Co. resources to provide a damage assessment to you as the insured. On smaller claims – such as hail damage to a single-family residence, this may be your only point of contact on an insurance claim. They will complete the inspection, draft an estimate, and maybe sometimes even provide an initial payment for your loss that same day.

Staff Desk Adjuster – A staff desk adjuster will be assigned to larger claims. They receive the information gathered by the field adjuster and continue the adjustment process with additional investigation/evaluation back at the home office. This adjuster will most likely never visit your loss. A desk adjuster usually has a much higher claim amount authority than the field adjuster, so if you have a larger claim loss, you can expect at some point that your claim may be transferred to multiple adjusters within the insurance company until someone with the required authority ends up as the final point of contact for your claim. In the process of transferring the claim from one person to another, especially to someone who has never viewed the loss in person, details can and do get missed.

Independent Adjuster – There are many companies throughout the US that provide these types of adjusters to the Insurance industry. These adjusters are considered “subcontractors” and work on an as needed basis for larger scale losses where the Staff Adjusters for any geographic location would not be able to keep up with the number of claims that result from that event.  In most cases, all estimates written by this type of adjuster, go to a Staff Desk Adjuster who reviews that estimate for compliance with the policy terms, coverage limits and any other changes that the Insurance company wants to make to the estimate before providing it to you as the insured in the form of a claim summary. There have recently been a lot of stories in the news about Insurance companies completely rewriting estimates submitted by IA’s prior to sending the claim summary to the Insureds.

PUBLIC ADJUSTER – Of all the types of Adjusters listed above, this is the only type that is hired by the Insured and not the Insurance Company. A public adjuster’s sole mission is to work as an advocate for you! A public adjuster is licensed by your state and has the qualifications required to complete all of the duties the other Adjusters complete on behalf of the Insurance company. A public adjuster’s primary role is to help you secure all of the benefits you are entitled to, as written in the insurance policy/contract. They manage the Insureds coverage requirements, review policy amounts/limits, and understand any/all of the additional coverages that you may have included in your policy when it was purchased. They are your one point of contact throughout the entire process of the claim and will complete all communications on your behalf with the Insurance company, its hired adjusters, experts, engineers, and any others hired by the insurance company as they evaluate your loss on their side. Your Public Adjuster guides you so that you remain in compliance with your duties as a policy holder and makes sure that the Insurance Co and its Adjusters do the same.

This is the most important part of your Insurance Claim. Everyone who is tasked with providing estimates on behalf of the Insurance Company has one goal in mind. Unfortunately, that goal is to protect their boss (the insurance company) and provide as small a scope of work, at the least expensive price that they are able. Most adjusters have a workload of 20-50 claims per month and have no incentive to take the extra time required to thoroughly analyze the damages and to make sure that every single piece of material or labor that is required to restore those damages back to the pre-loss condition is contained in their estimate. At Sentinel Claim Services, this is our number one goal. With over 25 years of construction experience, SCSI has the resources to make sure that everything that is required gets accounted for in its estimates. Even items which may not have been directly damaged by the covered loss, or may not exist on your building currently,  may be required to be repaired or replaced and included in your final claim award if they are not compliant with current building codes. Your policy may provide coverage for these items, allowing the repairs to be code-compliant (covered under your policy as Code and Ordinance), but these items don’t always get included in Insurance company estimates. This attention to detail is what differentiates SCSI from our competition. We make sure that the Insurance company pays for it, and not you as the Insured .

Our public adjuster license allows us to advocate for you, to discuss policy language and coverage issues with your Insurance company, striving to get you the proper coverage. Your roofer or siding contractor, or any of the other trades that you have relationships with CAN’T do this for you. It is illegal in most states for anyone not licensed to be able to have these types of conversations with Insurance company adjusters.

Sentinel Claim Services will :

• Review and identify all of the coverages that may be applicable to your claim.
• Assist in coordination of damage mitigation required for your property.
• Thoroughly review your loss and identify damaged items in order to provide a detailed scope of repairs and inventory of damaged personal property/contents.
• Provide you with handouts, pamphlets, or information to assist you in obtaining necessary information about your loss. Including other expenses relating to additional living expenses, loss of use, business interruption, and other items related to your claim.
• Setting up and attending all meetings with your adjuster, the owner or representative of the loss as required to fulfill your policy obligations.
• Walk you through this process every step of the way and keeping you updated on claim adjustment events as they happen.
• Providing you with your approved scope of work to allow you to secure the appropriate contractors to complete the repairs.
• When repairs are completed, submitting all final documents to allow for release of any recoverable depreciation retained by the insurance company and close the claim.

After Sentinel Claim Services Inc. completes the Insurance Claim adjustment and a final scope of work and value to repair and/or replace that scope of work has been approved/accepted by your insurance company, you as the Insured can hire contractors of your choosing to make your repairs. Sentinel Claim Services Inc will provide you claim documents confirming what has been approved and for how much and will be available to answer any questions regarding the approved claim specifics. Once the work is completed Sentinel Claim Services will document the work completion and notify the Insurance company of its completion so that they can send the amounts that they have withheld as depreciation until the work has been completed.

Properly evaluating and adjusting Property Insurance Claims is complicated and very time-consuming. There have been numerous studies that show working with a Public Adjuster vs. relying solely on the Insurance company to adjust your claim can increase the overall claim award by 50-300%. IF you attempt to do this yourself or try to have a contractor (who is not legally allowed to do any Claim Adjustment activities) assist you in the process, you may find that one mistake or omission of a requirement can be extremely costly, and in a worst-case scenario result in a claim being denied! The comfort level you receive knowing your claim is being managed professionally, combined with the benefit of the time you don’t have to spend as the Insured by having your Public Adjuster handle the commitments required from the claim (meeting with Ins Co Adjusters, contractors, responding to emails, communicating with Insurance Agent, trying to read and understand the policy) and most importantly making sure that you as the Insured don’t miss doing something that you are required to do, when you don’t even know that it is required, is certainly worth the money it cost to hire a Public Adjuster.

At Sentinel Claim Services Inc, we work on a contingent fee basis. This means if we don’t secure claim funds from the Insurance company for the damages being claimed, you don’t owe us anything. On those claims where SCSI is successful and receives a claim award, SCSI will be owed a fee based on the Total Claim Award. By using this fee structure, Sentinel Claim Services, Inc. is firmly on the same side of the table with you as your claim adjustment is completed. Our fee ranges between 10-15% based on the type and extent of damages and we will discuss your specific fee in detail during out initial consultation with you. This fee payment will be deducted from each claim payment made by your insurance company to Sentinel Claim Services Inc., and the balance paid to you so that you can pay the companies completing the actual repairs when that time comes.