Working with an insurance adjuster can be very frustrating. On the one hand, the insurance adjuster may act like your friend. He may even do things to help you. In the end, you need to remember who is putting food on the insurance adjuster’s table. It isn’t you. It is the insurance company. In the end, the insurance adjuster will be loyal to his or her employer.
Several years ago a well respected insurance defense firm tried to recruit me to work for them. I flew to California and met with several attorneys and insurance adjusters. During lunch, talk turned to personal injury plaintiffs. The level of contempt and disdain coming out of their mouths was astonishing. I won’t go into the gory details, but let me just say, insurance adjusters don’t like claimants.
Insurance adjusters have the difficult job of telling someone who has been injured through no fault of their own, who is facing mounting medical bills and who can’t work, that they should take a dime on the dollar and be grateful. Many insurance adjusters quickly burn out. I believe that as a self defense mechanism, those insurance adjusters who don’t quit in moral outrage, quickly begin convincing themselves that all personal injury victims are cheats, liars and fakers. This allows them to justify their low ball offers.
The other thing that you should know about insurance adjusters is that they are overworked and under paid.
Knowing this about insurance adjusters, helps us in presenting claims to them and persuading them that a claim is worth settling. It is crucial to convince the adjuster up front that the claim is legitimate. The personal injury victim is not faking, is not lying and is not a cheat. The second step is to convince the adjuster that we are prepared to increase their work load significantly if the case is not settled for a fair amount.
By doing this, we’ve been successful in getting fair settlements for our clients.