We Can Help With Your Property Subsidence Claims
Please Note: Due to the high volume of claims we are dealing with and partly due to the pandemic, we are not currently taking on new clients for subsidence claims. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause. We hope to rectify this problem as soon as we can.
Subsidence issues are often the most technically challenging type of insurance claim.
This is why we have a specialist subsidiary company that deals exclusively with Property Defects such as subsidence. When your home or business suffers from subsidence damage, the loss on your property will require a specialised understanding of subsidence damage to fully ensure the scope of potential damage can be calculated.
Typically, insurers take longer to settle a subsidence claim than they do to settle any other type of claim made under building policies. A significant reason for this is that, with a claim of this nature, identifying the nature of the damage and its cause is far from the end of the investigation. In many ways, it is only the beginning. In quite a large proportion of the subsidence cases appointed to Public Loss Adjusters, the policyholder complains of delay by the insurer in dealing with a claim.
Our approach involves ensuring that insurers and their appointed representatives take reasonable and proportionate time to investigate and monitor the situation, relative to the damage you have taken.
With A Subsidence Claim Communication Is Essential
Putting our client’s mind at rest is an essential part of our service throughout our management of your claim management process. Despite all the technical know-how that insurers and their representatives devote to resolving your situation, the need to maintain good communication with the policyholders can sometimes be overlooked. For policyholders that are understandably anxious to halt the damage to their homes, possibly already putting up with a considerable degree of inconvenience.
The prospect of apparently unending debates among experts can often be the final straw that can lead to frustration. We will keep communications open throughout your subsidence claim.
There are many pitfalls in dealing with a claim of this nature, an example being that sometimes the sum insured may not be enough to pay for the stabilisation of the site and the cost of repairing the damage to the buildings. We see complaints where the insurer tries to stop payments in relation to the claim when they reach the total of the sum insured – even if not all of the necessary stabilisation and/or repair work has been carried out.
When the insurer has chosen to repair the damage, it has entered into a “contract to repair” – this is separate from the contract of insurance. In most cases, this means that the insurer is not able to limit the benefits under the “contract to repair” to the “sum insured” set out in the insurance policy.
