America's Claims Adjuster

Helping Home and Business Owners Prevent-Prepare-Survive and Recover from Disasters

The story of being a Public Adjuster is the story of people and the impact a loss has on their lives. Our homes are so essential to us. Not just to the functionality of our daily lives but to who we are. We store up our memories in our homes in many different forms and ways. Within our homes the more precious moments of our lives occur. Children take their first steps. Celebrations of the joyous times of our lives. Home is where we go to be comforted when it seems the entire world has turned against us. Home is where we recover so we can venture forth into the world again and succeed.

When a public adjuster responds to a home that has been devastated by a fire, tornado or just suffers damage by whatever cause the public adjuster walks into that world of human life. While the insurance companies impersonally pursue their bottom line the homeowner is trying to get a very essential part of their lives back together to the degree they can. At first to restore their ability to function day to day even if it requires moving to new quarters. But ultimately to re-establish that precious place we call home.

The process is most often a long and very painful one. Burnout ruins, boarded up windows

and doors along with the infamous blue tarps covering rooftops for months and months at

a time hint at the struggle the homeowner is suffering through to get their homes repaired.

Most homeowners who have never made a claim against their homeowner’s insurance policy are often not prepared for the resistance they get from the friend they were told they had in their insurance company. After all, they may have paid for decades for a product that they were told would indemnify them if they suffered just such a loss. Sure the insurance company’s agents and claims adjusters are friendly and even compassionate. But their compassion really feels empty when your home is in ruins, your life is in turmoil and the insurance company is throwing up endless roadblocks to restoring your home.

This is where the public adjuster is far more than just compassionate. A good public adjusting firm has the knowledge and resources to fight for the homeowner and get all that is owed to the homeowner according to their policy. This often means fighting the big insurance companies at every level from negotiating with the insurance company’s claims adjusters on a peer to peer basis to resorting to legal means to have the courts order the insurance companies to do what is right.

A woman, after her home for over forty years burned down, asked a very experienced

public adjuster how hard the process would be to get her house rebuilt. The public

adjuster told her the simple straight forward truth; it’s going to be a long and painful

process. It often is because the interest of the insurance companies is to protect their

bottom line and to pay out on a claim as little as possible. Even if it means their policy

holder’s home is not restored according to the promises made in their policy.

It has been proven to be true over and over again that the skill, the knowledge and resources of a good public adjusting firm can make the process easier and faster. It has also been proven to be true that a good public adjusting firm can get the homeowner much closer to being indemnified for their loss than if they were to go it alone against their insurance company. And a public adjusting firm can most often keep a claim out of court to the advantage of the homeowner because public adjusting firms are always far less expensive than lawyers and courts. Not to mention public adjusting firms in many cases take on claims most lawyers refuse to touch.

Homeownership is under attack from many different quarters. Our friendly insurance companies of the past in many cases have turned against the homeowners and certainly do not share the homeowner’s interest. As a public adjuster I am for the homeowner and for homeownership in general. It is an essential part of being middle class. I see homeownership as a key component of building wealth as individuals and being able to have a secure place for our lives to take place.

As public adjusters we owe the homeowner what the insurance industry has openly refused to accept; fidelity or otherwise expressed as fiduciaries. Public adjusters are dedicated representatives of the homeowner's interest and not the insurance company. To this I am proud to sign my name.

David W Conn

TORNADO DAMAGE

FIRE DAMAGE

BEING PREPARED