How long should a flood insurance claim take?

Question

Chris N asked this but didn't seem to get a full answer. Another guy had 6 months for a fire claim. Why does it take so long?

Answer 1

The problem with a flood claim is the difficulty in quantifying the loss.

1) The house has to be dried - this will take several weeks and a large amount of electricity.

2) Then the house will probably have to be gutted and cleaned - this will take quite a while.

3) The the house will have to be completely decorated, appliances bought and installed and of course new furnishings/ goods purchased.

4) The insurance company should be able to quantify most of the household costs and come to an agreement quite quickly - but it will be quite a while before the customer can get to buy the goods. The loss assessor should have been out quickly to arrange the drying out etc.

5) Also of course there may be two insurers - one for the buildings and one for the contents - so two sets of negotiations.

6) There is also the effect of alternate accommodation.

Most of the expenses mentioned should not involve the policyholder as the insurer will deal direct with the contractors and pay them for the work.

Customers who feel that the insurers are dragging their feet can raise complaints against them -which have to be dealt with expeditiously.

For full details you can refer to the FSA handbook http://fsahandbook.info/FSA/html/handbook/ICOB/7 which tells insurers how to handle claims and you can use it as a basis of complaint making (this changes Jan 6th to a principles based system ie treating customers fairly is the golden rule and insurers do not have to obey the rules listed provided they treat their customers fairly.)

Answer 2

Crikey! In our case L&G appointed Crawford as Loss Adjusters. A week later a Crawford guy did an initial survey to see the possible maximum claim. This is important: you don't want it to get too HIGH! If it gets above a certain figure, like £25,000, your case gets passed to a special office of professionals, whose job it is to keep the costs down on bigger claims.

Don't let anyone fob you off with stories about Loss Adjusters not being paid on a per-claim or policy basis - they ARE, but they are subject to adjustment on an annual review.

Won't bore you with the ensuing tos and fros. Most important thing was 2 months after the flood, Crawford finally appointed a professional surveyor to inspect and report on the building works.

You may not get told, but there are 2 bits to this, the 2nd is Restoration but 1st comes the Stripout: electrical survey, plumbing disconnection, how much plaster needs to be hacked off, kitchen units to be removed, and wood floors etc for the place to dry out. This should have happened within about a week of the flood, not two months later.

The surveyor's plan is crucial. It lays out in detail everything that needs to be done, and by which building trade. You may not even get told this plan exists.

It took nearly 4 weeks for us to get a copy of this plan. And when it came, as a spreadsheet, all the values - hours per task, provisional cost estimate - had been zeroised or blanked out.

We've been trying since to get an unaltered copy of this plan. We keep getting calls from various Crawford offices, and from Legal & General, but nobody will reply to our emails, they only want to discuss things verbally. Wonder why?

Answer 3

I think it takes forever. In the Flood earlier this year all the houses across from me got flooded. 99% are still living in the upstairs rooms and are still waiting on the insurance to sort out. 2 did not have any.

Answer 4

hi we had flood damage in June this year which ruined our kitchen and living room.....we had a visit from the assessors and have been told that work to repair and replace the damage should take place at the end of Jan 08

Answer 5

6-8 weeks after the assessor has been .repairs could take 12 months .we were flooded out where i am in June and peeps wont get back in till July2008.

Answer 6

1

Answer 7

There is no set time limit on a claim. There are too many factors involved in this type of claim for me to go into.

Chris N - just needs to call his adjuster and touch base with him about it.

Answer 8

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Answer 9

The time it takes for a declare to be processed relies upon on the size and circumstances of the declare. until eventually the coverage company believes that the declare is suspect it is going to truly have been taken care of out by potential of now. If it maintains in the beginning i could ask to communicate to between the claims managers in the respective coverage company. If this fails then threaten, not aggresivly, them with the economic obudsmen. This company is a factor of the FSA. in fact in case you earn or the isured merchandise is under £1million pounds then they'll take on the declare on your behalf.

Answer 10

Billion years.