Insurers are preparing for a flood of claims in the wake of Hurricane Harvey – and property owners started filing insurance claims before the storm was even over, according to Joel Moore, an independent insurance adjuster in Houston.
“They filed claims before they evacuated,” Moore told NPR. “So they actually have no idea if there’s damage or not. They just wanted to be at the front end of the curve.”
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Officials say there are around 49,000 flooded homes in the wake of the storm. While not all of those will have flood coverage, insurance companies still predict that tens of thousands will have covered damage, according to NPR. To work through the expected deluge of claims, insurance companies will turn to small catastrophe companies that hire independent contractors. Those adjusters will work 14-hour days to handle all claims, NPR reported.
Moore, who has been adjusting claims for 25 years, told NPR that in high-pressure situations like the aftermath of a big storm, some catastrophe teams will hire inexperienced adjusters. That practice, some industry experts warn, can do more harm than good.
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Jeff Major, an adjuster from New York, told NPR that in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, for example, inexperienced adjusters overlooked a lot of technical details – meaning many homeowners didn’t get paid as much as they should have.
After receiving thousands of complaints from Sandy victims, FEMA investigated and found more than $390 million in unpaid damage, NPR reported. Since then, the agency says it has increased oversight over private carriers that administer its flood program.
“There’s much stronger awareness that FEMA has made, and much stronger points that FEMA has made with insurance companies to try to ensure that the consumer’s treated appropriately and fairly,” Don Griffin, vice president of the Property and Casualty Insurers Association, told NPR.
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