5 tips for businesses filing hurricane-related insurance claims

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Whether a business’s properties have been flooded, lashed by wind or fully leveled by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, finance leaders at affected companies need to work quickly and document damage carefully to make sure their organizations get the insurance proceeds they are owed as soon as possible, experts told CFO Dive.

The storm-related losses — especially in hard-hit North Carolina — have devastated communities across multiple states. NBC News has reported deaths related to Helene have soared above 200 while Milton was responsible for at least 11 deaths, according to The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, estimates of Helene’s total flood and wind-related losses were pegged at between $30.5 billion and $47.5 billion by CoreLogic, a global property data provider. Milton’s insured losses are expected to range between $30 billion and $50 billion, according to Fitch Ratings. 

Indeed, as Milton approached Florida, concern about the impact those losses could have led the sunshine state’s CFO Jimmy Patronis to issue an emergency rule on Wednesday requiring insurance adjusters to “identify and provide detailed explanations for any changes made to damage estimates,” according to a release. The move came about two years after a group of independent claims adjusters accused insurers of “deceptively” altering damage estimates and low-balling policyholders, according to The Insurance Journal. 

Robert Hartwig, director of the Center for Risk and Uncertainty Management and a clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business, said in an interview Friday that the alleged deceptive practices were not a widespread problem, noting that regulators often take a hard posture against the insurance sector during times of crises. However, he said there are some steps that CFOs and finance executives can take to smooth the way to getting their claims paid. They include: 

1. Immediately call your insurer, agent or broker. As soon as you and your staff are safe, notify your insurer that you are filing a claim so they can schedule an adjuster to visit the site of the damage. In the wake of larger disasters, major insurers often send catastrophe response teams who set up RVs in church or Walmart parking lots or other temporary locations to offer assistance, Hartwig said. “You can sometimes file a claim by simply walking in,” he said, noting that you should reach out to your insurer even if you don’t have all the information on the situation yet. “Waiting to contact your insurer would be a mistake because you place yourself further away from the actual event and make it more difficult to adjust a claim,” he said. 
2. Document damage irrespective of the cause. Again, make sure the storm or disaster has passed before you begin your property audit, he said. Then document all damage, not just obvious physical damage like flooding or wind; for example, document if the business was potentially looted in the wake of the storm, if there’s loss of inventory, or if it was forced to close because workers or customers couldn’t get there. “They’ll want associated financial documents such as payroll, rents,” he said, adding that the business could be eligible for a business interruption claim.
3. Dive deep to assess structures. Visit everywhere that it is safe to go on the business’s property after disaster hits: go into the store room, go into the basements, turn on and off all electronics and computers to see what’s been damaged so you can consolidate all the damage documentation in a single claim, rather than finding out later that some equipment is not working, Hartwig said. “Beyond ensuring the safety of your employees, from a business perspective, there are fewer things that are more important than to ensure the structural integrity of buildings, and the value of inventory and business equipment,” Hartwig said. 
4. Take videos, ideally before and after disaster strikes. In advance of a disaster striking, CFOs should ideally make sure they have videos of all company properties and detailed information about the type of equipment that the company owns, complete with VIN numbers for vehicles, Jim Buffington, advisory services leader at Intuit ProConnect said in an interview Thursday. Also, when taking videos after a storm hits, do so before you start cleaning up or work to mitigate the problem, Hartwig said. 
5. Aim for filing a claim within 48 hours. The sooner you submit and document your claim, the sooner you will be paid and that can be as quickly as a few weeks, Hartwig said, noting that filing within 48 hours is a good goal. “If you want funds to recover, you need to file the claim quickly,” he said.