Any incident involving fire can lead to devastating damage to an organisation’s equipment and property, which results in prominent financial losses. In such situations, a fire insurance policy from a reliable provider like TATA AIG provides coverage for the expenses that the organisation incurs, ensuring economic stability.
However, it is essential to file a claim under a fire policy immediately to your insurer to receive a claim settlement on time.
While there are different types of fire insurance, it is more important to understand the claim settlement process. This understanding will help you to maximise the claim settlement to ensure the continuity of your business operations.
Ways to Maximise Your Fire Insurance Claim Settlement
Collect Evidence of Your Damages
Before you claim fire insurance, you should gather all the necessary evidence of incurred damages before you initiate a clean-up. This should include recording videos and taking clear photographs of the different damages your property has suffered.
This will act as proof and can help maximise the amount of claim settlement. However, when you buy fire insurance you should have a proper understanding of what you can claim for and what you cannot.
Timely Inform the Claim
The next step in the fire insurance claim process is to inform your insurer about the incident as soon as possible. This will enable your insurer to appoint a surveyor immediately to carry out the overall loss assessment. Both the insurer and the insured can benefit from this action.
For instance, let us suppose that a part of your back office was subject to a fire, which partially damaged your property, however, the smoke that arose from the incident spread throughout the back office, affecting those areas that were initially unaffected.
Any delay in removing the unaffected property from your premises could result in the unaffected property being damaged. On top of it, if you delay intimating the insurer, this loss could aggravate, which the insurance company would reject, reducing your overall claim amount simply because there was a delay in reporting the incident.
Mitigate Your Losses
Another way to maximise your claim settlement amount is by mitigating your losses. Despite having fire insurance policy coverage, it is your job to act as an uninsured and take all necessary measures to prevent further loss. For instance, if your goods have caught fire, you must take all measures possible to ensure that the fire does not spread to other locations, aggravating your overall losses.
Since your insurer provides coverage for the expenses incurred during this process, you are advised to undertake all possible precautions to lower the extent of your losses. Your attitude should be such that you take the necessary measures for loss prevention, without thinking that it is alright to allow the property to be damaged because your fire insurance policy is covering your property.
Keep a Record of Inventory Losses
Apart from the documentation of damages, you should also maintain a detailed record of your inventory losses because of the incident caused by fire. This record can include damages caused to physical documents, computers, machinery, etc. This detailed report can help you get extra coverage for inventory losses, which will help to maximise the amount for claim settlement.
Make an Accurate Estimation of Repairs
While the surveyor assesses the damages incurred to get an estimate of the repair costs during the fire insurance claim procedure, you should also take the help of a professional to get a second opinion on what the estimated amount will be for the repair work.
This becomes important if the claim settlement amount according to your insurer does not match your requirement, and you have to negotiate for the claim settlement amount using the estimates provided by the second opinion.
Present Original Invoice
To maximise the settlement of claims in fire insurance, you must submit only original invoices to your insurer. Also, submit these invoices on time to receive a timely claim settlement. On the other hand, if you fail to provide original invoices to your insurer, the insurance company will calculate the claim settlement amount based on the product’s market value.
This amount may not be the same value that you paid for the product. This way, you will lose a significant amount at the time of claim settlement.
Conclusion
While it is mentally and financially exhausting to be subject to a fire incident, with the help of a fire insurance policy you can recover your losses and resume business operations. By following these tips you can get the most out of your fire insurance claim settlement.
