BUSINESS BURGLARY INSURANCE CLAIMS

Quite obviously, you are very unlikely to be able to make a full and comprehensive list of all the items that have been stolen from your workplace and this is something you must make very clear on any small schedule of the main items that have been stolen that this is simply a temporary list pending your staff conducting a full stock check.

It is not a rare occurrence when we find that factory/shop/office victims of burglary are far too quick to pass the police or their insurers what they believe to be a total list of everything that has been stolen without giving any explanation that the schedule had been drawn up in a rush without having made a detailed stock check. It can often take a week or two (sometimes more) to discover other unobvious items that were stolen and when these extra items are sent to the police your insurers treat your burglary claim as suspect. When the Loss Adjuster does feel that a theft claim is worthy of further “forensic examination/investigation” by their specialist teams, this will have a great and ominous effect in the subsequent administration of the claim. At the risk of repetition, all of this could have been avoided by simply writing those few words, “This is a temporary list of those items that we can immediately see have been stolen and will be subject to a complete inventory after we have carried out a full stock check”.

Telephone your insurance company and get the name of the person you speak to in their claims department and ask them for a reference number. They will confirm that if the claim is large enough they will be instructing a Loss Adjuster to contact you in due course. This is the ideal time to instruct a Loss Assessor (we hope, us!). We will then telephone the Loss Adjusters directly and hopefully get them to visit your shop/factory/offices far quicker than if you had telephoned them yourself. Please note that our meeting you before you meet the Insurance Company’s representative is not absolutely essential but ideally, we like to be at the first meeting with the adjusters at your workplace to initially discuss the burglary claim.

Please be mindful that it is essential that you inform the police and your insurers within hours of finding out you have been burgled. Insurance companies can, and often do, repudiate a claim if they feel that they have not been notified in good time.

The first thing we will do upon arrival is to discuss the method by which the perpetrators gained entry to the premises. By way of example, if the perpetrators forced their way into the building and you have a policy that demands that you have burglar alarm which you haven’t yet installed, then do not expect your theft claim to be paid. Similarly, if you are waiting for a maintenance visit from your burglar alarm company because the unit is not working correctly and the burglars got in without any alarm going off, once again, it is very unlikely that your claim will be paid.

You don’t, we do! Our function is to make an easily and acceptable formatted Schedule of everything that you have had stolen. We check the Schedule twice before sending it to you for final signature and then we forward it to the Loss Adjuster. More often than not, because Loss Adjusters have a very heavy workload dealing with a lot of very small claims (we only handle claims of £10,000 or more) they tend to take an age to get back to you with an offer. Because we are dealing with Loss Adjusters every day of the week, we are often able to cut through the “red tape” and dramatically shorten the wait for payment.

So long as you are not very under-insured, we are likely to get payment for everything you have had stolen. However, and importantly, this is all down to getting the correct valuations.

Don’t think for a second that the Loss Adjuster is simply going to pay you out on your opinion of the valuation of something that, because it’s been stolen, cannot be seen and inspected. This is where Salmon Assessors come in very handy because we have our own in-house valuation team and, more often than not, our valuations are accepted by the Loss Adjusters as accurate. There’s a reason for this. Over 35 years Salmon Assessors have gained a reputation for professionalism amongst insurance companies and Loss Adjusters which helps us in our negotiations on your behalf.

Good question, and we hope an equally good answer. There’s a lovely old saying that goes, “The strongest doesn’t always win the fight and the fastest doesn’t always win the race, but that’s where the smart money goes”. In short, we do not do anything other than negotiate insurance claims. We don’t sell insurance. We are simply master insurance claim negotiators… nothing more and nothing less. It is important to understand that your own insurance company is employing third party insurance claim experts, i.e. the Loss Adjusters, to negotiate any large claim on their behalf. And the reason? It’s because the insurance company does not hold itself out to be a claim negotiator. In much the same way, you, the claimant, would be considered very unlucky indeed if you had to make more than two or three large claims in a lifetime. We, as insurance Loss Assessors, handle 10 or more new and large commercial burglary claims every couple of weeks and our experience is second to none. We know our way around the insurance claims industry very well and, in much the same way that the Loss Adjuster is, it could be said, being paid to reduce your claim on behalf of your insurers, we are doing everything possible to get you the highest possible settlement. You would not dream of going to court to defend yourself without a Solicitor, and we hope that you will agree that something as important as a large insurance claim should be treated in expert hands on your behalf, just like the insurance company are leaving it to their experts. (Isn’t it strange how the vast majority of insurance claims are worth far more than minor court claims but one seeks expert representation for the minor court claim but, more often than not, does not seek expert representation to help them get the largest possible settlement). Please, do not make the misguided mistake of thinking that the Loss Adjuster has been sent to help you by your insurers. He hasn’t. He is there to represent their interests and to ensure that the extent of their liability is restricted by clever negotiation.

Certainly, our repeat clients (and 60-70% of our clients are either repeat or recommendations) would not use us if we achieved a lower settlement than they could get themselves! The fact remains that if we achieved much the same as you could get yourself, we could argue that the time we have spent handling and negotiating the claim leaving you to do what you are best at is good value in itself. However, we know for a fact that we are able to achieve an average in the order of 20-30% more than you as a non-insurance claim expert would be able to achieve yourself and as we have said previously, we are totally incentivised by how much we can get you. The more we get for you, the more we take from you and the quicker we get your money, the quicker we get paid! We assure you that there could not be a better incentive for us to ensure you are paid to the absolute maximum. We make no apologies when we describe ourselves as “mercenaries inhabiting the world of insurance”. In fact, it was the London Evening Standard that described us in this manner and, we are pleased to say, in a complimentary way!

Certainly, some of the larger insurance brokers do have a Claims Department. However, please understand that the role of an Insurance Broker is to get you the best quality, all-encompassing insurance policy at the keenest possible price. That’s how they earn their money. Certainly, they will help you with your commercial burglary insurance claim to the best of their ability in the limited time that they have available for what for them is a non-profit making activity. It may interest you to learn that 65-70% of our business is actually referred to us by insurance brokers. We hope we have made our case.

We charge a small percentage of the claim total and this is dependent on our estimation of the size of the claim. What we can say, is that it is a very rare instance indeed where we are not able to negotiate a far higher settlement than you can yourself. We haven’t been around for 35 years because we get people less than they can get themselves! Think of us as mercenaries (but nice ones!) The more we get you, the more we will charge you and the quicker we get your claim settled the quicker we will be paid. We assure you that there could be no better incentive for us to ensure you are paid to the absolute maximum.

Even if we have not been instructed at the start of the claim, we are still prepared to help you get a better settlement. However, our fee structure is different and instead of charging you a small percentage of the total claim we will charge you a higher percentage but only on any difference that we achieve. In passing, it is a rare instance where we cannot get an extra payment from insurers.