What I Learned From Interviews With Former Insurance Adjusters in Indiana

Confessions Of Ex-adjusters

Over the years, when I hear that an insurance adjuster has retired or quit a particular insurance company, I have on occasion interviewed that insurance adjuster. Some of these ex-adjusters have told me they have had trouble sleeping at night! Insurance companies have no conscience. Insurance companies exist only to make a profit.

These same ex-adjusters told me about “nice people” who took “tiny checks”….only because “the people were nice” and only because “they did not have a lawyer on their side”. I asked one ex-adjuster, “do you feel bad making ridiculously tiny offers on good cases?”….he simply laughed. He said he was just protecting his job and doing what the insurance company told him to do. The adjuster was just following orders! They revealed strategies to me such as stalling, stonewalling or delaying making offers to injured people. A common strategy is to purposely wait until the financial pressure grows and grows and finally the injured person is forced to take a “tiny check”. Some ex-adjusters told me they waited until Christmas or until they were sure the injured person was desperate for money and then a small settlement offer would be made. Insurance companies sometimes have vast resources of information available to them about the injured person’s car payment, house payment and other bills that may be past due and if a house is about to be foreclosed, that would be the best time to make a very small settlement offer. One ex-adjuster told me that she had been working for a large, well-known insurance company for 20 years and beginning about 10 years ago, the insurance company started a campaign of making “extremely small offers of settlement” to seriously injured people. She said the insurance company actually demands that their adjusters make ridiculously low offers of settlement and “if she didn’t, she would be fired”. Unfortunately, a lot of injured people without lawyers say “yes” to these low offers. One ex-adjuster even told me about giving “high fives” to each other when a seriously injured person accepts a tiny check. They actually brag to each other about getting a case settled way-below-true-value. Ex-adjusters also told me about the pressures they had from their bosses to make the settlement offers lower and lower and lower because the bosses received pay raises and bonuses for making more profit for the insurance company. Another ex-adjuster told me he had “trouble going home to face his family and friends and going to church knowing that his bosses demanded that only very low offers of settlement be made to people without lawyers”. Some adjusters have even argued with their bosses that the low offer was not fair….but….the adjuster was told to make the small settlement offer anyway.

Ex-adjusters have also confessed to me of making low settlement offers to elderly injured people, expecting the elderly person to die before a trial can be scheduled. A TRULY HEARTLESS BUSINESS DECISION!!!! The ex-adjuster also told me that it is common to make very low offers to injured people who had out-of-state accidents while on vacation. The insurance companies know how difficult it is for the injured person to return to the state for a trial. Thus, the adjuster makes an extremely low offer, saving the insurance company a ton of money.

You may have read in the Indiana newspapers, recent stories about some of the insurance companies being investigated by the Indiana Department of Insurance because the insurance company failed to treat seriously injured people fairly. Most of my clients only want to be treated fairly. I have said many times….”if insurance companies treated my clients fairly….I wouldn’t have a law practice”! I stand between the insurance company and my clients “everyday” making sure that the insurance companies treat my clients fairly.

From time to time, I will continue interviewing ex-adjusters in the hopes of getting more inside information to help my clients get the settlements they deserve. I have spent the past 48 years tracking, investigating, analyzing, studying and keeping track of insurance companies and their negotiation habits. I have found that the more I know about insurance companies, the better settlements I get my clients.

There’s a lot more that you need to know.